I’ve been struggling with Blood of Midnight: Hollow Vengeance. It’s been going slower and slower until there have been days where I haven’t been writing at all, too intimidated by the prospect of slogging through another chapter. When I began writing the sequel to The Broken Prophecy I very much wanted to focus on the female lead who got less attention than her male counterpart in the first book. It annoys me that there are far fewer female protagonists than male, and even fewer female protagonists of colour. Very often, the only female characters of note end up being the male lead’s love interest and nothing else. I did not want that to be the fate of Phoenix.
But there’s a difference between what you should write and what you want to write. I found myself not wanting to write Phoenix but feeling like I owed it to feminists and women of colour. I rarely ever get inside this character’s head. Is it because she’s female? Is it because she’s not white? I don’t know.
The feedback I’ve had so far from people who have read the chapters from Phoenix’s point of view has been universally positive. They like her. She’s a badass. She doesn’t take shit from anybody. She’s complex. She sometimes makes the wrong decisions and has to deal with it … So what’s my problem with her? Continue reading “Shifting Gears – NaNoWriMo 2014”
Hey This IS My Job 