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The Beautiful and Bold Women of Fantasy
Renditions of the main male characters from OFFWORLD have been up for a while:
I’d searched all over for photos that best represented the men in the book, because I was still learning how to digitally edit photos.
Now that I’ve got the hang of it, I decided to post some of my own fantasy renditions of otherworldly African American women since we’re underrepresented in the Scifi and Fantasy genre:
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The Final Frontier
Sometimes I get so caught up in the real world that I don’t get back to my fictional worlds as often as I’d like.
So as I ready the ebook HUI for release, I’m mindful of the books I’ve been editing at a slow and steady pace.
Some of these books are in the genre of science fiction:
A reanimated man – OFFWORLD, which was recently included in a Speculative fiction post on a site titled blackgirlnerds.
A reluctant female hero in an empire ruled by women:
A child given the power of creation:
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Black Swan
I’m not going to put too many words to the promo photos I’ve created for the novel Hui. Hopefully they convey a bit of the love the two characters share in the upcoming ebook:
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Living for the weekend
Ahhh . . . a three day weekend. I’m working on new, diverse book covers with Asian leading men and readying QUEENSREALM for release.
ETA: If you’re a self-pubbed author and you don’t know how to use Photoshop or Paint.net( free software), or Adobe elements, try to get someone to teach you. Stop by a local college art department and offer to pay someone to tutor you. It’s an investment that will save you money over the long run. Covers do matter, especially when faced with showing a heroine of color. The ability to manipulate an image to more closely resemble your book’s characters (if your female lead is brown in the book, then she should be close to that color on the cover. IR readers do notice and many are becoming quite vocal about seeing cover models with more variety in their skin tones and hair texture). The model below is actually a blending of two stock images I bought:
I think its very important that minority writers not fall complacent enough to think we can’t stumble into “othering” another racial group, or fall into the trap of making our own culture the exotic. There was an interesting discussion on Dear Author regarding the use of food to describe minority characters, in a way that is sometimes different than the description of white characters. I’ve seen this in a number of books and some readers don’t care for it, so that’s something I keep in mind when writing.
I tend to use Saturday as the time to work on covers and promos. There are a number of scifi novellas I’d like to release this summer:
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Last Day for FREE excerpt downloads on Amazon
Thank you, thank you THANK YOU! To all those who’ve tweeted and spread the word about the free Sneak Peek downloads this weekend. Since these are excerpts from novels, there was no way to know if any readers would be interested. So I’m very happy about the progress of The Scifi Sampler:
Multicultural Scifi is another passion of mine. And QUEENSREALM is the next book coming out, so I hope all those who like to read scifi or futuristic military tales, or read about hot alien virgin heroes, or even THE ONE books (but this time a woman of color saves the world), well, I hope this book will appeal to those who like conflicted, but kick ass heroines.
A new excerpt from QUEENSREALM:
So this was where Banks threw the dissidents. They never escaped. He just had the Bog devour them,
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A Woman is a Weapon
That’s my tagline, and the very first sentence of my epic, Scifi multi-cultural romance QUEENSREALM.
Once I started with a powerful opening sentence, a major stumbling block was the prose that followed, which had to be just as riveting. Hopefully I’ve succeeded in doing just that. I began writing this book a few years ago, left it alone, then came back to it.
While the novel is done, I need to release RUSH before I send out the full ebook of QUEENSREALM. My tentative release date is May 15th (I say tentative, due to the demands of my 9 to 5). Marketing for this book will be much different for me, since the genre will include African American fiction, scifi and urban fantasy.
I’ve woven published modern scientific theories into the story and current goings on so that the premise isn’t so far fetched. And its also because I do love actual science.
But it’s also a futuristic look at the military, and a bleak, dystopian tale. And there’s no fade to black sex scenes. Not even with the aliens. To read the first chapter, please click on the photo.
- E books, Historical fiction, Middle Grade Fantasy, New Adult, Novella, Paranormal romance, Scifi, Women's fiction, YA Contemporary, YA Fantasy, YA historical, YA Novella
Seeing RED
After I put up the post EACH ONE, REACH ONE I decided there was more I needed to do, besides putting links in the sidebar of this site.
So on this day remembering Martin Luther King Jr, I’m setting up a new site, one that I hope will become a one stop shop if a reader (or author) wants to peruse books with protagonists of color in all genres. The books won’t be sold on the site, but there will be links directing buyers and others to the websites where an author’s work can be purchased. I’m working on the new site now, on another browser. If you’d like to take a peek at what I’ve got so far, the site is
This is how I’m trying to set it up (columns, video set up, featured books slider)
Right now I mainly have place holders up. My hope is simply to become an asset for those without advertising budgets, or those new to self publishing, or those who aren’t listed on the front page of Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Maybe I can compile a decent database of authors and their novels. And I’ll have GIFs and book trailers up there also.
I’d also like to promote sites that review multicultural works, and those that interview authors of color. Hopefully, the site will be fully functional by February 🙂
- Adult Novella, Contemporary Romance, E books, Historical fiction, Novella, Paranormal romance, Scifi, Urban Fantasy, Women's fiction
Scifi Sampler is live on Amazon
While the Scifi Sampler is live, the free download won’t kick in until tomorrow, Dec 19th. The excerpts will be free from the 19th until Saturday, Dec 21st.
This weekend I hope to have up multi-chapter excerpts from Razher, Rise of the Gargoyles, Gaijin and RUSH on Amazon.com