Some of you may remember me mentioning on WattPad last summer that I was planning on expanding The Winter Court to be novel length. Some of you may be wondering where I'm at with that.
Fair question.
I love Finn and Tamsin's journey across Faerie. It was the most fun that I have ever had writing a single piece of fiction. It was actually the first thing that I've written that I have ever finished (RIP to all of my orphaned fics on the various platforms that I've used over the years).
Reading it back though, especially as I was going through the editing process to publish on WattPad, I realized that several characters fell flat, and that there were a whole lot of white people. I'm white and French speaking so this is a natural instinct - for me to reflect myself onto the page. But you know, that story has been told. It's gotten to be a little boring. I also know that diversity in fiction is important, and it's something that I care about deeply.
So, in my expanded version of The Winter Court, I have done two major things:
1) I have beefed up some of the side characters, namely Brandon and Arianna because they will be important to later books in the series (and also I love them); and
2) I have tried to inject some diversity by making Arianna's new love interests less straight and less white.
I can just hear someone going "stop pandering to the SJWs!" First of all, shan't. It's not pandering because it needs to be done for verisimilitude and secondly, you can pry my baby Caz from my cold, dead hands (all my characters are my babies).
Are two non-straight, white people groundbreaking in terms of diversity? No, definitely not. I am definitely not claiming to be the Goddess of Diverse Fiction. There are so many better writers out there doing that for us all, with more stakes in the game, and who can be more authentic about it. Casimir Lam is a half-Chinese and half-Belgian guy from Ottawa whose Ah Ma makes dumplings and whose maman eats toast with Lièges pear jam. That's the brownest that I feel capable of portraying accurately, and even then, that's the least interesting thing about him.
I don't know. Truly. But I'm trying, and I hope that counts for something.
"But Tori, we don't care about that part. When is it going to be finished???"
Short answer: I don't know. I haven't looked at what I've written in a while. I feel like it's still unfinished, and there are definitely some things that I put in my rough draft of The Lost High King that I haven't mentioned or alluded to yet. Some of that is intentional, and some was oversight. I have to look it over.
I was in a major car accident in September and I am finding it hard to sit in one place for the time that getting in there and writing requires. That's kind of an excuse, but it's also why I abandoned my #NaNoWriMo project this year, which is something that I'm eternally disappointed to have done. But health trumps fiction, and I'm doing my best. Sort of.
Anyway, that's longer and ramblier than you probably signed up for at the beginning of this post, so I'm going to sign off for now.
Bisoux,
Tori
Comments