Happy Black History Month. Black history is world history, so we celebrate it every month, but February is when The United States has chosen to acknowledge it. As an author and a lover of history, it often rolls over into my work. Characters and events inspired by history or historical figures are a lot more common than most people would be comfortable admitting. This month for the newsletter, I thought I'd highlight three of my favorite characters inspired by Black historical figures.
Martin - Intercosmic
Martin is one of Efrem's adopted parents in my web novel Intercosmic. He's rancher, a youth scout leader and the understanding heart that Efrem always wanted from his own parents. He's based on Martin Delaney. Delaney was the first Black field officer for The United States army, an abolitionist and a writer. His works earned him the moniker, "Father of Black Nationalism." His most prominent work is Blake; or The Huts of America. It of course calls for Black people to overthrow their oppressors. More importantly, and the reason I chose to name a character in a science fiction work after him, is because many scholars consider this to be the birth of Black science fiction. There's a slave revolt, but also discussions about a utopia type society waiting for them if they can just get free.
Pauline - Intercosmic
Pauline is Martin's wife. She doesn't take any mess and is a shrewd business woman. She is the voice of reason and a walking lesson in how to advocate for your own rights and desires. I named her after Pauline Hopkins. She was the writer and a historian, things I'm all too familiar with. She wrote plays, essays, fiction, non fiction, romance and science fiction. Her most known novel, One Blood Or, The Hidden Self is a science fiction book surrounding a man who simply does not care about any attachments to other Black people, only wealth. It was serialized in The Colored American Magazine. Parts of the book are structured around actual history and travelogues; this is also something I do. At some point, I'll put together references for places in my some of my works. The love of history, the various types of writing, genres and serialization of novels is why she is one of the people I consider to be one of my writing ancestors.
Alexandre - Virtual Vagabonds
Alexandre is the main character of my web novel Virtual Vagabonds. I named him after another of my writing ancestors. Alexandre Dumas was also a historian, prolific writer of multiple genres and lover of serial novels as well. Please don't read The Three Musketeers in one sitting. It was mean to be spaced out, it's a serial novel. An underappreciated, in my opinion, work of his is called The Wolf Leader. People debate the placement, but it is most certainly one of the first werewolf novels ever written. Honestly, people call it trash. One thing about Dumas that I love is that as much as people praise works like The Count of Monte Cristo, he has some HATED works. The man just loved writing, and everything didn't work. It happens, trust me, I know. Another reason I call him a writing ancestor is because he would read other people's works or watch their plays, then write his own versions. That's really how I started writing. The first thing I remember writing was basically Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles stories because I thought they could be doing better. I was eight or nine years old, but I knew I did not like the lack of emphasis on character development.
Updates
Virtual Vagabonds has wrapped up the first book. I'm not even sure I can call it a book. There are about 65,000 words of people being stuck in a video game that people have been reading for over a year now. There's probably going to be a sequel because it's popular despite me rarely ever promoting it anywhere. I wrote more about it earlier this week.
I'm working on getting paperbacks of my already published works this year. My first shot at paperbacks went terrible, and Amazon still won't let me remove it. However, things have gotten way easier in the world of self-publishing since then. I've also made friends with an amazing woman who has wonderful paperback editions of her books and she has been a huge help.
On the history side of things, I've been covering the Black Panther Party, extensively for the last year or so. That includes a 30 minute video about the rise and fall of the party. It's been fun, and I'm not sure what my next big project will be or if it'll take an entire year to cover.
