The origin of my creative philosophy
One of the first lesbian movies I watched ended with the protagonist committing suicide. I was eighteen at the time, and still a freshman at the university. It wouldn’t be the last time I got exposed to such a tragic ending for the gay characters of a movie or show.
If they weren’t killing themselves, then someone else was doing it for them. Usually, they were stigmatized by their society as though they were a plague. Being gay was treated like a disease, a pestilence, in many of the movies I watched in my youth.
One that easily comes to mind is But I’m a Cheerleader — a movie about gay teenagers shipped off by their parents to a camp where they could be cured of their homosexuality.
Literature and film are incredibly powerful in shaping our perspective. And at such a young age, while still grappling with my sexuality, I wondered if there was something wrong with me — something perverse about being gay.
Why else was there such profound hatred of gay people everywhere, especially in a space that was supposed to be an escape from reality?
My mind was a constant battlefield as I endlessly wrestled with internalized homophobia. I didn’t hate gay people. I just hated myself for being one.
But I did find solace in stories. Powerful stories in film and literature broadened my worldview, showing me that a character’s end didn’t have to be tragic just because of their sexuality.
Like everyone else, they could love deeply and truly, set and accomplish goals, thrive in their societies, and be appreciated by their loved ones. Yes, they were gay. But they were people first. And there was nothing wrong with being different. Slowly, I began to understand that maybe, just maybe, there was nothing wrong with me too.
I wanted to write stories like that. Stories that humanized gay people, exploring their hopes and dreams, fears and pain, and everything in between.
Unfortunately, that terrified me.
Sure, I was getting more comfortable in my skin. But that didn’t mean I suddenly dared to write positive stories about gay people in a deeply homophobic society. I feared that people would think me depraved if they read my books. So I heavily censored myself, never daring to allude to any form of same-sex relationship.
Paralyzed by the dread of exploring my creative prowess, I felt like a prisoner of my own making. Those were easily the worst years of my creative journey. And I longed to escape from that nightmare.
If only I had a tiny bit of courage — I was an utter coward.
It wasn’t until my early twenties when I discovered gay-positive media, that the bars of the prison I had trapped myself in began to weaken. I fell in love with two paranormal shows; Wynona Earp and Shadowhunters.
In Wynona Earp, two of the main characters — Waverly and Nicole — are a (lesbian) couple with an amazing relationship that most people can only dream of. In Shadowhunters, the love story between Alec, a shadowhunter, and Magnus, a warlock, is central to the plot.
So touching was Alec and Magnus’s story that my cousin started rooting for them. You see, homophobia was rife in Ghana, and like most Ghanaians, my cousin believed that homosexuality was a sin. She’d spoken quite distastefully of gay people one too many times.
So when she told me she wanted to watch Shadowhunters, I almost refused to it upload for her. But I eventually agreed, hoping that she wouldn’t come back to complain to me about the romance between two men.
Well, she did come to complain. However, it was for an entirely different reason, to my utter shock.
She kept ranting about how disappointed she was in Alec for not recognizing his lover, Magnus, simply because the main villain of the story, Valentine, had swapped bodies with Magnus.
She thought they were in love. Shouldn’t Alec have looked into Magnus’s eyes and seen that he was Magnus, and not Valentine? How could Alec not have known? What the hell was wrong with him?
The whole time, I just gaped at my cousin, who looked upset by the whole thing. I had felt the same way when I watched that scene, so I understood her completely. However, what I couldn’t for the life of me wrap my head around was why my cousin cared so much about the heartbreak of two male lovers.
No seriously. What the fuck was happening?
Why is a freaking homophobe so fucking invested in the love story of gay people?
It was all I ever thought about for days. Why did my cousin want these two men together? More importantly, what was it about Alec and Magnus that won over my cousin’s empathy?
And then it hit me. It was the way their stories were told.
Stories are powerful. They shape our worldview, give us new perspectives, and make us feel like there’s something much bigger than ourselves. In Magnus and Alec’s case, their love story humanized them. Yes, they were gay. But like everyone else, they also had hopes, dreams, fears, pain, and everything that made us human.
Stories shape the world. And the most powerful people — good or evil — are great storytellers. They instigate wars and inspire peace. They elevate a group to the peak of the social class while subjugating others to the bottom.
Religion. Politics. Culture. Science. Everything is story, propagated by savvy storytellers.
Coming to terms with this realization was arguably the most important stage of my creative life. In the beginning, I wrote because it was fun. But as I evolved, I learned that writing stories for fun was just the surface.
