Today on the site, please welcome Devin Harnois, author of Rainbow Islands! Is that not the most utterly delightfully queer book title you have heard? Oh, and behold the cover and blurb…
In the Christian Republic, homosexual people are given two choices—a camp to “fix” them, or exile to the distant islands populated by lesbians and gay men.
Sixteen-year-old Jason chooses exile and expects a hardscrabble life but instead finds a thriving, supportive community. While exploring his identity as a transgender boy he also discovers adventure: kraken attacks, naval battles, a flying island built by asexual people, and a daring escape involving glow-in-the-dark paint. He also has a desperate crush on Sky, a spirited buccaneer girl, but fear keeps him from expressing his feelings.
When Jason and his companions discover the Republicans are planning a war of extermination, they rally the people of the Rainbow Islands to fight back.
Shy, bookish Jason will have to find his inner courage or everything and everyone he loves will be lost forever.
*happy sigh* Here’s the link to get it: Amazon
And now, a post from Devin!
*****
After I began transition I sometimes felt a little guilty about not writing trans characters. There were so few trans stories, even fewer written by trans people. At the same time, I didn’t want to push myself into it just because I felt like I “should”.
The main characters in my novels are cis men, or a cis man and cis woman in my m/f romances. Growing up I always identified with cis male characters, because that was my fantasy: to be a cis man. When I was younger I didn’t have the words or even the understanding of what transgender was, I only knew a desperate desire to be a boy. I wrote a few poems and abandoned a handful of vague story starts that touched on my dysphoria and being trans, but otherwise I inhabited the fantasy, the escape, of being cis.
Then I saw a Tumblr post and the long string of replies that built an amazing story, a queer YA dystopian adventure with people fighting back against oppression. You can find it here: http://bequilles.tumblr.com/post/133505733119/lynati-lectorel-hazel-the-space-ace. And I thought—what if this story starred a trans boy? He’d get sent to the lesbian island, of course, because the oppressive government wouldn’t understand trans people.
That was how Rainbow Islands was born. For once I wanted to write trans male character. It finally felt right.
I wrote the first draft in November of 2016. Yes, during that election. The fear and anger lit a fire under me and through a haze of caffeine and anxiety, I somehow finished. Even under normal circumstances this wouldn’t have been easy to write. It touches on some dark stuff and some very personal stuff. Add to that our current political climate where trans people and other queer folk are being demonized. While writing some scenes I had to stop and walk away because they hit so close to home.
But Rainbow Islands also full of joy, about finding yourself, finding your people and holding onto that with everything you’ve got. It’s a story of queer triumph over oppression.
Jason, the main character, isn’t exactly me, but he’s sort of a love letter to my younger self. He’s the kind of character I desperately needed growing up and never saw. A boy like me, with a body like mine, and he gets to be the hero. He gets the hot pirate girl.
So many trans narratives are about the struggle and the misery. I wanted to show the other side of that, acceptance and happiness. Jason’s life isn’t perfect—he still deals with dysphoria and there’s a war looming, but he’s surrounded by people who support him. A whole society built by queer people, where being transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, or a myriad of other identities is just normal. It’s the opposite of the world Jason came from, where people tried to force him to be something he’s not.
My hope is that trans boys find this book and recognize themselves in it. That they see boys like them can be heroes too, not just victims or lessons for cis people. We deserve the kinds of stories that center us and lift us up, that show us a world where we get happy endings.
And a hot pirate girlfriend.
*****
Devin Harnois writes YA and Romance of the fantastical sort. Somehow his books keep getting more queer. When he isn’t writing he spends too much time on Twitter and plays a lot of Dragon Age. Follow him on Twitter @devinharnois.
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The whole city is searching for Hasryan.
