More on “straightwashing” YA

The YAY/Gay story I posted earlier this week has a rebuttal. The agent in question claims the edits had nothing to do with the sexuality of the character, but was about the quality of the book itself. At this point because no one can come out and show any hard proof, either because it doesn’t exist or because it would be impossible to release without releasing the book as well for inspection by the reader (at which point I’m sure everyone would have an opinion as well on the quality of the work that would different and thus feed the drama).

This is what I want to do though. Below is a breakdown of my publications and where they fit on the white/POC and gay/straight/other scale.

Wolf Heart, Violet Ivy Press, 2012-  2 separate secondary characters in mixed race relationships

What Was Once a Man, Horror Library volume 4, October 2010- Major male gay character

Meat World, Dark Futures: Tales of Dystopian SF – Gay male main character, love interest is Hispanic

Silver Veins, Expanded Horizons, February 2010 – Autistic main character

Men in the Moon, 9 (Ennea) Issue #505 (Greece) – Sexuality not at all part of plot, but for the record lead is a hetero white male, antagonist is a made up SF minority

Rot, Skullvines Press, August 2009- Vital gay secondary character

Diener, Aoife’s Kiss, September 2009- white male lead

Hacked, 9 (fiction magazine accompanying Eleftherotypia newspaper in Greece), #416 July 30, 2008- white male lead

Scarecrow (reprint), Pseudopod.org, August 15, 2008- Gay male lead with a Hispanic lover and their sexuality is a vital part of the story

Carnivorous, Black Ink Horror XXX, December 2008- lesbian leads

American Idolatry, Nocturnal Ooze, June/July 2007 (now available atAnthologyBuilder)- white female lead

Moodoo, From the Asylum, October 2007- white child lead

Bloodwalker, Read by Dawn volume 1, April 2006- straight female lead of questionable race

Published Stories: 13   Stories with GLBTQ Leads: 4  Stories with GLBTQ characters vital to the story: 5

Stories with POC leads: 0   Stories with POC characters vital to the story: 2 Stories with Disabled leads: 1

Stories with minority characters of note: 8   Stories with no minority character of note: 5

*I did not count vampires or shape shifters are other races despite that being a theme to my BloodWalker stories. However I did count the antagonists in Men in the Moon as minorities because they had genetically altered themselves to reflect who/what they identify as.

So in short, I’ve never had more of a problem selling a minority-character story than problems selling a story period. I’m not going to say my experience is typical because there is no typical experience when it comes to a writing career.