Why Is the HPAC President a Black Woman From Africa?

Here’s a question some people might wonder after reading parts two and three of my Faerietales trilogy… Why in the world did I make the HPAC president a black, African woman instead of like my otherwise very white, Western-World male villains?

Great question, and I have an immediate answer: I have no clue.

The unnamed but very distinctive Madame President was never anything else in my mind. She came into being with the gender and skin color and origins that she did, and I never paused to dispute it.

I don’t plan out most of my characters. Yes, some are based off of specific people, whether friends or acquaintances or public figures. But for the most part, they just kinda come with the physical characteristics and personality traits that they do.

Deanda, for example, was supposed to be based off of my two best friends. Instead, she took on her own sense of self. And neither of the women I originally intended her to mirror have the long, dark, curly brown hair that she does. Or violet eyes. That’s simply the parameters she “was born” with.

Dr. Stewart? He was always a dark-haired, blue-eyed, self-satisfied and very intelligent creep.

And Kyla? I’ve got to admit that I’ve kinda come to associate at least her image with one of the characters from Disney’s Tinker Bell movies (Fawn, for anyone who cares). But she came part and parcel with her delicate frame and confident personality.

I don’t know anyone like her. Or Dr. Stewart, for that matter. The latter of which I’m very happy about.

The same goes for Madame President. I have to say that I’m really rather happy she popped into my head and onto my Microsoft Word doc that way, and not just because the Faerietales trilogy would have been a little too pasty otherwise.

I do like showing that there’s no perfect group out there. Anyone can be bad if they only choose to be. Black, white, male, female, intelligent, slow, North American, European, African… and yes, human or faerie (if faeries existed, which they don’t, of course. I know that. Really). We’ve all got it in us to behave pretty darn rotten when we want to.

Hence the reason why I pick on just about everyone I can in my writing, including both major American political parties (my own included) in my upcoming Dirty Politics series. (Then again, I also pick on both sides because I can’t stand most politicians, whatever letters come before or after their names. But that’s a topic for another blog post.)

So while it does delight me to have Stewart and Morrison kowtowing to a chick, I can’t take any real credit for that fact. Madame President is who she is; there’s nothing more to it than that.

Scottishisms: No, They’re Not Typos

Anyone who read the first two books of my Faerietales series – “Not So Human” and “To Err Is Faerie” – may very well have noticed some stuff that looks a whole lot like typos.

If you thought I screwed up and missed an edit, that’s understandable. But I swear that isn’t what happened. They’re what I call “Scottishisms.”

Way back in January – I believe for my first blog post, actually – I wrote that I had made a fool of myself with my Scottish editor, writing “British” and “English” as synonymous terms when they’re not at all.

For those of you who didn’t read that blog and who are on the same ignorant level as me, “British” means any citizen of the British Isles, i.e. the United Kingdom; whereas “English” means someone from the much more specific geographic locale of England. Makes sense, right?

Editor Alan Freeman was exceptionally helpful in pointing out that kind of blush-worthy mistake, and he’s also responsible for helping me flesh out my setting with lines like:

“The dense cityscape gave way to seedier neighborhoods, and then again to suburban high-rises until the last of even those buildings disappeared. The limousine kept rolling through flyovers and farmland, and finally into a hilly scenery that was downright stunning.”

That’s from “Not So Human” when Sabrina takes in the Scottish countryside. I had already seen that years ago, so I was able to remember the following thought without any outside help:

“Sabrina had heard people talk about the forty shades of green in Ireland, but she couldn’t imagine seeing more human versions of the color than what she saw on the thirty-minute ride.”

But Alan was the one who prompted the very next lines of:

“And when they drove into a brief rain shower, the following delicate light dancing off of both watery leaves and roadway made the journey even more picturesque.

“Staring out the tinted windows, Sabrina made an offhand comment about the strange weather, only to learn that it wasn’t strange at all. According to her driver, whose partition was down, the Scots had a saying: four seasons in one day.”

Love it, right? And there were plenty of smaller edits he also suggested, such as changing:

·         “Wouldn’t” to “wouldnae”

·         “Not” to “nae” or even “no”

·         “Brook” to “burn”

·         “Such” to “suchlike.”

Oh, and apparently the Scots don’t say “mate” like the Brits – excuse me, English – do. They’re much more likely to say “pal.”

Overall, I was pretty delighted with the changes he recommended. Though I do have to take some issue with the vernacular edits he made to the English Dr. Stewart’s dialogue in Faerietales 3: “Up in the Air” (which is out April 24 on Amazon.com).

Some of them were just downright creepy! I mean, I know I intentionally designed Stewart to be a wretched jerk, but he even had me shuddering with his new vocabulary choices.

Ugh!

Maybe there’s a reason why the English make such convincing villains. Their language alone is disturbing.

Creating a Villain. Or Two. Or Three.

In Faerietales Books 1 and 2, I have three main villains… Which, come to think of it, is rather mean of me. Pitting Sabrina against any one of them is bad enough, but all three? That’s definitely an unfair fight, even with her superior faerie strength and sense of snark (i.e. sarcasm).

Oh well. The stories are already written, and I ain’t changin’ them. So she’ll just have to deal.

And yes, if I was Sabrina (which I’m not, since I have short brown curly hair and brown eyes, not straight yellowish hair and green eyes. Such a big difference), I’d hate me.

But moving on to how I created Mr. Smiley, Dr. Morrison and Dr. Stewart.

Believe it or not, I didn’t base them on anyone in particular. Not at first anyway. Stewart did take on a few characteristics of a former creepy coworker of mine, but that was in much later drafts.

The truth is that all three characters are fairly “typical” villains, when you think about it. There’s nothing redeeming about any of them, and unless you’re way too kindhearted for your own good (*cough* *cough* *Mom*), readers are supposed to want them dead. That’s how I intended it.

I could have gone into depth about their good qualities, since I do believe everyone has at least one. I can’t think of a single person who is wholly evil, though some individuals certainly come close.

Simply put though, I didn’t want to. I wanted to show how ugly bigotry (Mr. Smiley), egotism (Dr. Stewart) and unscrupulous pursuits of science (Dr. Morrison) can get.

Warning: Here’s where I might get a bit preachy.

Most of us know that judging people by generalized category is unfair and hurtful. The same goes for being an arrogant little prat, placing our inclinations above everyone else all the time.

But idolizing intellectual studies can be just as dangerous. How so? Try talking to a pretentious English major and you’ll understand pretty darn quickly.

Ok, that’d be more like chit-chatting with Stewart, not Morrison. So check out the Nazis instead.

It’s a documented fact that the Nazis were inspired by Darwinian science. They used it to justify the designation of “sub-humans” suitable for lab rat-status. And the experiments they consequently ran on twins, dwarfs and other individuals with genetic anomalies were revolting.

(If you ever want nightmares, do a study on Nazi doc Josef Mengele. Ugh!)

That kind of intellectual superiority, which doesn’t always show itself so vividly, bugs the heck out of me. Hence the reason why I probably portrayed certain villains as harshly as I did.

Then again, come to think of it, maybe Morrison, et al were inspired by some of my college profs... Hmm.