Last weekend I celebrated my mom’s birthday. She visited me and we had a good time relaxing in each other’s company. In honor of her birthday I am posting the next part of Vampire in Space for free on my Patreon.
Recently I have been reading The Bridgerton Series. I saw The Bridgertons on Netflix first and when I found out the show was based on a book I had to go read the books too. There was a major factor that disappointed me about the books and that was that the characters weren’t diverse like in the show. The duke was not a black man like in the show. There were no women of color or a queen even. Mrs. Whistledown was revealed far earlier in the show than in the books. Parts of the plot were also different. I like both the books and the show, but I actually like the show better for its diversity. I was truly happy to see characters of color in a period show.
I try to include a diverse cast of characters in all of my books. It’s important to have representation in a work in my opinion. I know that it means a lot to many readers and it certainly means a lot to me. One of my favorite ways to include diversity is to include Asian male leads, which is not common in American media. I studied East Asian culture in college so I like to include elements of East Asian culture in my work. I even learned Chinese and became fluent in it 我还能说普通话 (I can still speak Mandarin). If I could go back to school I would study even more languages like Korean and Japanese. I love learning languages which makes me somewhat tempted to create my own language for one of my series.
Anyway I hope my love of diversity and culture is reflected well in my future books and that my readers will enjoy that aspect of my work. What sort of representation would you like to see in books? Feel free to leave a comment below.