One reoccurring compliment and honorable mention in reviews that I receive is how diverse the cast of characters are in my stories. This is something that I don’t set out to do when I sit down to write a story, my very 1st priority when I pick up my pen is to scare the heebie jeebies out of my readers or at the very least make people uncomfortable. All my stories would still be scary if everyone was white and straight.
My stories are multiculture because that’s the world I’ve always lived in. I grew up on a US military installation where having a black mom and a white dad, or a white dad or Asian mom was normal. My mom had gay friends, I have gays friends and while serving my country I practically travelled all over the world. I was born in Washington and live in Seattle which has a pretty diverse population.
I got an email today from a reader who vows never to read anything from me again. After just reading three stories in my anthology and after the conclusion of Best Friends Forever, which tells what happens when a relationship deteriorates in the most frightening way. A relationship which just happens to be between two women.
She explicatively demanded to know if I wasn’t going to bother explaining the hardships and challenges of the LGBT community then why use them in my work and furiously accused me of using LGBT characters as tokens and explained in great detail how deplorable and crass she found it coming from an African American writer who should know better. She advised me that she would be returning the book to Amazon for a full refund.
I’m completely stunned, I’m confused and probably not done crying. I’m not sure what else I was supposed to do. Finding yourself in a war of the roses situation after initiating a breaking up and then finding out your ex is Psycho Suzy would be hard for anyone, gay, straight, black or white to deal with. In this story the couple just happened to be same sex.
I’m just not sure what else I was supposed to do
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