Read Around the Rainbow | Challenges in Writing Queer Characters in Various Subgenres

ReadAroundTheRainbow

It’s Read Around the Rainbow time! If you’ve missed these posts before, we’re a group of authors who get together on the last Friday of every month to blog on the same topic. This month’s topic is:

Challenges in Writing Queer Characters in Various Subgenres

At first, I didn’t really know how to tackle this topic. I see myself mainly as a writer of paranormal romance, but if we’re to check the number of titles, I have about the same amount of contemporary stories as I do paranormal, then I have a few alien romances and post-apocalyptic ones as a bonus 😁 As Holly, I have more paranormal than I have contemporary, so the majority of the stories I’ve written are paranormal.

Why?

Well, the standard answer is of course that the world is no fun without monsters and magic. And I stand by that. The biggest reason why I read is reality escape, so give me the magic and the things I can’t find in real life.

But if you’re to scrape a little on the surface…

I write paranormal because there I set the rules. Writing queer characters can be a delicate matter. In a paranormal world, I get to decide how society views queer people, if there are laws against queer relationships, if it’s a more forgiving climate than the real world, and so on.

No one can say that I get it wrong because I’m the creator of the universe. It gives me a lot of freedom. A lot.

It doesn’t mean I can make it too outlandish because there has to be something we can connect with, something we can relate to, something we can understand. But for the most part, I’m completely free.

When I write contemporary, I can’t do that. And when I write contemporary, I’m painfully aware of being Swedish. We have homophobia here. We have people with fanatic and fascist opinions. But only about 20% of the Swedish population believe in a god. The people waving a bible and proclaiming love to be a sin are few and far between.

There is plenty of prejudice against queers, don’t think that there isn’t, but when I look at the US, I shake my head. I mean WTF, people?!

And there are cultural differences, of course, many, many cultural differences.

So for me writing contemporary is a struggle. Contemporary should (must) reflect the world we’re living in, but the reality I’m living in isn’t the same as the reality you’re living in. And I’m afraid of getting it wrong.

I could of course do my stories very Swedish, but… I’d be bored.

I always find it interesting what people decide to write. I write paranormal because I feel free. I write contemporary but… reluctantly. I write sci-fi, though I’d say it’s alien romances because there aren’t many sci-fi-y elements since I’d probably mess them up 😅

What you never will see me write is historical. I’m in awe of those who do, but I just can’t fathom writing a story that would take me more time to research than to write. It’s also a matter of interest, of course. And I think (those of you who write historical, feel free to correct me) writers of historical fiction find satisfaction in getting it right. They study clothes, language, events, what cities looked like back then, what people ate, what occupations there were, and on and on the list goes, and you weave it into a story. Whereas I just want the words to poor out of me, paint a world I find entertaining at the moment, and then move on.

I always have this idea that writers of historical fiction are much smarter than me 😊 And I guess I’m lazy. I research things, of course, I do. There isn’t a writer alive who doesn’t research things. But if the research takes longer than the writing, I’m out.