When I first deliberated on this novel idea last year (Starless Skies and Broken Dreams), I knew exactly what I wanted to bring to the reader’s attention: fear. My protagonist, Lucy, would struggle with this emotion throughout the story as she is suddenly transported from her own world, similar to ours, into a civilization on the brink of destruction. There’s the City of Dreams, inhabited by the wealthy and powerful Spell Casters, versus the Starless City, shrouded in pollution and poverty. I aimed to especially highlight the division inside this society caused by fear of the unknown; fear of diversity, because after all, is it not a writer’s job to challenge and chase after the truth through fiction?

I nod. “That’s awful, but it also happens in my own world. We don’t even have magic, and we’re just as divided…”

I let the sentence die out. America isn’t a terrible place to live; it really isn’t. But I have been ashamed for it more times than I can count. I have cried out in anguish over the injustices that many ignore. School itself is a dangerous game, because my classmates see the differences in my complexion and in my characteristics rather than the similarities in my humanity and my personality. Pair that with being the new kid all the time, at the schools I attended before I came to California, and there’s a recipe for disaster.

But while I am much more suited to blend in, others are not. This included my own father, back when he was still alive, with his heavy, lilted accent. He even tried to change his last name, to further Americanize himself, but it did little good in the end.