#representation does matter

In case you haven't seen it. Ali Hazelwood confirmed that Olive was demisexual...

Thank you for sending this @blackcoffee85.  I know it took me a while to respond, but I wanted to take my time.  (Also, a bitch just moved.  It’s gonna be a mood for my postings…JSYK)

I am really thankful for you noticing and appreciating the thought I put into writing Halle and Liam (and other POCs when I am not writing those two).  I started writing fanfic again (I used to do it when I was a teen) because I wanted content with specificity when writing about how a Black MC would operate in The Royal Romance or BloodBound.  I wanted to write that because I wanted to read it.  

The MC as written in the book is meant to have gaps because the idea is you create the person you want in the story.  You help build that character.  I just take mine and expand even more.  

I try to be very deliberate in my choices for how I write both Halle as an American Black woman and Liam as a European Asian man.  I want to read stories about a Black woman is desirable and an object of desire but not fetishized.  I like to think I have done that for Halle. 

I didn’t want to her to be this put-upon mule that just has to suffer in the name of uplifting her man.  I wanted her relationship to be genuine and uplifting to Halle as well as Liam.  I still want them to struggle.  No one is perfect, not even Liam.  Every relationship has its ups and downs.  They have theirs.  Their struggles, fights, highs, lows and the like is what makes them real.  They have the tough talks, they talk about capital “R” race.  They are an interracial couple that operates outside of “whiteness” in a lot of ways, mainly that they both experience racism and have to work through that.  

I think about a lot of these things as I write because its catharsis for me.  It’s how I deal with things.  I want whoever reads my work to relate but not be retraumatized or triggered but I don’t want to scrub away those realities either.