An open apology to the Trans community:

I have a heavy heart this morning. It has been aching for two days since I realized that I made a grievous error when publishing my last book. There is no way to take back the hurt that such an ignorant move caused, but I can come clean and own it and apologize for it.

I was at Outlantacon this weekend in Atlanta and while enjoying the convention with friends that are like family to me, I was also in the process of finishing up final edits and publishing my book “Kaden” Master’s Boys (Book Three). For those of you who are fans of the serial, you know that Zack Teak, the owner of DOMZ.com, the fictional online sex club, has a problem hiring receptionists. All of them seem to come with flaws that cannot be overlooked.

In “Kaden” my receptionist is Vesper, a beautiful, transexual who is the size of a linebacker and dresses in drag when she comes to work. My friend Jeff Adkins and I were sitting in our hotel room in Atlanta and I was telling him how excited I am to start book four. I was telling Jeff that I want to keep this character because I just love her. I’m not going to let Zack fire her, the way he’s fired all the others, maybe just move her into a different capacity and keep the whole revolving door receptionist thing going. As I was talking about Vesper, I began to read a passage from “Kaden” with her character’s description. As some point, I looked up and noticed Jeff’s eyes as round as saucers and I began to sweat.

He began to shake his head. “No!” he said. I didn’t realize what was going on until he went on to tell me what I’d done. In the book, I referred to Vesper as he/him rather than her/she, when I was describing her clothing etc. What I hadn’t realized when writing the book, was that when a man is identifying as a woman, as Vesper clearly was, in her dress, I was to call Vesper her/she. Well, there were several references to her as “he” and the minute I realized it, I burst into tears.

The truth was, this is the first time that I have written a transvestite or transsexual character but I should have known better. I began to go through the manuscript and pick out all the mistakes. The book had already gone live on ARe, Smashwords and Barnes and Noble and would be live on Amazon at any moment. I checked sales, and found that in the 12 hours or so, since the book had been live, it had sold 18 copies and it was still selling. I was horrified.

Jeff tried to comfort me but I couldn’t reconcile what an ignorant idiot I had been and all I could think of was the fact that someone was going to take this as an insult, and even more grievous, a slur and that destroyed me. Within five minutes, I had made the decision to pull the book down from sale and make all the corrections before republishing it. Anyone who is familiar with Amazon’s policies, can attest to the fact that, no changes can be made, and the book cannot be pulled until it goes live, so I was able to pull it down from the other three vendors and then sit, nail biting for hours while I waited to pull it from Amazon. Finally, that happened, and I corrected the errors that I could find and put it back up for sale.

As soon as I pulled it down, I went onto social media and admitted that there had been a glaring editing error in “Kaden” so the book had been temporarily removed from sale. I promised those interested, that the book would be back up as soon as I fixed it and then I sat back and debated how to handle such a bone headed move, publicly. I finally decided that coming clean was the best thing to do.

The truth is, in the book, the pronoun him, or he, when referring to Vesper is only used in third person. Vesper is never directly addressed as he or him, only talked about or thought about by the other characters in the book. Nevertheless, it was a horrid error. The fact is that I honestly didn’t realize that my use of the pronoun could be so damaging but it made total sense to me in hindsight. Of course, if someone is identifying as a woman, she is a woman, you would never refer to her as he or him. For the next nine hours, I sat in my hotel room waiting for changes to be made that were completely out of my hands. I believe that Amazon finally changed out the books and that the corrected book is up at all the other vendors as well.

Those of you who read my work can see the love I have for GBLTQ community. I try to make sure that it comes through with each manuscript that I write. I’ve always tried to be sensitive to everyone but in this case, I know that I blew it big time. If I were out shopping and someone referred to me as mister, sir or he or him, I’d probably deck them.

To all of you that I may have hurt or offended, I beg your forgiveness. I cannot undo what has been done, but I can own it, as I have said, and apologize for my grievous mistake. Thank you for listening.