At its core was something more profound — the power to stir all kinds of emotions in people, broaden their perspective, and appeal to their empathy.
This was the new philosophy I cultivated about writing fiction. I didn’t just want to write for the sheer love of it. I wanted to write stories that made people feel… everything.
So I began learning all about how to do that.
In September 2021, after failing to finish several dozens of books, I started yet another novel. The protagonist, Narvari Shar, is a badass demon hunter, who falls in love with one of the main characters, Pheera Zoleris.
Ironically, in December of the same year, while rewriting Awakening, some members of parliament in my country proposed a bill ridiculously dubbed the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021.
Informally, it was called the anti-gay bill.
Ghana already has a law that criminalizes the existence of gay people. However, this so-called anti-gay bill would take things a step further by prosecuting everyone else who supports the gay community. Writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists, and every other creative, whose art promotes homosexuality or advocates gay rights would face prison time.
Hearing about the bill heavily debated in the media, and how almost every Ghanaian supported it, terrified me so much that I almost gave up on writing the book.
Hell, I went through days of contemplating whether to give up writing in general. But later, I said fuck it. I would keep writing. Sure, maybe I might not publish anything, since all my stories did in fact ‘promote homosexuality’. But I’m never giving up on writing ever.
And that’s exactly what I did. For the first time in my life, I finished writing a novel— Awakening — and went on to publish it.
Between 2022 and 2023, I wrote three more fantasy novels. I noticed something very interesting while writing my fourth. It turned out that while gay people existed in my fantasy stories, there was no such thing as homophobia. In the worlds of my stories, being gay was as normal as being tall or having black hair.
With the extreme hatred of gay people I saw all over the world, my unconscious mind somehow created worlds where that kind of contempt was nonexistent. A utopia, if you will.
Thinking about this consciously, I realized that I don’t want to make homophobia a core conflict in any of my fantasy novels.
My fantasy stories are full of magic, demons, witches, mages, dragons, dark lords, and an infinite world of wonder and splendor. I could explore a thousand-and-one themes like discrimination among the magic and non-magic classes, wealth disparity, sexism, ableism, ageism, tyranny, obsession, and so much more.
But homophobia? Absolutely not.
It never even registers in my mind. Well, maybe in my stories set in the real world, but certainly not fantasy.
In my newest paranormal novel, Her Witch, Her Demon, for example, the theme of the story is forbidden love. However, love between the protagonists is forbidden not because they are women, but because one is a witch and the other a demon.
Meredith’s parents don’t want Meredith to be with Nyx because Nyx is a demon. It has nothing to do with Nyx being a woman.
Funny enough, the day I published Her Witch, Her Demon in February 2024 was the day the anti-gay bill was passed unanimously in parliament. This bill has the potential to criminalize everyone, whether gay or straight, for doing anything that’s considered a promotion of homosexuality. Yes, even if it means watching some random show or movie with gay characters.
Besides, gay foreigners and allies of the LGBT community who travel to Ghana could be punished because of this bill. Do with this information as you please.
It’s pretty grim, to be honest. But it’s still funny as fuck because most of the supporters of this bill due to ignorance don’t know that they may become victims of the same law.
I almost quit writing Awakening in 2021 because of the proposal of the anti-gay bill. Fast-forward to 2024, I published Her Witch, Her Demon when the bill was passed. Well, the president hasn’t signed it yet to make it a law. But who knows? Most Ghanaians are violently homophobic so it’s only a matter of time until that happens.
It’s at this critical period in history that stories are important. In times of oppression and dehumanization, we need storytellers to remind us that we deserve to be treated with dignity and humanity like everyone else.
This is why I write.
While I want to entertain my readers, I also want to inspire them and ignite the flames of hope within their hearts.
I want them to cry, laugh, feel fear, envy, disgust, rage, euphoria, and every last emotion saddled by humanity. I want my characters to empower people to be themselves, pursue their goals with all their might, and live freely without fear.
I write today with the young version of myself in mind — the young me who was traumatized by the tragic stories of gay people in films and literature. I write nuanced characters, some of whom happen to be gay, to show young gay people they are worthy of love and deserve to take up space on this planet without apology.
I want them to know that being gay is not tragic. It’s nothing abnormal or weird or even special. It’s just natural. Human.
And of course, while I’m not one to tell people what to believe, I hope my stories show people a world beyond what they already know.
I want them to see that maybe, just maybe, the content of a person’s character, not their sexuality, is what defines them.
Want to read my newest paranormal romance? Do it here. It will go a long way to support my work. Thank you for reading.