An Interview with Carole McDonnell, Author of Wind Follower - Page 2

I like being a writer, though, because it's what I'm good at. What could be better than sitting around making up stories?

There is a big, beautiful picture of a black woman with a nose ring on the cover of Wind Follower. Has anyone ever told you black people don't read speculative fiction?

I belong to several online speculative fiction groups, many of which are groups dedicated to fantasy and science fiction written by people of color. They also ask this question and wonder where the black readers of fantasy are. They make generalizations such as ‘science fiction is a genre written by and read primarily by white male geeks.’ I don't really read science fiction. I like fantasy a lot but I don't read much of it because I don’t really connect to all those lords, ladies, knights and Euro-type elves. I'll read urban and contemporary fantasy, however. They're usually more inclusive. And I'll read works by multicultural writers. I don’t know if my audience will be black folks, though. It all depends on which market is receptive to me. Christian readers? White speculative fiction readers? Romance readers? Black readers? Black Christian readers? Will see.

What do you think the difference is between Wind Follower and other Christian themed speculative fiction novels like The Left Behind Series and The Chronicles of Narnia?

The Chronicles of Narnia is a classic. In its time it was a mix of fantasy and contemporariness. Now it’s a bit dated in some places, at least in the contemporary scenes. At that time the young characters in the story were actual kids dealing with the war that had engulfed England. They had to encounter evil. Now, a movie like Pan’s Labyrinth is much different. I’m not saying Pan’s Labyrinth is going to be a classic, nor am I saying it’s a Christian work of art… but it understands the evils of the physical world. And it parallels the evils of the physical world with evils in the spiritual non-physical world. Harry Potter also deals with that. Again, I’m not saying Harry Potter is Christian. But it does deal with contemporary class and race issues, evil, and alienation. The Left Behind series is contemporary, but it is very preachy and although it deals with spiritual warfare, it doesn’t really touch on the subject of race. And like many Christian speculative stories, it focuses on the apocalypse. Wind Follower takes place in an alternate past. It deals with spiritual and cultural warfare but it is multicultural. So it’s alike in some ways and unalike in other ways.

Article Author: Constance Burris

Constance is an aspiring speculative fiction writer with a serious attention deficit disorder. She currently writes to Single and Blessed where she chronicles her everyday life as a single mother of two beautiful hyperactive children. …

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