Madhuri Pavamani's Blog, page 24

Some Solange…

Mostly because she is the business, but also because this song is a serious jam that never got enough air play, the video is gorgeous, and I just felt like sharing it again.

I #SupportWNDB – The Series: EVOLUTION OF A WRITER

Evolution of a Diverse Books Writer

Rebecca White

Evolution of a Diverse Books Writer or How I Went From, ‘Why Not Have a Dark-Skinned Character?’ to ‘Everything I Write for the Rest of My Life Will Include Diversity for the Sake of My Son and the Rest of the Non-White and Disabled People on Earth’.

Step One: Why Not? It was 2003, and I wanted to write a book. I’d had ideas developing in my mind for years, and it was finally time to put them down on paper, so to speak. The book’s largest theme would be the injustice and loss that follow nationalism, shown in a story about a girl who escapes one kind of inequality only to find herself in a country where she’s not only a minority, but a minority from a much hated race. The girl’s adventure, relationships, and character development would keep people reading.

It wasn’t until I started pounding out the first scene that I realized I needed to know what the girl looked like. As I sat there in the college library, trying not to listen to the conversations of some un-conscientious types, I decided that in order to move the plot properly, I needed my two nations to look very different from each other. Because of the world’s geography it made more sense to give my protagonist darker skin, so I wrote a brown-skinned protagonist, and that was that.

Step Two: White People Need to Get Over it. Almost ten years after I began writing my first novel, Kergulen, I had given up on traditional agents and publishers and gone indie. (I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing, but that’s another blog post for another time.) When I started passing around the cover art/font for feedback, I was ASTOUNDED to hear that ‘people won’t buy a book with a picture of a black girl on it’. I heard this from light and dark-skinned people alike, and I just couldn’t believe it, na��ve me. My response was to be stubborn and insist that there is no reason why white people shouldn’t read books about non-white characters. It’s ridiculous. If my son (who is black) can be expected to read books about white people, why can’t white people read about people of color? They need to get over it.

Step Three: What? Almost All Books Are About White People? Being a European-American, I had never thought about it before. I only became aware of the issue when I finally started looking for markets that might be more open to the book I’d published and the sequel I had in the works. I learned that there are LOTS of people craving a good, non-white lead to read because they just can’t get their hands on enough of them. I began looking at diversity as something we need, not just something white people needed to accept. Many of the characters in my second book, Kings of the Red Shell, are various shades of brown and tan. The heroine is no longer a minority.

Step Four: My Son Could Use a Hero. Our son has diverse role models in real life, but it finally sunk in that he might very well want to read about characters who look like him when he gets older. They should be powerful, believable characters who overcome struggles and still embrace life with gusto. In Kings of the Red Shell, my main character has grown much stronger, more confident, and pro-active. She still has doubts and things to work through, of course, but she’s more courageous and selfless than ever. She’s the kind of character we wouldn’t mind our young people emulating.

Step Five: Huh. Disability is Part of Diversity. My son has a severe physical disability that renders him ventilator dependent when he’s sick or sleeping. A condition like that would be hard to reproduce in a fantasy, electricity-free world, but other disabilities could easily work. And that is why one of my more interesting secondary characters was dealt a disabling blow near the end of book two. Despite being an amputee, he’ll return as an important character in book four. I’ve also been thinking over other ways to incorporate disabilities without making the stories about disability any more than they’re about diversity. In the future, I also intend to include adoption.

Step Six: Everything I Write for the Rest of My Life Will Include Diversity for the Sake of My Son and the Rest of the Non-White and Disabled People on Earth. This statement is only partly true. Everything I write will include diversity, but not just for the sake of the non-white and disabled. All of this evolution has brought me back to the beginning, the belief that diversity is good for everyone. Maybe if we produce quality diverse content, diversity will become the norm. Then my original motivation for writing a non-white heroine would be sufficient. Why not?

