I sat on this for a bit b/c I wasn't sure how to frame it, but, I received a message from a reader asking "can we" make a certain character in LB1 "a nice, non-bigot, non-racist individual" in LB2. They "would really love that."

This request is haunting me for a few reasons.

The tone of this message was overwhelmingly positive. This reader praised the book and said they are excited about the sequel. The framework was "nice." The contrast of this bright, polite tone with the unsettling nature of their request is jarring.

I try to assume that I don't know someone's situation or home training. There's a chance this person isn't aware that this message is inappropriate. Also a chance they do and don't mind. I don't know their intentions but intentions don't determine impact. So, the impacts here...

This msg suggests to me that I, as the creator, didn't make my character choices intentionally, with "good reason." That the integrity of that choice is up to an individual's comfort with racism. That racism is a tap someone can turn on and off. That *I* can turn on and off.

I'm not interested in disparaging an individual reader, and this message was private so pls don't go looking. Not my point.

They explained why this character being racist made them uncomfortable -- it's because they share one of their names. And they didn't want to see that.

It makes *me* uncomfortable to talk about a reader's experience, because we all bring ourselves to the table when we read a book. It's not my role as the author to police or critique anyone's internal experience of my art -- that aspect is necessarily out of the artist's hands.

But this internal experience became a direct request to the author for a major change in their series. A direct request to erase the very real representation of a racist young white man, and thus erase the experiences of real BIPOC teens & adults who encounter him in their lives.

It's wildly offensive to me that the desire to avoid race/racism is so strong that someone could ask a Black woman to ignore it in her own work and, in effect, her own life, to increase their entertainment and emotional experience of her work.

This ignores the work of the work.

I'd be remiss if I didn't add that this situation right here and now in this country? Was brought to you by centuries of individuals erasing and ignoring racism, rewriting history so as to make themselves more comfortable and look better. And all of that feeds white supremacy.

I don't have a great conclusion here, but wanted to share. Not to shame this person (that's not my work) but to reiterate my ethos as an artist, which includes doing my best to dismantle racist systems, decolonize fantasy, and challenge assumptions about who has power and why.