BIO

TELL US ABOUT YOUR BOOK(S)!

At the moment, I mainly write retellings, but I have many different types that I am working on! My flagship series is a BIPOC queer reimagining of Greek Mythology with the first book, Drag Me Up, featuring Black love between a trans, pansexual Persephone and a demisexual Hades. I also have one contemporary romance out at the moment called “What Are the Odds?” and a monster romance, “Sing Me to Sleep”, that is a novella introduction to a larger series I will be debuting later this year.  All of my books feature queer Black and/or brown main characters as that is who I write for, my communities. I currently write romance as my primary genre, but within that, I also write fantasy, horror, and paranormal/monster romance, and I am planning to branch out further in horror and fantasy as well.

HOW DO YOU WEAVE YOUR CULTURE INTO YOUR WRITING?

Up until now, I think I've done so quite subtly. I've tried to incorporate my culture into the roots of all that I write so that it is simply threaded through the fabric of each story and not a decoration atop them. It's both easier and harder for different reasons to do so in fantasy worlds, but a lot of what I do at present revolves around reclaiming spaces that we historically occupied but have since been erased from. For example, with my Greek Myth series, everyone being BIPOC and queer is to combat the false idea that Ancient Greek society was a homogenous cishet white one. It was not. African countries, figures, and landmarks are often mentioned in the mythology. Even before Cleopatra's reign, Greek and African cultures collided, and it is depicted in both written records and art from the time. We've been here. We will always be here, and it's time to push back against revisionist narratives. Going forward, I do have other works that are more blatantly about my culture, mainly as a Black Indigenous person in and around Southwest America (mostly horror), but I do also have other retellings that I cannot wait to write through my own lens.

WHAT BLACK AUTHOR HAS INFLUENCED YOU THE MOST?

I can only speak for right now because different writers have influenced me at different stages, but currently, I am in complete awe of Akwaeke Emezi. They are writing across several genres, and they are doing it to perfection. Their writing style is beautiful, and the way they have chosen to weave their culture and Blackness through their work, carefree and alive, is what I aspire to. I’m currently reading You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, their most recent novel and debut romance, and for someone who doesn’t really care for contemporary romance or settings, I have struggled to put it down. Their characters are always so well constructed, and it’s impossible not to identify and find kinship with them. Additionally, they are doing something for our community that is so desperately needed. Black, queer people get to see themselves in these books without needing to justify their existence in these places, which is the way I am dedicated to writing my own. This is especially true for Black, trans people. We have a lot of ground to cover, a lot of spaces to take up and carve out, and Akwaeke is BLAZING TRAILS, OKAY?!?! I adore them, so yeah, definitely Akwaeke.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE READERS WILL GET OUT OF YOUR BOOKS?

The main thing I want my readers to get out of my books is a sense of belonging. As I said, I write for my communities, and I love my people more than I could ever possibly love myself alone. While writing is therapeutic for me, I do not use pain and trauma as a centerpiece of my stories because I think we have had enough of that. I don't like the idea of scraping myself raw in order to be good enough to be published. I want escapism, and I want to share that with my communities. I want stories that let my people know we already belong here, that we have always been here, that we deserve to be here, and that this world was made for us not in spite of us. And I write and create worlds where we do not just belong but we thrive. We run things, we control our destinies, and we get to have the same adventures and fairy tales that everyone else has without having to spend half of it fighting for our right to exist. In my books, being queer is the default because it is for me, and being Black and brown doesn’t come with an explanation because we do not need one. So I just want my readers to be able to open a book and not have to read about their trauma or reflect on the hardships of the world we live in. I want them to be able to escape like cishet white people get to do in their books, and I think that thus far, I’ve delivered on that.

WHAT IS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT BEING A BLACK CREATOR IN PUBLISHING?

I think we’ve probably all heard the saying, “we have to work twice as hard to get half as far”, and that is true in every industry. Publishing is no different. I have a lot of confidence in my writing. I’ve been perfecting this craft for over twenty years consistently, so I definitely should. However, I was told early and often that the odds of me getting a book deal were slim to none by plenty of people. I believed them too and kept chasing other careers I really did not want, got degrees I wasn’t actually prepared to use, just to say I had a backup plan. Yet I started publishing just a year ago, and since then, I’ve been able to make it my full-time job with just five books out and no publisher. I was lucky enough to have the resources to self-publish, but that isn’t true for many Black creators, and we often have to peddle our pain to get in the door of traditional publishing. They don’t want too many Black stories. They will look at our stories and say “Oh, we already have one of those” despite white authors being able to write the same stories over and over until they run them into the ground, and even then, they still get published. Black authors have to be the best, the most unique, the most creative, and if we flop, our entire community pays for it, so we are always running the risk of taking spots from each other because they only give us a few. So really the hardest thing is the pressure of having to be perfect and getting very little grace to make mistakes or grow. It seems like we really do only get one shot, but there are creators like me (and y'all of course, thank you!) who are trying to change that, and I do believe it is about that time.

Robes! I'm wearing robes. Black, beautiful African robes with gold trim. If I can have a bit of Black - Indigenous Mexican crossover, I'm gonna do that. It's comfortable and luxurious all at once. Mainly comfortable for me, luxurious for the Met because I'm always gonna choose comfort LOL. Oh yeah, though, once outside is safer than it is right now, I'm tryna bring robes back.

ANY ADVICE FOR OTHER BLACK CREATORS?

My advice for other Black creators is a simple goal with a million ways to accomplish it, and that is to write with the intent of building our own table rather than getting a seat at someone else’s. It may start as making the table bigger, but we should always be striving to carve out space for our community, to build new doors and a new table where Black creators can write and create what they want without having to ensure it stands up to cishet, white western standards. Know your worth, never settle for less, and never let anyone else tell your story. Be true to yourself, and be honest about what it is you want to accomplish. There are a lot of authors who have sacrificed the comfort of their community for that of publishing and white readers, and that keeps us pigeonholed with no capital to negotiate with. It does us no good, so don’t feel like you have to sell out or adjust your morals to appease anyone. Write your story, be it romance or horror or fantasy, and know that you don’t have to sell your trauma or pain to be good enough. We deserve escapism as much as anyone else. We deserve rest and peace, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

WHERE CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU?

• WEBSITE: rmvirtues.com
• TWITTER: @rmvirtues
• INSTAGRAM: @rmvirtues
• TIKTOK: @rmvirtues
• PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/rmvirtues
• READ SING ME TO SLEEP AND MORE AT:
• https://www.amazon.com/R-M-Virtues/e/B091P6JF17/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1