My vision for my genre. I knew if I was going to embark on this new fictional author adventure then I had to find a way to do it in a unique and original way. Something that felt authentic to me and nothing like I had ever seen before. Being a Black Woman in STEM means being a trailblazer. That means everything I do is unchartered territory. Always being a pioneer means sometimes moving blindly just to arrive at destination you can feel but cannot see.
In my mission to write about Black Women in STEM, it had to be the same way. I knew what I wanted to do even if I did not know how to do it. I had a desire to show these women in their multiple identities balancing their personal and professional lives. So, I had to marry art with my STEM in order to have it imitate their lives.
It's not possible to see their multidimensional, intersectional nature without examining their interactions with friends, colleagues, family, and other relationships. STEM is fun. STEM is sexy. STEM is romantic. Since I've been a romance head all the way back to my first Harlequin in high school, this was a natural transition for me. How else can you normalize and amplify diversity in STEM if you don't examine their complicated relationships with the people in their lives?
My husband often tells me that I am not a robot. What he means is that I must learn to slow down, rest, not be a machine and take time to breathe and rejuvenate. I cannot expect everyone and everything around me to behave in a linear, predictable manner. These books are my attempt at showing these women as more than super nerd technicians, who are unfeeling and one dimensional.
This is why I knew my genre for my writing had to marry all of my loves including #AfricanAmericanFiction, #AfricanAmericanRomance, and #BlackWomenSTEM even if there was no such thing. My goal for my writing is to tie together my intersectional identities as a mother, wife, engineer, professor, author, speaker, and researcher. I hope that it will help people to see us as more than an enigma or unicorn and embrace the possibilities of seeing more like us.
I hope you are able to see and embrace my vision through my writing. I would be remiss if I did not end this post by acknowledging those who helped me to achieve something that I sometimes thought was impossible. It was inspired early on in April 2020 by my #CatalystChronicles crew, Dr. Monica Cox, Dr. Tahira Reid Smith, and Dr. Tequila Harris. It was spurred forward by some really great writing mentors like Tiffany Christina Lewis, Lena Hampton, and my writing accountability group.
Elevated Inferno by Carlotta Ardell coming summer 2022 from RebellionLit. #MonetsMoment #FirstResponderFairyTales #ElevatedInferno