Before Blade. before, Black Lightening, before Luke Cage and Black Panther and this interest in  black speculative fiction, I wanted to write fiction that
featured themes and characters from my culture in genre fiction that I loved so dearly. Back then It wasn't a thing and I've had publishers freeze out my work because of my ambitions in speculative fiction. I persisted and watched the accolades being bestowed on the usual suspects who were showing us the world from their perspective, again and again.
Am I hating?
Of course not. James Herbert, Clive Barker, Stephen King, Dean Koontz. Peter Straub, David Seltzer, David
Eddings the names go on and on of authors I love, who have given me years of fantastic entertainment and wisdom. But I was starving for books with characters like me, from my culture with familiar motivations but set in a horror, fantasy or Sci-Fi milieu.
Some greats had come before me like Octavia Butler, Samuel R Delaney, Charles R Saunders, Nalo Hopkinson, Tananarive Due to name a few but this was my personal journey.
And so started pursuing my dream of producing speculative
fiction with an African-Caribbean flavour but my work was ignored by publisher after publisher, agent after agent. I worked at my craft and felt the sting of rejection, time and time again. And when I did find a publisher to work with me, Fantastic fiction was the last thing they wanted me to write.
It was gruelling, tough and daunting and sometimes no matter how hard you push, the work did not reach or engage with enough readers.