Riley is a completely different character for me. I love her so much, but want to know a secret…? Shh… don’t tell anyone, but in order to find out, you’re gonna have to keep reading…

Okay, y’all. This is huge. HUGE. Riley… I wanted to make her transgender. I’ve had several conversations with transgender people. I’ve done my research, but I still got really scared. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone if I got something wrong. I would’ve been devastated, even though I had sensitivity readers.

So, I stepped back and asked myself what could I bring awareness to that doesn’t have a lot of it. And the answer was standing right in front of me. I have an aunt who is intersex. Well, adopted. She lived above my grandmother for most of my life. I remember when she was a male. She was born intersex. I sat down and had a long conversation with her about her experience. How she was born. Everything.

Her parents made the choice. They made her male. Her case was a bit different. She was born with both functional parts on the outside of her body. On the inside, it was another story. She had functional female parts, but her parents wanted a male. So things were removed throughout her childhood. She went through surgeries. By the time she was an adult, she was all male with very little to absolutely no recollection of what she went through in her very young years.

So, while I was writing Riley, I sat down with her, my adopted aunt, and really hammered out details. I wanted her to be close to her, but not so close that I was basically writing about her, though she wouldn’t have minded. I tried to get down the feelings, the details. At the end, I wanted to get down Jacob’s delusions and bring them to the forefront so I could show just how damaging it was for Riley.

I also wanted to show good parenting, in that her mother, at least until later on, really wanted her to make the decision on her gender. What I didn’t mention in the book but did imply is that it was never the mother making these decisions. It was her father. Her father was allowing the decisions to be made until he was gone. And because Riley was later on in her teens and could make decisions for herself about her body, her mother allowed it, even though she was always on Jacob’s side, Riley’s stepfather, about the gender Riley should be, which was both genders with both parts so he could fetch more money for her.

In the end, I think justice was truly served and very much deserved. How do you all feel about Riley? Did I do her justice and give her the justice she deserved in the end?