Please consider assisting our efforts to diversify everyone���s bookshelf by checking out the We Need Diverse Books website and seeing how you can help. It’s super easy, just click ���>��HERE����� it���s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

R.A. White grew up in the Pocono Mountains, sharing her childhood with as many as six siblings and foster siblings at any given time. In her early adult years, she spent two years living in Moscow, Russia. More recently, she and her husband, both white Americans, adopted an African American child. Growing up in a racially diverse family, living as a foreigner, and raising a child through trans-racial adoption all make her well suited to write novels about the complexities of multiracial communities. A lifelong love of the fantasy genre led her to set her story in an imaginary world.

Want a little more Rebecca? You can find her in all these places:

WEBSITE

AMAZON

FACEBOOK

I #SupportWNDB – The Series: Diversity Now

Diversity Now

Zoraida Cordova

 

Diversity Now

Or, a call for authors to write more diverse characters.

In a recent Guardian article the question is ���are diverse characters only OK as long as they���re not too diverse?���

I personally think that nuanced diversity is a good thing. When the chat over #WeNeedDiverseBooks started in May, a friend asked me ���so then you want to take away what makes a character different and then just white wash them?���

Again, no.

When you spend so much time being singled out as being different, sometimes you just want to fit in. What the hell do I mean by this? I���m not talking about denying who you are as a person. I���m talking about being a teenager in popular culture. For me, I grew up in a working class family and neighborhood in Queens, NY. I was born in Ecuador, but I started my American education in first grade. In that sense, I assimilated right away. I remember when I started not just speaking English, but exclusively thinking in English. It���s so totally weird to think of your brain just switching languages. But anyway, my assimilation happened.

In school we were given books like HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, and THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET and all I wanted to read were vampire books. My being Ecuadorian doesn���t affect my day to day life. I���m not Catholic. I don���t cook. I live alone. But when I���m with my family, I enjoy Ecuadorian food and speaking in broken Spanish. In fact, I worried less about my Ecuadorian-ness in high school, than I do now when people point it out the most.

This is why I think it���s important for kids to see themselves in stories that right now don���t represent diversity in leading roles. I want a brown Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a mixed Bella Swan just because. You don���t have to whitewash a POC in order for them to be a leading character of a ���non-issue��� book. Not everyone has a problem with their race. The problem is society.

Look, I know that there are still kids assimilating, and not all third generation kids ignore their roots. But if we don���t write them, then you can���t hope that someone else is going to.

To play devil���s advocate, maybe changing the ethnicity of a character wouldn���t make a title an astronomical seller. Would The Fault In Our Stars have been the same if Agustus was a Black urban teen and Hazel was Asian-American? If Katniss has been portrayed by an ���olive skinned��� actress like the books describe her as opposed to J Law, would it be a #1 movie?

Right now, we don���t know because over and over the leading ladies can be portrayed by the same girl. And book covers are whitewashed, ambiguous, and silhouetted.

In a world where people don���t understand the importance of race in cases like Mike Brown vs America, how do we even begin to place diversity in books just because? Where white people think Latinos are dangerous? How do we begin to accept casually placing POC in ���regular��� roles?

I don���t have the answer. Except, maybe, write my own.

The fundraising campaign for We Need Diverse Books is closed but there are still plenty of ways to work to diversify our bookshelves. Please visit their site and see how you can contribute to making the stories out there ALL of our stories by clicking ���>��HERE����� it���s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

 

Zoraida C��rdova��was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where she learned to speak English by watching Disney���s��The Little Mermaid��and Michael Jackson���s��Moonwalker��on repeat. She studied English Lit at Hunter College, and The University of Montana before finding a home for herself in the (kinda) glittering world of New York City���s nightlife. She prefers her whiskey neat, her bacon crispy, and her men with a side of chivalry. She is the author of��The Vicious Deep��Trilogy (YA) and the��On the Verge Series��(NA). Visit her at��www.zoraidacordova.com

You can find her here:

GOODREADS

TWITTER

FACEBOOK

Zoraida is the author of

THE VICIOUS DEEP��(YA Fantasy)
THE SAVAGE BLUE��(YA��Fantasy)
THE VAST & BRUTAL SEA��(YA��Fantasy)

LUCK ON THE LINE��(Contemporary Romance)
LOVE ON THE LEDGE��(Contemporary Romance) Coming��5/5/15
LIFE ON THE LEVEL��(Contemporary Romance) Coming��9/8/15

ENCANTRIX��(YA Fantasy) Coming Fall 2015

Thursday Thoughts

Sexing It Up On Wattpad

A couple of weeks ago I decided to give Wattpad��a try. What is Wattpad you say?