Claudie Arseneault is an asexual and aromantic-spectrum writer hailing from the very-French Quebec City. Her long studies in biochemistry and immunology often sneak back into her science-fiction, and her love for sprawling casts invariably turns her novels into multi-storylined wonders. The start of her most recent series, 
Award-winning author Ginn Hale lives in the Pacific Northwest with her lovely wife and their ancient, evil cat. She spends the rainy days admiring local fungi. The stormy nights, she spends writing science-fiction and fantasy stories featuring LGBT protagonists. (Attempts to convince the cat to be less evil have been largely abandoned.)
Luke can uncross almost any curse—they unravel themselves for him like no one else. So working for the Kovrovs, one of the families controlling all the magic in New York, is exciting and dangerous, especially when he encounters the first curse he can’t break. And it involves Jeremy, the beloved, sheltered prince of the Kovrov family—the one boy he absolutely shouldn’t be falling for.
For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.
Ryan McCullough and Gabby Hart are the unlikeliest of friends. Introverted, anxious Gabby would rather do literally anything than go to a party. Ryan is a star hockey player who can get any girl he wants—and does, frequently. But against all odds, they became not only friends, but each other’s favorite person. Now, as they face high school graduation, they can’t help but take a moment to reminisce and, in their signature tradition, make a top ten list—counting down the top ten moments of their friendship:
Rumor Mora fears two things: hellhounds too strong for him to kill, and failure. Jude Welton has two dreams: for humans to stop killing monsters, and for his strange abilities to vanish.
Even gods can be slain
Being the middle child has its ups and downs.
Bells Broussard thought he had it made when his superpowers manifested early. Being a shapeshifter is awesome. He can change his hair whenever he wants, and if putting on a binder for the day is too much, he’s got it covered. But that was before he became the country’s most-wanted villain.
Chase Payne is a walking contradiction. He’s the most powerful psychic in the Community, but the least respected. He’s the son of the Community’s founder, but with his tattoo sleeves and abrasive attitude, he’s nothing like his charismatic family. No one knows what to make of him, which is how he wound up locked in a cell on the Farm yet again. But this time, the only man he’s ever loved is there too.
NFL football player Isaiah Blackwell lost his husband three years ago and is raising their teen son alone. He lives his life as quietly as his job allows, playing ball to support his family but trying not to draw unwanted attention. His quiet life is shaken up when a mutual friend introduces him to Victor, a visiting principal ballet dancer who is everything Isaiah is not.
THE RULES ARE SIMPLE: You must be gifted. You must be younger than twenty-five. You must be willing to accept the dangers that you will face if you win.
In Savannah Espinoza’s small New Mexico hometown, kids either flee after graduation or they’re trapped there forever. Vanni never planned to get stuck—but that was before her father was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, leaving her and her mother to care for him. Now, she doesn’t have much of a plan at all: living at home, working as a performing mermaid at a second-rate water park, distracting herself with one boy after another.
Ryan, Harley and Miles are very different people–the swimmer, the rebel and the nerd. All they’ve ever had in common is Isaac, their shared best friend.
Tony Quinn has a knack for figuring people out. He likes labels, likes to be able to put everyone and everything in tidy boxes. As a theater director, it allows him to run a production without too much drama. But when he meets Gentry—“call me Gee”—in a bar one night, he discovers that some people aren’t so easily defined.
Adda and Iridian are newly-minted engineers, but in a solar system wracked by economic collapse after an interplanetary war, an engineering degree isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Desperate for gainful employment, they hijack a colony ship, planning to join a pirate crew at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.
Letting queer characters and characters of color have space in their own stories, especially when those characters are being written by authors from our own communities. Characters with marginalized identities need space to grow and evolve in their own stories, they need room for realistic portrayals of the obstacles they face, and they need chances at happy endings.
Anna-Marie McLemore (she/her) was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and taught by her family to hear la llorona in the Santa Ana winds. She is the author of THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS, a finalist for the 2016 William C. Morris Debut Award, and 2017 Stonewall Honor Book WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature. Her latest is WILD BEAUTY, and BLANCA & ROJA is forthcoming in fall of 2018.