Sorry for the poor quality, I was in a dark room and only had a cell phone camera.

One of my favorite characters to think about in the Paper Girl story is Rasa. She's brash, highly technical, often snide, and very, very sure of herself. She's also of Punjabi decent.

One of the first challenges Pazi posed to me when working on the story was the race of Rasa and her twin brother Rama. I inherited the names from a friend's project, and -- like most caucazoid authors -- completely failed to consider race at all. I had felt obligated to avoid the issue entirely rather than step on people's toes. Pazi convinced me otherwise. I expect to make many, many stupid mistakes while writing Rasa. Hopefully she'll kick me in the ass when necessary.

You might have also wondered why I said Punjabi and not "Indian American". That's the funny thing about Paper Girl -- while it's set in northern Minnesota, it's not set in the United States...