JollytheGeek asked Shannon Messenger:

Are you going to add any more African Americans to any of your book series?

Shannon Messenger This is a tricky question to answer because technically in both of my series I don't have any characters that are "african" or "asian" or "american" or "european" or any other racial/cultural term, because those are human delineations and I'm not writing about human characters. In the KEEPER series, their race and culture is "elf." And in the Sky Fall series, their race and culture is "sylph."

But I'm assuming what you're really asking is whether I will have characters that look like the different races. And the answer is yes, my goal is always to write in a way that reflects the beautiful diversity in our world. And there actually are quite a few diverse characters in the KEEPER series. I'll refrain from listing them because somehow that feels like reducing them to token characters. But it was always my goal to have a cast that reflected the same variety of physical appearances as we see in our world. And several of them have been growing into the larger roles I'd always planned for them (certain plot threads couldn't happen until the villains were ready to up their game), so you'll be seeing them more and more in the later books.

And of course as I write new things, I always strive to write with diversity in mind. Not to say I'm perfect in this regard--I'm sure I can always find ways to grow and improve. But it's always my goal to make sure that my books reflect the world as it is.

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