Official line: it’s “a place to discover and share stories: a social platform that connects people through words. It is a community that spans borders, interests, languages. With Wattpad, anyone can read or write on any device: phone, tablet, or computer.”

You can write as you go or if you already have a complete manuscript, can upload as much or as little as you want. You can interact with readers, read other people’s work, and just generally indulge in all sorts of bookish activity.

You can also design your own covers for your work using their cover creator app, which caught my attention because recently I’ve been having conversations with my brilliant friend, Michele, who designs my covers, about doing a redesign of the covers for The Sanctum Trilogy.

Why? you ask – you love my covers.

So do I!

They’re stark and modern and chic���but people who read this genre, that being paranormal fiction, tend to go for something a little less stark and modern and chic and a little more sexy and girlie and���ugh.

Or so I’ve been told.

Thinking about some of the paranormal book covers I’ve seen as I scroll through the titles on Amazon makes my skin crawl. But then there are the Shatter Me’s of the world – gorgeous covers, evoking energy and sexiness and touching on just that little something that hooks a reader – and I start thinking okay, maybe I could do this. Maybe it wouldn’t be so painful to go that route.

I mean, seriously, take a look at Shatter Me���it’s stunning.

Another piece of gorgeousness in the book cover game belongs to Shadowshaper, coming out next Spring.

So while Michele designs the cover for Book III and starts thinking about the redesigns for the entire trilogy, which I’ve seen some of her ideas and they are stunning, I decided to play around with Wattpad’s cover creator, conducting an experiment of my own to see if this whole cover redesign was even worth it.

What did I do, you ask. Well, it’s pretty simple. I originally uploaded the first ten chapters of THE GIRL for people to read using the original cover

��and got about 300 something reads. Not bad, but my numbers never really moved from there, even as I uploaded new chapters. That’s when I saw the cover creator app and got to thinking it would be the perfect time to put something together and see how people responded. So I played around with some designs and came up with this:

Nothing great, but not terrible, puts a girl on the cover of THE GIRL, although she looks nothing like Dev, sexes things up a bit, and is more in line with covers in the genre.

I put up the new cover, and in about 45 minutes, my reads jumped from the 300s to the 700s.

Wh-wh-what??

Exactly what I said. Holy shit. And that cover isn’t even good.

I’ve since played with it and come up with something I like a lot better and my reads have continued to grow. In under two weeks, I’m already at 1500. Not that this is some great number, and I still have very few comments or votes, but whatever. At least I kind of see what all the cover hype is about now and am actually excited about Michele’s redesigns.

Until then, I’ll have to stick with my own designs on Wattpad, but someone seems to like them because they keep getting hits. [It also pleases me tremendously that my reads keep growing despite the fact I have a woman of color on my cover���and a dark woman of color at that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that you cannot put a person of color on your book cover if you want to make a sale. I’m not saying this is proof that old adage is wrong, but it’s not entirely correct either.]

So here are the Wattpad covers, a little sexier, a little more YA/NA. They’ve grown on me, and have helped me get a little more excited about reissuing The Sanctum Trilogy with its new covers next year.

If anything, these Wattpad covers are proof that even a stubborn bitch like myself can learn some new tricks.

Holla.

������

Book Review: What The Body Needs by Laura Oliva

Romantic Suspense

Published January 2014

Meet Jak and Marcus, two survivors of their own hells, on a collision course with each other.

Jak does not want to be touched. Not after what happened five years ago.

