I am often asked where I get my ideas for my books. I am not Stephenie Meyer; as lovely as it would be, I do not have dreams that direct my writing, word for word. For me, Fighting Gravity was a response to several social phenomena surrounding my life. It was a knee-jerk reaction to wanting to protect the young people in my bubble of the world and wanting to show others the vast rainbow of diversity in their worlds: high schools, relationships, families. The novel became my personal handbook to compassion. I wanted it to be honest, funny, and pleasurable to read, while also bringing up those important questions that every person has to answer for him or herself as an adult.
I remember watching an old episode of Oprah where three mild-looking men were discussing how they met and “groomed” young children for inappropriate relationships. I recall being both disgusted and amazed at how these men got away with such vast amounts of alone time with children, as certainly my children would never be allowed such freedoms, but they did. Somehow, their parents were unaware that grown adults shouldn’t want such time with children, or they were fooled by their titles: coach, clergy, neighbor. What I then recognized, and later saw on an episode of 20/20, was that meeting a teenager online would be an easier task than prying a younger child from a parent’s side (at least my partner and I’s helicopter sides). I knew this to be true because, as a young person (and also a thirty-five year old woman) who had been obsessed with her own looks/weight/popularity, I would have given just about anything to find my soulmate.
People are often driven by emotion, and I think this is the most honest, enviable way to live—but also the most dangerous. A young girl with self-esteem issues, running away from an uncomfortable home situation, would hardly have to be lured at all if she thought the person she was speaking to was another young person, and one who wanted to love and accept her, protect her. I was pregnant with my second child and had a young niece at the time that I wrote this book; my niece was a curious teenager like any other, and worried about her looks and the way people saw her, just as I had. This understanding of my niece as a maturing person grew into Calliope. Calliope is isolated in many ways by her social status as an “unpopular” girl, or so she believes. She, also, finds herself in a tattered relationship with her mother, is torn in her want to relate to her “new” father or run from him, and is uncomfortable with her grandmother’s illness and that impending loss; she is incredibly vulnerable. She is also beyond brave. She is who, perhaps, each of us would be in the same situations.
Once I had the idea for a book about a high school student looking for love online, much of the rest was simply picking and choosing from social belief systems I held. I believe, whole-heartedly, that all men and women are created equal. This is not just a tired phrase from a yellowing document signed by old, dead white men. I wanted to show that equality on a high school level, so I sifted through “outcast” stereotypes. My first thought was to tackle homophobia, because I am a gay mom. My partner and I never want our children to be judged on our choices; it is one of our greatest fears as parents. So I wanted to create a gay character who not only helped others selflessly, but also really cared about the world despite her own, inner demons. I didn’t feel comfortable making Calliope gay on top of all of her other difficulties, both because I didn’t want to lose my reader in melodrama and because even my three year old would have seen the writing on the page. So I birthed Farrah. I wanted readers to respect Farrah even if they had a discomfort for whom I believe she was born to be. I think physical differences are particularly hard in high school, too, so I wanted to add a differently-abled character. Again, this character had to be “real,” thus Lynn’s submissive reactions to popular boys, and also her heroic side, her saving of the boy on the bus: balance. I sewed in images of different faith systems: Farrah’s Christian parents, who are generally good people who want the best for their daughter, and Gandhi, and the hero at the end of the story, the Jewish woman who feeds and drives Calliope to her home after her captivity, are all loving, yet flawed and scarred, people despite deity. Calliope’s uncles are gay men who want to parent; they defy stereotypes in many ways. Calliope’s father is not the “typical” man, either; he is incredibly sensitive, overtly emotional. He wanted to be a father to his daughter. He was deeply hurt by the initial deception, despite his physical and string-less relationship with Calliope’s mother that perhaps society would see as a gift for a young man who played the sexual field.
The idea of the cyber bullying incident happened slowly. Bullying in high school, of course, is not an unusual topic. Technology is used both for good, and to cause pain, with all age groups. Humans who are unsupervised and feeling insignificant might use technology to harm other humans without the courage of signing a name, or standing in front of their victims. We’ve seen this in the news with high schoolers and college students, alike. We’ve seen grown adults humiliate children in this way. I wanted to make a stand with Heather’s character; she did not deserve to be belittled, no one does, and yet that is even our protagonist’s, Callie’s, first response to her. In order to change, I think we need to see that those seeds live within ourselves; we are, after all, human. Literature is a safe way to explore our own weaknesses and, hopefully, vow to change them.
I wrote this book because I went to high school and the experience was less than an award-winning cinematic one. I once worked as a high school English teacher and fell in philosophical love with kids who were strong, proud, struggling to find themselves. I believe that young people have the ability to change our world for the better, and I want to support them in that awesome endeavor. I wrote this book because I was a gay teenager, and one who took 19 years to be able to say, Yes, I am gay, in the mirror of my college bedroom. I wrote Fighting Gravity because the Internet is a scary tool, and bullying is rampant, and “slut shaming” hurts our entire society. I have written and edited all of my books because I believe in the general goodness of people, and I want to remind all of my readers of their own Buddha natures and their inherent value in this—my—world. My hope is that my readers will find their own power in reading about my characters and their struggles, and use that power to “Be the change

By: Sarah Deimer
I’m twenty, at a party with people mostly older than me.  Everyone’s drinking around the bonfire, and I’m sipping my glass of water, talking and laughing, mostly about ridiculous, nerdy things.  It’s the beginning of summer, the scent of wood and smoke in the air, the insects buzzing a melody.

