Review: REEL Rangers Adventure: Volatile Moon by Darrell T. Boyd

March 30th, 2014

REEL Rangers Adventure: Volatile Moon by Darrell T. Boyd

Week One: Covers - Third Favorite! Tiffany Trent's "The Tinker King"+ Ellen Oh's Prophecy/Warrior & Sarwat Chadda's The Savage Fortress/The City of Death giveaway!

Okay! Day Three of this week's favorite covers! 

Next cover, I actually found out about the "Unnaturalists" series through a goodreads thread about women of color in steampunk. I wasn't sure about it, because no one ever mentioned "what" exactly the main character was ethnically(even though I suppose it would've been difficult since the ethnicity doesnt exist in our world). I bought the book and cast it aside.

UNTIL I saw the cover for it's sequel! Which is why it's one of my favorite covers. I started the book to get to the sequel, and was so glad I did. I ended up loving it and all it's confusion, but nothing pushed me to start the series better than "The Tinker King!"

Take a trip to the "New London" with Tiffany Trent! Tiffany sits down with Twinja Book Reviews!

I had the honor of reading Tiffany Trent's book on our blog a few months back. I loved it, as it was my first steampunk book with a person of color. It was one of the first books that made me actually have to courage to tweet my favorite authors. My experience with her has been fantastic! She not only wrote a book that I loved, but had a unique take on diversity in her interview!

1. I've been honored to meet you through your writing, but for those who haven't been as lucky, why don't you introduce yourself?

I’m Tiffany Trent. I write science fiction and fantasy for young adults, but I also write about science as a communications manager in my dayjob. I live with my husband and our critters in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

2. You are the author of 7 published full length novels, as well as un up-and-coming sequel to your fantastic novel "The Unnaturalists", with many short stories under your belt as well. What prompted you to be a writer in the first place? What was your journey before publication like?

Part II of our Double Feature: Author Heather Crews

 Heather Crews penned her first book not too far back. We love our indies :) Even better when there's a POC hottie as a main character/love interest. Our review site is obviously a good choice for such a pair :)

1. For those of us just meeting you, what can you tell us about yourself as the "person" and the "author"?

I'm a pretty friendly but introverted person. Although I'm generally rather lighthearted, I might become irritable when writing. I feel emotions, good and "bad", are really important. I try to transcribe whatever strong feelings I may have experienced at some point in life to help make the characters more authentic.

2. What genres would you say you are drawn to most when it comes to writing?

I usually like to include some element of the paranormal in my writing, though some of my ideas don't involve the paranormal at all. Either way, I always put in some romance and try not to make it too sappy.

Calling all geeks! Your King Dennis Upkins has arrived @ Twinja Book Reviews!

By far, Twinja Book Reviews' longest interview ever! When it comes to the marginalization of any non "default" group, you can bet author "Dennis Upkins" has something to say about it. He refuses to be silenced, and between writing his new novel, standing up for injustice, and leaping from tall buildings in a single bound, Dennis has found time to sit down with the Twinjas!

Skin Deep- Guest Post by Author Kelan O'Connell

SKIN DEEP

I'm white. Thought I'd just put that right out there. I'm not African American, Latino, Chinese American, or even a Chinese immigrant. But I've written for characters who are. 

When speaking about my novel, Delta Legend, I'm often asked about the choice to have many of the primary characters (especially my protagonist) be racially and culturally different from me. Truthfully, it wasn't so much an intentional choice as a natural occurrence that developed along with the story. I can assure you I didn’t wake up one day and decide my main character just had to be a 16-year-old African American guy. 

The first character of Delta Legend was the Delta itself. Calvin Pierce came next and was born out the need for dramatic conflict. Let's see ... who might feel like a fish-out-of-water in the heart of a predominately white region known for agriculture and recreational boating? An inner-city teenager, that’s who. Mei Li Cheng was also a natural choice when considering the history of the Chinese and Chinese Americans in the California Delta—the keepers of the “Legend.”

As a writer, if you’re going to create diverse characters who are dramatically different from you, it’s got to be organic, born naturally out of the story. Diversity is not some new fashion trend for white authors to try on, see if we can pull it off. On the flip side, when I find a new author of color only to discover their main character is white (and didn’t have to be) I think it’s an opportunity missed.

I grew up in what was, and sort of still is, a predominately white East Bay suburb of San Francisco. My dad worked for Coca Cola, calling on restaurants, bars, and other venues in and around San Francisco. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I got to skip school and go to work with him. Once I got a taste of the city’s diverse population with its numerous distinct cultural communities, I was hooked. I loved hearing different languages being spoken, not to mention sampling a delectable cornucopia of international foods (the roots of my foodie-ness). 

A day in the city with my dad was a cultural and epicurean field trip that was far more educational than any day spent at school. It's easy to understand why when it came time to decide on a college, I chose San Francisco State and continued to live in the city for 12 years.

Regardless of my urban exposure to different cultures and races, prior to writing Delta Legend, I was like a lot of other white writers who simply go on the premise that unless we state otherwise, our characters are white. All that changed for me when writing first the screenplay, and later the novel version of Delta Legend. Suddenly I needed to clarify if someone was white, it was not a given. And that’s a good thing. 

Creating the screenplay version of Calvin Pierce wasn't all that difficult for me. You can get away with less character development when writing for screen; you rarely get inside a character's head to say what they're thinking or feeling. But when it came time to write the novel version of Delta Legend, I initially danced around Calvin, unsure if I could properly represent him. Fortunately, as with all my characters, Calvin ultimately took up the reins of his own story, told me to sit at the computer, and take dictation.

One of my all-time favorite films is Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. I love the part where the different characters talk directly to the camera, going off on these tirades of racial slurs. It's so over-the-top, it makes them look completely ridiculous and laughable, which of course, is the point.  

While Delta Legend touches on issues of racial and cultural differences, it's not the primary focus of the story. Even though it's fantasy, I hope the characters realistically represent how we all think, act, and relate to people of different races, cultures, sexual orientation, etc.. Sometimes, it’s not so pretty, and no one gets out unscathed in Delta Legend. In creating realistic characters, you can’t PC them up too much or they’re not believable. We all know racism and bigotry exist in the world and in our own societies. To pretend like it doesn’t is not realistic.

It's true you need to do a bit more research when writing for characters of a different race or culture than your own, but like everything else, you find the resources and people to help you. Luckily, I have a niece and nephew who are mixed race, African American and white, so I had some solid assistance with regard to hip hop culture and slang (which evolves at an unbelievably fast pace). As I say in the acknowledgments, I would have had to change the manuscript daily were I to keep up with ever-evolving hip hop slang. At a certain point, however, you have to stop and let your work mark a place in time. 

As the United States and other countries become increasingly more diverse, we need our literature to reflect this. I believe it’s gradually happening but we need to keep the momentum going. More than just the extraneous secondary characters—the black classmate, the Asian doctor, the gay neighbor–diverse characters are taking their rightful place as protagonists. But it has to be organic and natural, staying true to the story that’s being told.  

For more musings by Kelan, visit her blog at kelanoconnell.blogspot.com and deltalegend.com

Scroll down to win Kelan O'Connell's debut fantasy novel "Delta Legend!

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Meeting author of The "Legend" series, Marie Lu

It seems like since my sister and I started our book blog we've gotten a chance to connect with some amazing fellow book blogs. We probably follow too many book blogs to remember but I'm glad to be part of such an interesting net of people who like books as much as we do! What's even more amazing is when we're given the opportunity to meet some of the writers that we go on and on about. In this case, it was Writer of the hit series "Legend", Marie Lu.