Marcus cannot forgive himself. Not after what he allowed to happen to his sister.

One night, slammed against the wall of a dark alley outside a bar, changes everything for these two in ways they least expect. And begins the painful and beautiful story of their damaged souls.

I must admit, I don’t typically read romance novels as I’m a fantasy girl who loves her world full of dragons and demons, vampires and fae. And the more fantastical, the better. So curling up with the very real and very broken Jak and Marcus was hardly something I considered, much less believed would suck me in for a weekend. But it happened and my own writing deadlines be damned, I’m so glad it did.

Laura Oliva’s characters are multi-dimensional and complicated, her use of suspense adds bite to the genre, and damn if Oliva doesn’t write some of the hottest sex scenes I’ve ever read. Trust me when I say, every woman should get pushed into the back of a GTO with a man like Marcus.

Hot.

And intertwined in all that wicked sexiness is some serious magic – Oliva has quite a way with words and I found myself highlighting passages throughout her story. Little pieces of perfection I wanted to hold onto for a bit longer.

It wasn’t like he had anything to offer in return. Just the way he breathed for her, bled for her. Existed for when she smiled at him, talked to him, for the way she said his name.

He could break her over and over and over. It wouldn’t matter. Just as long as he stuck around to piece her back together again.

So if you’re looking for a hot read to get lost in as the temperatures drop outside, grab a copy of Oliva’s WHAT THE BODY NEEDS��and discover what I did: in the right hands, romance can be just as magical as the best fantasy.

Holla.

I #SupportWNDB – The Series: No Angel

No Angel

Zetta Elliott

 

In 2000, I taught a creative writing class in an after school program on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. One of my students was a girl whose mother was incarcerated; she was angry about the situation and her classmates teased her, which led her to act out violently at school���and sometimes in our class. I searched for a book that could serve as a mirror for that girl, but I couldn���t find anything and so I wrote a story for her. That story became my first novel for young readers, An Angel for Mariqua.

 

Here’s a summary:

Christmas is coming, but eight-year-old Mariqua Thatcher isn���t looking forward to the holidays. Mama���s gone and Gramma doesn���t know what to do with her feisty granddaughter. Almost every day Mariqua gets into a fight at school, and no one seems to understand how she feels inside. But things start to change when a mysterious street vendor gives Mariqua a beautifully carved angel as a gift. Each night Mariqua whispers in the angel���s ear and soon her wishes start to come true! Mariqua begins to do better at school, and she even wins an important role in the church pageant. But best of all, Mariqua becomes friends with Valina Peterson, a teenager who lives in Mariqua’s building. Valina helps Mariqua learn how to control her anger, and reminds her pretend little sister that ���everyone has a story to tell.��� Their friendship is tested, however, when Mariqua discovers that Valina has been keeping a secret about her own mother. Can the magic angel make things better?

I was in graduate school when I wrote this story, and my studies focused on Black women in the US. I was frustrated by the way issues that directly impact Black women and girls never seem to receive the attention they deserve, and are perceived���even by many Black women���as less important than the challenges facing Black boys and men. So with this novel I was trying to do two things: 1) provide a mirror for the many children whose mothers are absent due to incarceration, and 2) bring attention to the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS and incarceration on Black women, their families, and the Black community in general.

December 1 was World AIDS Day and these sobering statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) paint a grim picture of the disease’s impact on my community:

African Americans accounted for an estimated 44% of all new HIV infections among adults and adolescents (aged 13 years or older) in 2010, despite representing only 12% of the US population; considering the smaller size of the African American population in the United States, this represents a population rate that is 8 times that of whites overall.


In 2010, African American women accounted for 6,100 (29%) of the estimated new HIV infections among all adult and adolescent African Americans. This number represents a decrease of 21% since 2008. Most new HIV infections among African American women (87%; 5,300) are attributed to heterosexual contact. The estimated rate of new HIV infections for African American women (38.1/100,000 population) was 20 times that of white women and almost 5 times that of Hispanic/Latino women.