“I’ve gotta talk with you…” says one of my friends, her hand at my elbow.  She leads me away from the fire, beer sloshing out of her plastic cup.  “I’ve been thinking a lot about it.  You,” she says, waving her hand over me under the pine trees.  “And I wanted to tell you that I don’t think you’re normal.”

My stomach tightens.  Where is this coming from?  What the hell is she talking about?

“What…” I begin, but her eyes are narrowing, and she’s staring at me angrily.

“What you’re doing with Jenn.  Being a lesbian.  It’s sick.”

I feel like I’d been punched.  All the air leaves me.  I’d known this woman for two years, we’d laughed and cried together, we’d helped one another.  When she’d had a car accident, I’d held her while she wept for hours.  When I’d lost my dog, she’d made me tea, hugged me tightly while I sobbed.

“You’ve known I was gay this whole time,” I splutter, and then I shut up, because she’s not done talking.  She’s rubbing at her eyes–I can see in the firelight they’re red.

“I’ve thought a lot about this, and I needed you to know what I thought.  It’s disgusting, and it isn’t natural or normal.  And I wanted you to know what I thought of it,” she says, sniffing.  And then, as an afterthought:  “I can still be your friend.”

I can still be your friend.

I don’t think.  I just speak the first thing I know.  “I’m not normal,” I tell her, breathing out.  “And neither are you.”

“Yes I am,” she splutters, and I take a step forward.

“No.  No one’s normal.  We came up with that stupid word as something to measure everyone against.  I’m at peace with who I am, that I’m different.  Are you?”  She shakes her head, waves her arm at me, walks away.

She says later that she was drunk.  That she’s sorry this sort of stuff came out.  But that, as a Christian, she has to stick with the Bible, and that’s the way she’s thought all along.  We stop being friends.  It breaks my heart.  But it’s not the first time–or the last time–I’ll lose someone because I’m gay.

But I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, that night in the dark by the fire.  I’m not normal, and I never have been.  And neither are you.  Everyone’s always afraid of being different, that people will point at them and laugh, or that they’ll become what people talk about behind their hands.

Is it liberating to say that, yes, totally, these things will happen?  Because they will.  I’m a Pagan, vegan, lesbian, pink-haired, heavily tattooed author chick.  There’s at least something in that list that makes you uncomfortable.  There are some things in that list that I’ve chosen to be as a statement and because they make me happy.  And there’s things in that list that I was from birth, that I can’t change, that I wouldn’t, even if I could.  And living out and openly as all of these things is painful, hurtful and incredibly vulnerable.  Always.

But I know I’m not normal.  And I’m incredibly happy not being normal.  I know the secret:

No one is.

In my just released YA novel, Twixt, I embrace that idea.  There is not a single character in that book who’s normal.  The main heroine has a lot of dark secrets, but on top of that, she’s falling in love with a girl.  The other characters are trading their hair for an addictive drug.  There’s monsters who would take you away, and monsters that would sell your soul, and the only way that things can possibly get any better is realizing that you’re completely not normal.  And being okay with that fact.

Because here’s the most important part.  The twist, if you will:  Being not normal?  Yeah.  Totally normal.

So kiss your girlfriend and eat that vegan cupcake and obsess about your pen collection without worrying what people will think.  And because it makes you happy.

And if you need a little inspiration, give my newest YA novel, Twixt, a read.  It’s a dark fantasy YA novel with a lesbian heroine!

Description:
You wake upon the cold ground.  As you struggle to rise, as your breath exhales like a ghost, you know only two things:  You can’t remember who you are.  And you’re being hunted.
No one sleeps in Abeo City.  The lost souls gather indoors at night as Snatchers tear through the sky on black-feathered wings, stalking them.  But inside the rotting walls of the Safe Houses comes a quieter, creeping danger.  The people of Abeo City have forgotten their pasts, and they can trade locks of their hair to sinister women known only as the Sixers for an addictive drug.  Nox will give you back a single memory–for a price.
Like the other lost souls, Lottie wakens in this harsh landscape and runs in terror from the Snatchers.  But she soon comes to realize that she is not at all like the people of Abeo City.  When she takes Nox, her memories remain a mystery, and the monsters who fill the sky at night refuse to snatch her.  Trying to understand who she is, and how she ended up in such a hopeless place, Lottie bands together with other outcasts, including a brave and lovely girl named Charlie.  In the darkness, and despite the threat of a monstrous end, love begins to grow.  But as Lottie and Charlie plot their escape from Abeo City, Lottie’s dark secrets begin to surface, along with the disturbing truth about Twixt: a truth that could cost her everything.

Find TWIXT on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, or as a SIGNED paperback plus free eReader copy on Etsy.

