Is Romance Color-Coded?
Me and my dog, Ben. Isn’t he handsome?
It may sound like a strange question to ask, but I’ve never been the sort of person who looked at the world with a color-coded mindset. To me, people have always just been people. And I’ve always been fascinated by the differences between us. I think that’s part of why I love reading so much, because there’s no better way to learn about the world and the multitudes of people in it – other than actually traveling the world, of course, but unfortunately not all of us have the money or the means to be able to do that.
When I first started writing with the intent to self-publish, it never dawned on me that, as an African-American woman, maybe I should be writing romance novels about black characters. I’m not really sure why that was, but it’s true. In fact, I never even thought about it until I was ready to hit the publish button on that first book, Pierced By Danger. Then, all of a sudden it struck me that perhaps readers would be a little confused when they associated my brown face with that story because, apart from a couple of very minor characters who are coworkers of the hero or heroine, there are no black characters in that trilogy. Maybe there should have been, but I simply wrote the story I saw in my head. They are the characters who introduced themselves to me, and I love that story so much it hurts. It’s my baby.
But this is the reason I chose to hide my face behind the image of a rose on each of my online profiles for over a year (Well, one of the reasons. You can read about the other reason HERE). Because I didn’t want a potential reader to see my face and think that I was only writing African-American romance. Because I didn’t want to be stuffed into one restrictive category and have my books thought of as just African-American romance, because they’re not. They’re contemporary romance. They’re romantic suspense. They’re romance for readers of all colors. And is there some rule out there that says that I’m only allowed to write stories about people who look like me? ‘Cause if there is, I guess I’m breaking it. Especially since my characters seem to have taken a more multi-racial turn since three of the five couples in my Jagged Ivory series are of mixed race. Something that, again, never dawned on me until I was in the middle of writing book five, Jagged Surrender. And honestly, it made me ask myself the question, “Have I somehow drifted into writing interracial romance?”
They say that you should write what you know. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is then I’m finally writing within my designated color barrier, because for me … what I know is interracial romance. And there’s a reason why most of the heroes in my stories are cops. My husband is white. He’s a retired police officer who used to be a K-9 handler. He’s a biker who has been riding motorcycles for over thirty years and now sells them at one of our local Harley-Davidson dealerships here in Ohio. He is the perfect combination of alpha male and caring sensitivity that most romance novels are written about, and I can say with honesty that each of the heroes in my stories have some tiny part of my husband in the make up of his character. Even the stories about the rock stars!
But the point I’m trying to make is that, I guess I’m no longer worried about whether my characters are color-coded or not, or whether the rules dictate that I write about my own race or not. My stories are populated with real people of all colors, my heroes aren’t perfect and my heroines aren’t shrinking violets. And I’m not hiding behind a rose anymore. This is me.
