Category: Letters to the Author

[Letters To The Author] Dear Laurell K Hamilton

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Dear Laurell K Hamilton,

I’m sure that you’re as sick of me as I am of your writing. 

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Letter to the Author – Matt Wallace

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Dear Matt,

You are the kind of author I aspire to be like when I grow up (or rather, grow into) as a writer. I love your Sin du Jour series like I love naps: i would take two of them a day if I could and when I’m not enjoying one, I feel strangely bereft.

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Letters to the Author – Afton Locke

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Note that this Letter to the Author contains graphic descriptions of racism and racist violence (sexual and otherwise) as it relates to the reality of white supremacy in history and historical romances.

Dear Afton Locke,

I could write you about a bunch of things in your Oyster Harbor series. I could talk about your constant use of food terms to describe Black characters (“butterscotch” and “light mocha” stand out). I could complain about how your heroine in Cali’s Hurricane is a vodou practitioner and how it’s so mishandled. I could even point out that the plot in and of itself is supremely flawed and in no way as accurate as you think.

But you know what, everything pales in the face of the one main question that I’ve had for you since the moment I read anything of yours: What on Earth possessed you to write a series of historical interracial romance novels where (at least) two of your “heroes” belong to their local branch of the Klan?Read More »

Letters to the Author – JK Rowling

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Part passive aggressive stress valve, part honest attempt at expressing my continuous frustration with JKR, this first post for Letters to the Author  is me at my grouchiest. Future posts will be more moderate. Maybe.

Dear Jo:

I can’t remember exactly how old I was the first time I read a Harry Potter book I was either nine or ten years old. It was before I moved to Florida and before I knew that there was a certain kind of magic that really only existed in books like yours.

As a small child, I didn’t notice how poor your portrayals of people of color were or how lacking all forms of representation were. You got so much praise for the women you wrote, but aside from my own headcanons about Hermione’s implicit blackness, only a handful of your women were like me.Read More »