Free teen eBook at Amazon and Harmony Ink Press with adventure, love, and, of course, LGBTQ characters! King Roland defeated the dragons, turning them human. Will Allanah’s new magic mean the survival of the world’s dragons?
So excited The Sun Dragon is free right now!! If you haven’t gotten your copy, be sure to do so before July 24th!!
New blog post about how Judith Butler and gender theory inspired the bone dragons in Starsong, Book Three in the Sun Dragon Series from @harmonyinkpress
I was very excited to guest blog for My Fiction Nook about the “friends first” relationship of Sara Lee and Nimue in my new book, Starsong: Book Three in the Sun Dragon Series, a five book series from @harmonyinkpress
“Although Sara Lee initially lacks the confidence to express her feelings to Nimue, when a ten-year-old child going through the Naming Ceremony refuses to pick a gender and instead stands up to the king, their confidence finally inspires Sara Lee to take a stand” Confidence in @annabelleauthor‘s series, The Sun Dragon
I wrote about confidence in Starsong: Book Three in The Sun Dragon Series on Harmony Ink's blog!
By Annabelle Jay
In one of the recent reviews of my new novel, The Sun Dragon, a reader pointed out that the book was not a romance. There are romantic elements—Allanah, the main character, is a bisexual girl who ends up with two love interests that she must pick between—but the novel is solidly a fantasy story. There are witches, dragons, and epic battles to save the magical universe. Such is the case with most of my books, whether young adult fantasy or otherwise.
It got me thinking, why does the question of romance come up over and over again in reviews of my books?
The answer lies in my books’ classification. When readers see LGBTQ+, they assume that the story will center on the main character’s sexual identity or a romance of some kind. In all fairness, many LGBTQ+ stories do this. But not mine.
In The Sun Dragon, Allanah’s biggest conflict is not with herself, but with a corrupt wizard named King Roland who secretly turned dragons into humans and bred himself a powerful army. Allanah’s best friend, Victoria, was one such dragon, so it’s fortunate that Allanah figures out she has magical power that can keep her friend a human—at least for a while.
Between creating the world’s first light dragon and trying to save the entire wizarding world from King Roland, Allanah does develop two crushes. Dena, a member of the native forest-dwelling Igreefee camp, and Cormac, a wizard, represent not only two different the two genders Allanah is attracted to, as well as her larger internal struggle to choose between the Igreefee and the Council. However, she is a witch with special powers who just happens to be bisexual, not the other way around.
In fact, none of the relationships in Allanah’s life, from her friendship with Victoria to her interest in Dena and Cormac, take center stage during the book—and why should they? Why do stories about girls need to focus on their relationships with other people, instead of the crazy adventures they lead on their own? Allanah fights her own battles, and though she might ask for help along the way, she doesn’t need it.
In my opinion, having a strong lead character who also happens to be a woman or a bad-guy-battling witch who also happen to be LGBTQ+ is the best thing an author trying to diversify the genre can do. I’ve gone to a lot of schools and nonprofits to talk to young adult LGBTQ+ students, and the number one thing I hear is that they do not feel represented in mainstream literature. They cannot just walk in Barnes & Nobles and pick up a book with an LGBTQ+ character, especially one that is not about that character’s sexuality but instead just a plain old story that happens to have an LGBTQ+ character in the starring role.
However, not every reader is on board.
It’s a fantasy! I tell people when they ask about my new book.
Awesome!
And there’s dragons and witches in it! I continue.
Great!
And the main character is a bisexual girl!
Oh… Then the person slowly walks away, hoping I won’t follow them and make the situation even more awkward.
I truly believe that this reaction is changing, and that in the future, books will not need LGBTQ+ labels. Those labels will not be sexualized, and readers will not assume that an LGBTQ+ book is only for LGBTQ+ people. Books with female protagonists will not center on a man who fights her battles for her, but on the female protagonist herself. The Sun Dragon and the next four books in the series will just be a few fantasy novels among many, and Allanah will just be one character among many characters that accurately represent our diverse population.
Annabelle Jay believes with all her heart that there is no such thing as too many dragons in a book. As a fantasy writer with few other hobbies, she spends every day following her imagination wherever it leads her. A hippie born in the wrong decade, Annabelle has a peace sign tattoo and a penchant for hugging trees. She often gets confused for a student, though she is actually a young professor; when this stops happening, she will probably be very sad.
The Sun Dragon is available for purchase.
Check out my original blog post on the Expanded Universe blog here: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/giveaway/expanded-universe-why-i-write-about-gay-dragons/
Excerpt
I sit at my Outwrite Book Festival table, novels spread like yard sale trinkets across the pink plastic table cloth, and try to draw in the crowd. A few curious customers pick up Cairo in White or ask me about my pen name, Annabelle Jay, but no one finds exactly what they’re looking for. Then, when a young man asks me what I’m working on as he already eyes the next booth, I explain that it’s a young adult LGBTQ+ series about gay dragons.
Suddenly, everyone wants my card.
Although I would love to take credit for the idea, the focus of my newest novel, The Sun Dragon, came about as a bit of a joke. I was already writing primarily LGBTQ+ fiction—both under my own name as adult fiction and under my pen name, Annabelle Jay, as young adult fiction—and I was already writing young adult fantasy. I just hadn’t put the two together yet.
