West of Sunset by Dennis R Upkins

Brecken is a wizard, top of his class and much in demand for his skills as an investigator; skills which take him to Scotland and to California to face off against demons and vampires with only good friends and whatever magic he can muster to see him through.

This book contains two separate stories following the same protagonist.

The first, I’m afraid, I found pretty impenetrable. Honestly, it was a struggle to keep reading and if this story hadn’t turned into a second story half way through the book (something I didn’t know before reading this) and if it hadn’t been the book of the week, I would have put it down unfinished.

It had a huge number of characters many of whom weren’t particularly characterised in any depth and many of them representing an array of supernatural creatures, without any real development of what those creatures mean. We had an angel – but no particular depth behind that, what it represents or what it can do, demons that were pretty much the same, a guy called Elroy I’m still not sure where he fit. Then, we had the twins who were the last remnants of a dying race; but I had no sense of that about them at all, even though it was supposed to be their driving motivation and all I know about these guys is they have super powers – but that’s it; what they were labelled could have been anything because it would have made the same difference to the plot. What world building there was was delivered in huge chunks of info-dumping dialogue which itself was a problem.

The characters themselves didn’t focus on the plot much and were juvenile. Their dialogue was kind of frustrating and pretty ridiculous – these are supposed adults (include an actual police detective) taking childish bets over whether someone’s gay or not? In between fighting demons? They even have time to angst over whether or not said gay character finds them attractive, all so that Brecken talk about the arrogance of straight men believing that all gay men find them attractive. These conversations go on for a ridiculously huge portions of the book and they’re infantile, mind numbing and frustrating to slog through and just make me dislike pretty much every character. What more, these last two remnants of an ancient and lost race are more interested in getting laid than discovering their own origin. There was also a problem with the female characters – Nemesis the angel (who really needs a slightly less obvious pseudonym) is a WOC and several kinds of awesome. But the actual human women? We have a chiding elderly servant and then 3 blonde women who are cardboard cut outs of vapid, sexist tropes that they were pretty cringeworthy. That’s right, “scantily dressed young women  who looked as if they were all members of the Alpha Gamma Blonde sorority” The female villain was also pretty sexualised.

It’s also worth noting that apparently the best way to shame straight young men for their homophobic behaviour is to use misogynistic language as this passage highlights:

“This poor soul comes to aid you on your quest to discover your  origins and you repay his kindness with petty gossip, violating his  privacy,   disrespecting   and   utterly   humiliating   him   by   cavorting  about like a bunch of prepubescent females.”  “Did she just say we acted like a bunch of high school girls?”  Jacob asked.  “Lower your heads in shame!” Nemesis ordered, her low tone  brooking no disobedience. “Lower them!”

Putting this kind of language into the mouth of the sole strong female character in this story only makes it that much more unacceptable.

Navigating Through Race- The Plight of Storytellers of Color

 This is a Guest Post by Dennis Upkins

A gent by the name of Malcolm X once said, “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”

Many people often wonder how I’m able to reconcile being a spec fic author with being a social justice activist. Malcolm X’s quote is that very reason.

Because while the media has the power to control the minds of the masses, it’s also a platform to hold a mirror and expose inconvenient truths such as bigotry to a society who is still plugged into the proverbial Matrix of privilege and institutional oppression.

But in order share the truth, marginalized artists have to make many decisions that can play an impact on our careers, our art and its potential impact on society.

An example of this would be a conversation I was having with a buddy a few years back. He and I were discussing a popular graphic novel series created by a storyteller of color. My friend thought it was odd and a bit disappointing that the storyteller decided to make the main protagonist of the series, white. My buddy explained that even as a caucasian male, even he gets sick and tired of seeing white characters inundate the media. As I explained to my good buddy, there’s whole double standard that storytellers of color have to contend with when it comes to our narratives.

It’s never easy being an artist of color. When it comes to race, the race itself is a rigged one. No matter how talented and gifted you are, there are legions upon legions of bigoted whites who are looking to attack, denigrate and discredit you.

As I learned from several white critics and readers with my debut novel, Hollowstone, black writers are not real writers. We employed some type of chicanery, especially if we got published before many aspiring white writers did. I was also whitesplained that publishers who target black audiences or other readers of color aren’t “legitimate” publishers. They’re just not real.