Because sharing about one's self may be fun, but it is rarely effective...
Q. Do you write anyplace else on the web?
A. Well, you're the one who asked for it--I've started a crazy soap opera blog for my pet fish: As The Tank Cycles. I also have practical advice for first-time aquarists-in-love like myself.
Q. Where did you come up with Randitty?
A. I thought it sounded fun, and after trying to smush the words 'random' and 'witty' together in so many different ways, I felt this was the best. And sort of trendy-sounding.Q. Uh, I meant the site itself. Not that the blog idea is special, but why are you posting fiction on blogger.com instead of any other website for aspiring writers?
A. I think Randitty is special in that my ultimate goal is to use the interactive nature of the internet to make stories really irresistible. I want to re-create the joy of picking up picture books, as a child, except with heavier storylines and (though I love books) in a lighter interface. At present, I am still searching for a way to get it all just perfect: the visually sumptuous graphic design aspect of being online, with kick-arse fiction stories which I find must be executed using a tantalizing brevity in order to fully enjoy their digital medium. I'm not aiming for an e-book format when I don't wish for books to ever be replaced, nor are these stories anything like a graphic novel when I want to be heavy on text; I have no allusions about Randitty resembling those, in the slightest! I want to craft a different sort of story-animal. Also, blogger is easy to use when I desperately need for my story and my graphics to always, always match (no shame in being a diva!) and this website is $free.99.
Q. Speaking of animals, you sure do write a lot about nature. Is there anything else that inspires you?
A. I am a black woman and a DC native. The urban experience is a rich and humbling one which has enabled me to grow up with a real appreciation for my own ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and those of other people, as well. I long to blaze a new trail in the fiction community by getting more images of people of color, more of the so-called minority experience, and more, rich and thick culture (poor you, you are finding out that I am sociologically trained) into characters and fictional societies. I suppose I could write about elves or completely alien creatures, but my priority has always been to write about the human experience--humans as pristine creatures, and the black experience as something translatable, but also--obviously--endemically human. I am far too vested in making sure that real racial and cultural identities as I have experienced them, and as I perceive so many other people do too, are properly represented in fantasy fiction, to ever relegate any aspect of that precious complex human experience to something that I feel may be contextually, or even historically, as racially exoticized as its fantastic backdrop. Especially, when all through my life and education, I have had the pleasure of knowing that human diversity is what makes life so spectacular. By the way, everyone has culture, every human being is part of that diversity, so therefore--though I am black in addition to a lot of other things, and I have learned that I love writing about being black--it is not my goal to neglect any group.
When it comes to fantasy fiction--a genre that already engages readers through taking the best of human life and weaving those themes into exotic worlds, all of it seeking--ironically--to seem as realistic and convincing as possible, we will only have more powerful stories and more delicious characters if we allow them to enjoy the exceptional diversities of real life. I've been waiting, since I was a girl, to read stories about the fantastic worlds I love with people who look and feel like I do, adventuring within those dreamscapes. I will not wait any longer.
Q. So then, as a black writer, shouldn't you have more black people in your stories? Sometimes, you don't have any, like at all.
A. My priority is to craft thick racial, cultural and ethnic identities and include them in effective fiction stories. First, I ask myself what my new story is about. Second, I ask myself what setting is necessary and what characters will best satisfy the objectives of that story. Honestly, it is not always an element of human diversity, like any writer, I may be seized by some random and witty idea as silly as 'what if there were deer people?', but usually, my story themes are concerned with diversity in some aspect. The characters who fit the particular message I seek to convey are called on to do so, with whatever they need to have equipped, and by any means necessary. If, for whatever reason, a theme I want to talk about doesn't involve black people specifically, then we will not be present. I'm not a fan of tokenism. However, one is never inspired in a vaccuum, writers never write without being affected by some bias or passion. Whether or not you actually see black people in my stories, or people from some other background, the black experience is still represented in some aspect; if not because I have done so consciously because that effort means too much to me, then it will happen on its own, because it is a part of myself that I am proud of and have a great deal of fun writing about, whatever the plot challenge may be.
Q. Are you always this serious? Is it because you haven't been published yet?
A. I'd say that I'm very serious about having fun, and I think that, who I am, who we all are, is fun and should be celebrated. If it were possible for a person to be serious about being silly... my picture would be, like, right there next to that definition. As for me becoming published, yes, this is a part of that journey. Also, I couldn't keep the random stories bottled up anymore! I have other ones, manuscripts and such, and I will surely let you know where else you can find my stuff to read it once that happens (some of my stories that get submitted to various sources but aren't picked up find their home here), but writing online is fun for me too.
Q. This is fun for you? Seriously?
A. ... Yes.
Q. How interesting. I also find that, in the end, you are asking yourself these questions. What a set-up! The audacity of some people!
A. Mister Q. You will be happy to learn that you are also a character I have engineered for a specific purpose, lashed together with the wrappings of my sanity, no longer purple-wounded and so bandage has been removed, everything healed, and the whole of me happy to finally have herself, fictionally, expressed!
Muahaha...
