Help a Black Author Afford Editing Costs for Novel

Fifteen years ago, I googled “Black” and “Harry Potter” into the search engine and wasn’t quite shocked there was no fruitful results to be found. At the time, it was practically impossible to consider that Black folk could be a wizard. Ten years later, I googled again and found more options -- Akata Witch by Nnendi Okorafor, some lesser works with a culturally neutered reflection on Blacks in fantasy and a few other c-list sidekicks featured in someone else’s narrative along with a few lines and links about diversity in fiction and the work Publishing has done “trailblazing” this movement.

I purchased these books, but again, I was disappointed. The story I was hunting for didn’t exist: something that respect Blackness and AMERICAN  Blackness as its own entity and explored its point-of-view in the speculative form; it couldn’t exist and for some reason or another, I accepted that my vision of Blackness could not be magical in any case.

During my time as an undergrad studying literature and creative writing, I learned about a simple phrase: decolonization, and what it exactly meant to de-center yourself from whiteness, and how diversity failed this notion and why these sentiments could never be found in diversity or the Publishing that houses it.

Thus, I started drafting the story that I knew I would never find, Into the Ashe and Fire, to argue a point that seemed to escape every story I was picking up: about not only Blackness, but in how Whiteness exists from its honest, unyielding point-of-view.

Into the Ashe and Fire (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell x the Magicians x the Wire) is a 117k Afrofantasy Adult fiction social epic that blend racial discourse with spells in the enchanted near-distant future. A very quick synopsis of the story is it's a lyrical and speculative journey through the self-delusions of society as a Black boy fights to earn his place in the home he's always loved, with the people he's loved the most, while the circumstances of his poverty and the City's Law work to destroy him, and everyone he loves.

Further, the story draws a clear comparison to the state of social pause we experience today, where wealth is everyone's answer to so many violence and issues by creating a alluding the magic system to finances. Throughout the story, I wanted to paint a picture of every possible answer to the fight for equality and stability we make today and challenge them in a world where the power to make these things a reality are there. It's speculative fiction, at its finest.

Currently, I'm raising money to fund editing services to identify on-going issues throughout the book. Betas are difficult to maintain the focus and work of and there's only so much non-professional help can offer in the process of getting the novel to market. I come from a high-needs background and poverty, so out-of-pocket costs are difficult to muster. So, I turn to crowdsourcing...

WHO IS STEVEN UNDERWOOD?

A millenial trailblazer following in a long line of Black writers: inspirations like Toni Morrison, Fredrick Douglass and Octavia Butler, who decided to stop hoarding avocado, being a Black Identity Extremist and ruining Applebees for Baby Boomers and write a buncha books about all of those things.

I’m so legit, I even got a professional bio with subtle namedrops of places I’ve published, see:

Hailing from Columbus, Ohio, Steven Underwood is an award-winning writer with a penchant for finding the magic in the hypocritical world. Honest to his experiences, Underwood has published essays on Blackness and identity with LEVEL, Bleu Magazine, BET,  TOR, Catapult, MTV News, Essence, Cassius Life, and Banango Street, including an essay entitled “I Should’ve Talked Black” and other self-critical pieces. He has no dogs or cats, but several nieces who swear they are smarter than him.

Essentially, my typical subject matter is Black topics, Emotional/Social Literacy, Socialism and criticizing masculinity because it’s a joke.

Since 1995, I’ve always dreamed of being outspoken and confrontational. Except, I had what at the time a Black household called “shyness” and what medical professionals might have called “clinical anxiety” and the idea of speaking out loud to new people was a literal death sentence. Luckily, my mother was a former female rapper and passed a love of phrase-and-verse onto me. No musical talent, though, just enough to become apply this respect for the word to books, and become a writer.

I am an accredited academic with a Bachelor’s degree in English: Creative Writing with a minor in professional writing, which means I have a shiny degree that said I felt so invalidated by the knowledge I could’ve received from a library that I had to go to a fancy school built by slaves to pat myself on the back. There, I received the Eugene A. Noble Award for Leadership and Enthusiasm, and several other awards for academia, leadership and dedication to my field.

Currently, I am a freelance journalist and essayist with a popping twitter account and a Creative Writing MFA candidate.  So, basically, I’m about that writing life. I don’t see myself as someone who is pursuing the field of writing, but as an artist constantly working to improve. I’ve learned as much as I possibly can and have applied what I knew to analysis of not only techniques, but how the industry works right now.

Which is why I’m here. The current state of Publishing, to me, is nice. However, there is a problem in what stories can be told. Particularly, there is a problem in granting access to these stories in traditional publishing and how these borders are drawn around things. I dislike it immensely and having gone through the traditional query process and receiving a lot of… racially un-enlightened feedback and takes, I’ve decided that I won’t be waiting for space to be made in the industry in another 5-10 years and I’ll just take advantage of the social media and platform I’ve cultivated to tell my stories.

After all, I’m not a writer because I want to be famous, or because I’ve dreamed of seeing my book on a bookstore shelf (I mean, I can literally do that myself), but because I am drawn mind, body and spirit to the craft of writing and storytelling, and I love to do it. Whether I’m rich, or poor, this is my destiny, and Into the Ashe and Fire is the story that was meant to be told.

That is, it is meant to be told unapologetically with no pulled punches. And so, I will. Though, I’ll need a bit of help.