My World and Welcome To It

I'm sometimes asked how I came up with the world that I built for The Underground. In a word--bigotry.

One afternoon, I was stuck in traffic and started to think about the people who pass for what they are not--black for white, gay for straight and so on--in order to escape the discrimination, condemnation, humiliation and even death at the hands of mainstream society. What necessary lies must they tell, what subterfuges must they engage to keep others from finding out the truth? And then I thought about paranormals and aliens, who are probably the ultimate passers, unlike the others who are unmistakably human, they are passing for human.

So that's my world. That's why you won't find werewolves and other werecreatures running rampant around the city. That's why you won't find vampires draining one human for a meal. That's why the witches disguise and cast spells over their Temples to avoid prying human eyes. That's why elves are not constantly wielding their glamour, clouding human minds to make illusion and reality indistinguishable. The paranormals cannot afford to bring attention to themselves, lest they touch off a pogrom, the killing spree the human horde sometimes undertakes to "wipe out" the paranormals in their midst.

I'll tell you more about my world in the next installment.