I’ve made a lot of wonderful friends now that I’ve broken into the writing industry, but there’s one thing that bothers me.

I’ve been doing author takeovers and that’s when you promote your book and do giveaways on someone else’s book release or whatever. Anyways, I won 29 books in the past few days. I love book freebies. I just do. I spend more of my meager paycheck on books as it is. If I can get them for free I will eventually read them.

However, most of these books are romance. Which is fine, I like romance, especially gay romance or romantic comedy. Did I receive any of these in my freebies? No.

Out of the 24 authors that signed up to do this author takeover, I was the one one who wrote gay lit.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: Out of the 24 authors that signed up to do this author takeover, I was the one one who wrote gay lit.

This upsets me because I became a writer to provide representation for the LGBT community without all that nasty fetish bullshit. Now that I’m here there are almost no LGBT authors I know personally who don’t write fetish.

I don’t understand why it’s so hard to find a wlw book that’s well-written and isn’t thinly guised erotica to pleasure men.

When I wrote Bloom: A Monster Love Novella, the plan was to write a book where I had well thought out female characters with real personalities and wants and needs. Now I’m losing out and being crushed by erotica. Straight erotica.

There’s sex in Bloom: A Monster Love Novella if that’s what you want. It isn’t the kind of sex erotica has. It’s awkward and sweet and they talk about it before they have sex because that’s what sex is. Awkward.

Recently, Malinda Lo posted a twitter thread about how hard it is to write for a marginalized audience. Malinda Lo writes books for lesbians and I absolutely adore most of her titles. I own every book she’s ever written and she is a huge influence for me. I wish there were more people like her.

I’m going to keep trying and keep pushing despite this. I don’t want to live in a world where there aren’t books to represent people who deserve representation.

That’s why I write books with:

  • POC characters (despite a lot of my white friends thinking it’s weird that, despite being white myself, I crave diversity in TV shows and books)
  • Lesbians
  • Transgenderwomen
  • Transgender men
  • Women in general (There are not enough women in books and that is a shame. And the women that are in books seem to only want to serve their male love interest. WHY?)
  • Gay men
  • Asexual men and women
  • People with mental illness
  • Agendered people
  • Bisexual and pansexual people
  • Demisexual people
  • Intersex people
  • Gays who aren’t tragic
  • Books where LGBTQIA+ is normalized and no one bats an eye about people being trans or gay or bi or anything.
  • Stories where my characters aren’t defined by their genitals or who they decide to fall in love with (or not fall in love with), but are instead defined my their actions.

I could go on guys. I really could.

And I’m not going to stop writing books like this. I won’t do it. Not for all the money in the world. Representation is important and I will fight for that until my dying breath.

It is a shame more people aren’t on my side.