I was once asked why I write interracial erotica and not African American. This person also asked if I felt like I was “selling out”. She also asked why my male characters “acted black” when they were white. She also had issues with interracial dating of any form. At the time, I didn’t know how to answer her. Well, I did but I was trying to be nice *smile*.
As in my personal life, I didn’t start out writing interracial romance. My characters were black. In my book Nocturne (to be published by Beautiful Trouble Publishing), all of the characters were black. As I was editing the first draft, I realized that my hero didn’t “feel” right. After I changed his race to white, it seemed to flow much better. As I was writing Nocturne, my first interracial story Pink Cashmere was picked up by Cobblestone Press and the rest was history.
I realized when I stopped forcing my characters to be a certain race when they didn’t want to be, my writing flowed much better. As for the “acting black”, that comes from life experience. I have dated interracially, but the old me had rejected the idea of being with someone outside of my race. Yeah, we could mess around, but I ran away from anything serious.
(Side note: though I’ve heard that expression all my life, I still don’t know what “acting black” means.)
It was while I was journaling one day that I remembered declaring to my mother at thirteen that I was going to marry a white guy one day. She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind and while she didn’t try to talk me out, she wasn’t supportive of the idea either. While she dogs three of my cousins that have chosen to marry outside their race, I’m not sure how she’ll react when I bring home a white boy.
Before I left Arizona to move back home, I had reconnected with a former high school classmate. Never in a million years did I even think about being with this guy beyond friendship since I’d never talked to him in high school. We’d been talking off and on for the last two years. The irony is my mother met him when we ran into him at the grocery store over Christmas and she thought he was black.
(Side note: More on that in another blog, maybe).
Is this what’s really going on? Is this what the universe is waiting for me to finally let go of? Would I be “selling out”?
