Secilia_numa asked Kaje Harper:

I have been re-reading the hidden wolves series, in anticipation for the fourth book. The details I missed out in my earlier reading, mainly because of the hotness factor-including the garter belt (ouch!), really moved me...the constant fear/anxiety of being "different" in today's world, where the color of your skin or what you wear may cost you your freedom or your life. Were you always interested in this theme?

Kaje Harper I've always been interested in social justice. I think true progress can be measured by how well we accept, empathize with, and treat fairly those who are not like ourselves. My father used to quote Adlai Stevenson. “A free society is one in which it is safe to be unpopular.”

It's definitely always been part of why I love writing gay main characters. I was caught from the start by the desire to expose and highlight unfairness and injustice, and then turn the story to a happy ending for my characters. And it's fun as a writer to create those echoes in fantasy and paranormal. Like a gay man, a werewolf can hide in plain sight, and yet there's something fundamental about who he is that puts him at risk from those who can't accept or understand differences, if he comes out. This next book echoes that even louder, but hopefully not too persistently. I had no idea, when I began it a several years ago (I wrote book 3 after it), that current politics would make the difficulty of being an outsider in America this much more salient.

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