Weekend Giveaway:

To WIN A SIGNED COPY of TWIXT, tweet about it, talk about it on your Facebook, Tumblr or blog, and let Sarah know on her blog post, to be in the running!  http://muserising.com/?p=2095

Originally published on Loup Dargent as “QUILTBAG Protagonists in SF/F YA literature.” Reposted on YAtopia, March 16, 2013.

There is a lack of diversity in young adult fiction especially when it comes to QUILTBAG characters having the starring role in genre fiction. For those unsure, QUILTBAG stands for queer, unisex, intersex, lesbian, trans, bi, asexual and gay – a handy acronym to encompass various sexualities. The only one missing is the fairly new, pansexual, denoting a lack of preference or an all inclusive sexual preference.

Science fiction and fantasy, as both a literary and movie/TV genre, has been dominated by straight white males for decades. Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in his roles from Terminator to Total Recall. Consider Christian Bale and Tom Cruise in their leading manly-man roles in science fiction films like Equilibrium, Minority Report, Batman and soon to be released Oblivion. Given that a good number of these films are based on the works by literary greats like Philip K Dick, Asimov and others, this straight white male syndrome seems prevalent in the genre, and is sadly true for YA fiction as well.

Let’s look at recent YA smashhits: Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. J.K Rowling’s series featured a straight white male protagonist, Stephenie Meyer’s series featured a straight white leading couple (I’ll get to Jacob in a minute) and Suzanne Collins’s dystopian series featured a straight white love triangle.

Only after the success of Harry Potter, both as a novel series and as a movie franchise, did it surface that Rowling had always thought of Dumbledore as gay, not that this was ever made apparent in either the novels or the movies. Why not?

There are numerous articles about Twilight and possible racism floating around the net. Regardless of how you interpret the fact that Native Americans were the ‘animals’ in the story, what surprised me even more than a centuries old vampire willingly repeating high school, was the lack of sexual fluidity so apparent in vampire characters from the works of progenitors like Anne Rice. Even the True Blood vampires explore same sex partnerships. But Twilight didn’t feature a single gay main character. And neither does another super popular vampire series: The Vampire Diaries. Meet Damon and Stefan Salvatore – white and straight despite both being almost two hundred years old, who confound just about every social more. Meet Elena Gilbert and her brother – straight and white. Meet the sidekicks Caroline, Matt, and Tyler – straight and white. Bonnie is the only smudge of colour on the cast and she’s a witch (why is no one screaming racial stereotypes?). There is one gay character but his appearance is fleeting and has little bearing on the mostly white, all straight main cast.

And now The Hunger Games. There was an uproar at the time of casting for the movie adaptation of the book when they cast Amandla Stenberg as Rue. Why is Rue black – fans protested. Why not? Is every character in a YA book white and straight until proven otherwise? Another character in The Hunger Games, played by Lenny Kravitz in the film, is referred to as ‘the gay guy.’ Kravitz is quoted to having said he didn’t want to play Cinna ‘too gay.’ In the novel, his sexuality is never expressly stated. He’s simply a stylist and designer, so once again stereotyping runs rampant.

YA protagonists are only gay, lesbian, bi or transgender when it’s a contemporary issue book like The Perks of Being a Wallflower starring the fabulous Patrick. I can’t name a single best-selling SF/F YA title featuring a gay, lesbian or bi – never mind transgendered – protagonist. Can you?

I’ve never deliberately gone out of my way to write a QUILTBAG character, that’s just who my characters tend to end up being. My most recent YA book, Obscura Burning, is a hybrid contemporary issue (my character’s sexuality is the least of his issues!) come science fiction novel and features a white bisexual male protagonist who has relationships with a Native American girl and a Latino guy. When I submitted this novel to agents they liked it but were nervous about the content. Thankfully, an indie press wasn’t afraid of taking on my novel and all its ‘questionable’ content. This is the beauty of the indie industry: they’re not afraid to take on books that might be controversial.

Even in books like Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince where varying sexualities are presented as not only acceptable but ordinary, the main character remained straight. This is exceedingly frustrating. Why can’t the main characters in YA science fiction and fantasy be gay? There’s no reason why QUILTBAG individuals can’t be heroes. Just look at pansexual Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Torchwood fame, played by the openly gay and awesome John Barrowman. This is the type of heroic character I want to see in YA SF/F.

Given the slew of dystopian novels set in varying futures, I find it impossible to understand why so few if any of those main characters aren’t at least bi-curious. If we’re fated to a bleak future of robot wars, tyrannical governments and zombie apocalypses, why can’t we at least love whomever we choose and be comfortable with our sexuality?

Suzanne is a freelance writer and author from South Africa. She is the author of the cyberpunk novel Dragon’s Teeth (Divertir), the YA science fiction novel Obscura Burning (Etopia) and has had several short stories published by Golden Visions Magazine, Space & Time, and Niteblade amongst others. Although she has a Master’s degree in music, Suzanne prefers conjuring strange worlds and creating quirky characters. Suzanne is represented by Jordy Albert of the Booker Albert Agency. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and online.