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Thursday, February 17, 2011

FAQ: Multi-Cultural Characters

FAQ: Have you written any multi-cultural characters?

Answer: Yes, I have! My view of the future is one where people being multi-cultural is ordinary and so I've written a number of characters with diverse backgrounds, especially in my future-set stories. In order from newest story to oldest:

-Bree Molina (Demon Kissed) Latina

Bree's a demon slayer. Her hero is a demon.

-Troll Maglaya (The Troll Bridge) Filipino, African-Caribbean, and European

Troll is multi, multi, multi cultural and what I listed are just the major parts of his heritage.

-Kimi Noguchi (Dark Awakening in Shards of Crimson) Japanese-American

Kimi is Mika's younger cousin.

-Mika Noguchi (Through a Crimson Veil) 1/2 Japanese-American

Mika is half demon and it was the demon/human part that was an issue in her story. She was fairly well adjusted, but her hero who was also half demon/half human had some major problems with being a demon and with falling for another demon. :-)

-Cai Randolph (The Power of Two) - 1/4 Vietnamese-American

Her ethnicity became a bit more of a story issue than I'd planned, but she's carrying around some guilt over things she said to her mother.

If I write more Jarved Nine stories, there will be more multi-cultural characters to add to the list. Gravedigger's heroine, Nadia, will be in the group, although I'm not 100% sure what her background is yet. She hasn't talked to me yet and neither has Gravedigger. I figure they will when it's time to write them.

Also in the J9 world is Z-Man. Zach is part Japanese-American and Hawaiian. He has talked to me a little, but I don't have a heroine for him yet. The character I thought was his heroine turned out not to be. I've got time on this because his story comes later in the sequence.

The stories, though, if I write them would fall like this: Ravyn's Flight, Eternal Nights, Sasha and Flare's book (unwritten), Gravedigger and Nadia's book (unwritten), Z-Man's story (unwritten), and The Troll Bridge. Yes, I wrote out of order, but since Troll's story is a time travel, I figured it would work out okay. And I do want to do the other three guys some day. The question is going to be when I can squeeze them in.