Since I’ve always loved the supernatural and have always been an avid reader of those books, I knew I wanted to take that tack instead of writing a straight-up romance between a black woman and a white man.
Having decided that, I had to come up with a visual component that would make them different, much like our skin color. And into my head, popped the idea of auras! Different colored auras—blue and purple. Hence, the birth of the Auralite.
Though the Auralite is a different type of being, they have a history similar to ours, here in America, in which the purple suddenly found themselves oppressed by their brethren, the blue. This history is explored in the novel in “dream” sequences by a journalist who then writes about them. Writing the history and the romance gave me the opportunity to explore intolerance and how past oppression still haunts us today.
The use of my own beings allowed me to create some suspense, since these beings want to keep themselves hidden from humans. But because of the dreams, this might very well be impossible.
Now, before some of the readers think I’ve gone too far out there, just let me say Auralites look and act remarkably like humans; they just have a few powers that we don’t, and probably wish we did. I know I do.
