In the world of Las Anclas – Los Angeles in the far future – some people have mutant powers, squirrels can teleport sandwiches out of people’s hands, and deadly crystal trees take their bright colours from the clothes of the people they killed.

This is the setting for our new book, Stranger.

It’s a world full of danger and beauty, where there’s sometimes bias against the mutated “changed” folk, but other types of prejudice have completely died out. Nobody cares what race you are, what your gender is, or what your religion is, any more than they care if you’re a boy who prefers to date boys, or a girl who falls in love with other girls.

One of the main characters is Yuki Nakamura. He was once the crown prince of a floating city, but that was years before the story begins. The sole survivor of his family, his promised kingdom forever gone, he’s now just another teenager in the desert town of Las Anclas. Yuki rides on patrols to protect the town, takes care of his pet mutant rat, and dreams of the day when he can leave his tiny world behind and become an explorer. But how can Yuki leave Las Anclas, if it also means leaving the boy he loves?

Yes. Yuki is gay. In Stranger, the only person that matters to is Paco, his boyfriend.

But in our world, that matters to a lot of people.

It matters to the gay readers who might have never before read about someone like them in a book that isn’t about coming out or facing homophobia, but about fighting giant rattlesnakes and exploring strange landscapes. In our book, gay readers will see characters like them depicted as heroes. Who happen to be gay.

It matters to the straight readers who might have never met anyone who’s openly gay, and so may read this book and realise that there’s nothing wrong or weird about it. Some boys like boys, and some boys like girls, and some like boys and girls. It doesn’t hurt anyone else.

To sell a book to publishers, you need an agent to represent it. When we tried to find an agent for Stranger, we ran into problems. An agent finally offered to represent us… on the condition that we either make Yuki straight, or take away his point of view and all mentions of his sexual orientation. We refused. To make Yuki straight would have been to destroy our reason for writing the book in the first place.

We knew gay teenagers who said, “Every book about being gay is about coming out or hate crimes. I want to read about gay superheroes and gay ninjas!” We knew black teenagers who said, “Whenever I see a book with a black girl on the cover, it turns out to be about teen pregnancy or being pressured to join a gang. I don’t relate to that. I like fantasy and adventure stories, but why are the heroes always white?”

The serious, realistic books about social problems and prejudices are important and necessary. But they shouldn’t be the only reading options that depict main characters who are of colour, gay, lesbian, or disabled. We wrote Stranger so that the teenagers who so often get left out of the fun books could have a book where they’re the heroes.

It isn’t that agents and editors are all prejudiced, but they seemed to believe that the world won’t buy books unless the main characters are white and straight. The outcry about a “straightwash” afterwards prompted fantasy writer Malinda Lo to analyse all YA novels published in the US. She found that fewer than 1% of them have any LGBTQ characters at all, even minor supporting characters. A slightly larger number have heroes (as opposed to sidekicks and supporting characters) who are anything other than white, straight, and able-bodied.

Three years later, some things have changed, and some have not. We found a publisher for Stranger. Yuki is still gay, and so is his boyfriend Paco. Brisa, whose mutant power is to make rocks explode, is still a lesbian, and so is her shy girlfriend Becky.

We hope that Stranger will become just one of many more books that are both inclusive and fun. All of you should have a chance to read about heroes like you.

For more reading suggestions check out our list of the best LGBT books for children, teenagers and YAs and the authors featured in our Diversity week.

Do you want to join in the latest YA discussions? Join the Children’s Books site and or speak to us on Facebook and Twitter, @GdnChildrensBks.