Hey, I’m DC. I was tagged by Kish Knight (http://kishknight.blogspot.com/) an up and coming author whom I met through Goodreads. She is the author of several books for young adults and teens and I’ve been privileged enough to read her book The Shelf, a teen horror novel. I’m an African American author who works along with my mother. I have several books published all are fantasy or paranormal romance. My mom’s first book, The Legend of the Black Rose, will be published 07/29 and you can enter to win a free copy in the Goodreads giveaway.
The next book on my list is Roses and Incarnations which is a novel based on my mother's short story The Legend of the Black Rose a version of the story that's very different from the full length novel we're publishing under the same name. After that, I plan to work on The Black Giselle, a story about a ballerina. I did ballet a long time ago and it will be exciting to relive what it means to be a dancer. This one will be magical realism, which is a new genre for me to explore.
HOW DOES YOUR WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS OF ITS GENRE?
I believe our work differs greatly from most writers mainly because of the fact that few African American authors write sci fi fantasy books. I’m really striving to diversify the literary world and have recently decided to change the front covers on many of our books to reflect the multicultural characters we have inside of our stories. It’s a very rewarding experience to hear from fans and others who desire more diverse books and we have the ability to write them for our audience. You can get a glimpse at all our book covers here.
I write what I do because it helps me to express myself in a creative way. There's no rules or limitations on writing. Writing is as vast as the human mind's imagination. I enjoy writing fantasy fiction because it's hard for me to connect with reality sometimes. The daily news and current events fly me in rapid succession. So instead of having to live in the morbid reality we're in, I decided to take my imagination to far off worlds and fascinating characters and inventions that could never exist on earth.
I come up with one idea at a time and record them all down. Once I have a lot of ideas going, I piece them all together and reorganize them into a logical flow. I don’t like to plan out the plot word for word, because I’ve found this to be really mechanical and suck the life out of my writing. I prefer to have general ideas and line them up one after the other and then let the dialogue and character’s personalities drive me from one scene to the next. Life has no plot so why should all books have them? It’s more natural to me to have the stories be driven by characters and their big personalities.
WHO’S GOT NEXT?