At some point in their lifetimes, an estimated 1 in 16 African American men and 1 in 32 African American women will be diagnosed with HIV infection.

I look at these statistics and wonder why I waited so long to self-publish An Angel for Mariqua. Writing the novel wasn���t difficult, but getting it published by a traditional press proved almost impossible. For about a decade I sent the novel to various editors (some of whom are vocal supporters of WNDB) and had it repeatedly rejected. In 2011, a writer friend introduced me to her prestigious publisher; my agent sent her the manuscript and received this response: ���I do love Zetta���s writing but the story is a little tough because Mariqa (sp?) comes across as an unsympathetic character���I understand why M is acting this way, but you do want readers to connect with her too.���

I think a lot of kids can relate to being raised by their grandmother, and living in a household that���s struggling to make ends meet. I think plenty of kids know what it���s like to be bullied or teased at school, and many of those kids probably learned���as Mariqua did���that fighting doesn���t solve anything. I doubt that young readers will find Mariqua ���unsympathetic��� if they try to put themselves in her place���and isn���t that what books teach kids to do?

So after more than a decade, I have decided to self-publish this book. I wish I could say we���ve made progress since 2000, but the rates of Black women���s incarceration (up 800% since 1986) and HIV infection have actually increased. Still, I cling to a quote from the Combahee River Collective, ���Black women are inherently valuable;��� they deserve our love, support, and understanding. Our families and communities will not thrive unless we recognize that all Black lives matter. I never got a chance to share this book with the girl whose life story served as my inspiration, but I hope she found someone to help her channel all that pain and rage into something constructive.

Right now Black women are marching alongside Black men to protest the non-indictment of two white police officers who killed unarmed teen Michael Brown and street vendor Eric Garner; every three or four days a Black person in this country is killed by law enforcement, but where are the books that explain this reality to young readers? We don’t just need diverse books���we need a publishing industry committed to social justice rather than the symbolic annihilation of kids of color. We need books that affirm the fact that BLACK YOUTH MATTER.

The fundraising campaign for We Need Diverse Books is closed but there are still plenty of ways to work to diversify our bookshelves. Please visit their site and see how you can contribute to making the stories out there ALL of our stories by clicking –> HERE����� it���s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

 

Born in Canada, Zetta Elliott moved to the US in 1994 to pursue her PhD in American Studies at NYU. Her poetry has been published in several anthologies, and her plays have been staged in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland.��Her essays have appeared in��Horn Book Magazine,��School Library Journal,��and��Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures.��She is the author of thirteen books for young readers, including the award-winning picture book��Bird. Her urban fantasy novel,��Ship of Souls, was named a��Booklist��Top Ten Sci-fi/Fantasy Title for Youth and was a finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Book Award. Her own imprint, Rosetta Press, generates culturally relevant stories that center children who have been marginalized, misrepresented, and/or rendered invisible in traditional children���s literature. Elliott is an advocate for greater diversity and equity in publishing. She��currently lives in Brooklyn.

Download free posters and watch video testimonials at http://www.Kidlitequality.com

Follow Zetta on Twitter: @zettaelliott

Visit her website: http://www.zettaelliott.com

Zetta’s book Ship of Souls��was a 2012��Booklist��Top Ten Sci-Fi/Fantasy Youth Title and a finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Book Award. It also received a starred review from��Booklist:��“Urban fantasies are nothing rare, but few mesh gritty realism with poetic mysticism so convincingly. By turns sad, joyful, frightening, funny, and inspirational, Elliott���s second novel is a marvel of tone and setting.”

The Deep��is a companion book to��Ship of Souls.

 

 

Rough and Sexy

I randomly heard this song tonight and totally thought of my Class A Warrior for The Sanctum, Ryker Morrison.

It sounds like him, it evokes him, it’s him: sexy and hard and rough and so. Fucking. Good.

Go find him on AMAZON��– I promise he’ll make it worth your while.

Just Saying

Thursday Thoughts

WARRIORS!!