Diversity Is Not a Bug

Recently I was informed that my books are too diverse to be considered for re-publication by a major publisher because my subject matter (and the fact that Amazon has seen fit to slot my work in the LGBT Fantasy category without my input) is too controversial and not mainstream enough.

Unfortunately, I don't write "mainstream." I don't write to appeal to middle-class cisgender straight white men between the ages of 18 and 35.

I don't write safe.

I write strong women. Women that pursue their goals, dreams, and romantic interests be that straight, gay, or else without being Prada-devil harpy-bots, because that's what real women are doing. Young women that wield swords and grenade-launchers without being reduced to centerfolds for the Chad demographic. Young women that fight their abusive fathers without being screaming Wendy Torrance dishrags, by dousing them in their beady eyes with pepper spray until they shit their abusive pants. Aging women that are valued for their minds and their skills and their strength, because there are a hell of a lot of those in the real world that don't get nearly enough credit, or get more credit for maintaining their good looks instead of their contribution to important societal dialogues or scientific frontiers.

I write transgender men that could magically turn you inside out, but are too afraid to let anyone know their female deadname because their occult cabal is a toxic patriarchy.

I write people that had to relearn how to walk after getting their leg blown off, who had to relearn how to live after letting their best friend kill himself.

I write magicians with chronic pain that use their last spoon to help their friends by conjuring hallucinatory monsters, even though they don't even feel like getting out of the car. I write men and women with aged bodies and missing limbs that are every bit as capable as the rest of the cast without turning every situation into inspiration porn. Have you ever wanted to fall in love with an amputee? I did that. I have reviews bearing that out. Have you ever wanted to kick the shit out of an amputee? I can do that too. They're people just like you.

I write gay characters that are more than hand-flapping comic relief or lascivious sexual jaguars, gay characters that out-shoot and out-perform every hard-charging hetero in sight, bad-asses that just happen to be gay instead of the other way around, because those are real people. The armed services are crammed full of them, whether the armed services likes it or not, and they deserve a little time behind a fictional ironsight.

I write children that have to take care of their alcoholic parents, have to wake them up for work and chide them into putting on clothes and have to feed themselves, kids that do this without being reduced to a tear-jerking Sally Struthers UNICEF ad, kids that will brook no stupid shit from ignorant adults, kids that will defend their friends with their lives.

I write men and women that are sidelined and ridiculed and threatened and endangered because of their schizophrenia or kleptomania or because they're a woman, or old, or because their skin is the wrong color. People that have to live their lives being called faggots and sluts and niggers and pussies and idiots and crazy and "confused" because of the way they were born or because of things that were done to them. People that keep their mouth shut for fear of ending up dead in the river, shot dead in their cars, beat to death in the woods somewhere, dragged behind a pickup truck, gunned down in an Orlando nightclub, in prison for lack of mental healthcare, or found hanging from a tree in a park in 2016 Atlanta. I do it because they all deserve to see themselves between the pages of a book, and I'm not talking about the local mugshot rag sold at the gas station down the street. I write those characters because they are real and that's how they show up on my doorstep, and I couldn't change them even if I wanted to, because they will fight me tooth and fictional nail.

And I label my books with cues of diversity like #wndb and "LGBT" and "female protagonist" so these people can more easily find them. I cast a wide net.

If including those people dooms me to a life of obscurity in self-publishing or relegated to the bargain bin, berated and punched-down by conservative readers and pundits, and if traditional publishers are waiting for "safe" books because real life and real people are not lucrative, then you'll find me in the void. Because I know those shadows will be full of people like best-selling Star Wars author Chuck Wendig and G. R. R. Martin and John Scalzi and Marvel and a thousand other writers and publishers who aren't afraid to shun the sharp-edged cardboard cutout demographic of white male America.

Diversity is not a bug. It is a feature.