Author JF Garrard Launches Kickstarter Campaign for New Book

Author JF Garrard's International House of Vampires: Book 1 - The Undead Sorceress, has been rejected by friends and publishers over the last two years, so she created a Kickstarter campaign (October 26-November 26, 2013) to prove that the market is ready for multicultural fantasy books.

Characters in this book consist of vampires, sorceresses, warlocks and robots with different ethnicities and gender. After 48 hours, her campaign has raised 17% of its goal and she has gained 90 Twitter followers @JFGarrard.

In general, there is lack of diversity in the fantasy genre in regards to race and gender. JF Garrard states, "We live in an age in which interracial marriage is no longer a crime and everyone can sit on the same bus; the stories we tell should also reflect this."

The tagline of the book series indicates its heavy Eastern philosophy influence: "East Meets West, vampires suck chi, magic follows the Tao." The book cover features a main Asian character, which is only seen in 1.4% of covers in published books today (results from fellow author Kate Hart's cover survey).

Her recent tweets are a dialogue of quotes from family, friends and strangers:

Convention attendee - "Vampires that don't drink blood? Really?"
First Editor - "Wow, this is the first book I've read with so many LGBT people!"
Aunt - "You are not a celebrity, why waste your time writing?"
Friend - "OK, I'll donate. But I won't read your book."
Another friend - "Multiculturalism and diversity means nothing to me."

Her mother assured her not to worry, "It's ok if you have no friends to back your book! I'll commit to your entire goal!" JF hopes that she will not have to use this backup financial resource.

About: JF Garrard is an author of dark multicultural fantasy and non-fiction books on self-publishing and infertility. She will be releasing four books in 2014 and travelling to different conventions and libraries to give talks on the costs of self-publishing and multiculturalism in literature. She is a germaphobe with a Nuclear Medicine background and holds a MBA in Strategy and Marketing. Her Twitter account is @JFGarrard and she can be found on Facebook. Excerpts of her books are available on jfgarrard.com.