For clarity preceding this post, I am a white author.

Not Over Yet, the second Hot Under Her Collar book releases next Tuesday. It’s about a young female Chinese American priest who is a part of my “Sex in the City goes to seminary” crowd and her studly surfer/CEO ex.

I first conceived of writing the Hot Under Her Collar series several years ago and set out to brainstorm about real issues in the church that might work as conflicts in romance novels.

How well-meaning churches invite and embrace racial diversity (or don’t) is one such lively issue, and as soon as I considered it, a whole story and its characters began to emerge, largely inspired by things I had learned from colleagues of color about their struggle to get ordained or hired or simply be respected in our predominantly Caucasian denomination.

In particular, I have one dear friend and colleague who taught me worlds about my advantages (white privilege) by sharing with me her contrasting experiences as our careers have moved in parallel. Here I am resisting the urge to rave about her for a paragraph or so because she is one those people you just feel unbelievably fortunate to count a friend. So, all those years ago, I asked her if it would be okay for me to draw on some of things I’d learned from her to write a story for this series. She said yes.

A part of me wondered if I should even try, since it wasn’t my story. But by then the idea behind Not Over Yet wouldn’t let go, and I wanted to explore the important issues of race in clergy life, just as I explored my church’s confused messages about sexuality in Not A Mistake.   

I’ve worked on this book for about three years, and it was hard for about a dozen reasons. I asked for a lot of help from writing friends and clergy colleagues, especially my Asian American friends in both categories. Sometimes what they told me was difficult to hear or forced me to examine my own assumptions; sometimes it required I change something major about the book. Needless to say, I learned a lot.

Among those many lessons, I found myself weighing conflicting feedback from my sensitivity readers–they came from different backgrounds, were different ages, had different relationships with their parents and the church. I could do my very best and try to understand and incorporate many perspectives, and still, I came to realize, something in the story was likely to rub someone the wrong way.

In the face of that realization, for a while I considered dropping my manuscript into the virtual trash bin. I was afraid that no matter how much I intended to critique my church’s brand of racism and white privilege, I might unconsciously reinforce racist stereotypes. But like my character Lily, I’ve never learned anything by retreating out of fear, so I decided to push on knowing I will continue to learn things from people’s reactions, positive and negative, to this book.

Since I started writing Not Over Yet, there has been a wonderful outcry for diverse books written by diverse authors. I’m not sure I would have begun this project in this moment, because I want to be an ally for diverse writers writing their #ownstories. But the book was already written and Lily’s character is my best attempt at understanding an important story that is not my own story.

At the core, I think that’s what ALL fiction writing is about: trying to understand a character across difference. I’m not any of the characters I’ve written. When fleshing them out, I have to trust there is something universal about human emotions. I have to draw on empathy and the golden rule to IMAGINE another’s lives and motivations.  

Even deeper down, I believe this is true for all human relationships. We are all different, and we can’t read each other’s minds. The only way we achieve intimacy and understanding is by empathy and imagination. (I learned all this from a Roman Catholic theologian named David Tracy who calls it the analogical imagination). Perhaps racism is, among other things, a failure of this imagination, resulting in a lack of empathy.  

Because racism distorts our relationships and impairs our empathy, I had to work harder and take more care to imagine Lily. I had to ask friends to help me stretch my imagination. As I write this, I am overwhelmed with gratitude they trusted me enough to tell me hard truths. I’m sure I got some things wrong, and I’m still going to hit “publish.” But that doesn’t make me brave–it just means I’m doing my job as a writer and a human being.

Now, all these years after I first began this book, in the current conversation about race in publishing, it feels important to me to say I deeply believe we need diverse books by diverse writers, and I am not one of them. Not Over Yet in no way meets that need.

I wrote it from a place of empathy, with an open heart and a desire to share lessons I’ve learned. It won’t be perfect, it might even offend. But I intend to keep listening and learning from people who are different from me and the response to Not Over Yet will be part of that process.

By the way, if you want to follow the conversation about race in publishing and diverse books, check out the #ownstories hashtag. I also recommend following @AlyssaCole on Twitter.  Not only is she a fabulous writer, but she is very wise and articulate about these issues. Her tweets resonate as true to me, and at the same time the challenge me and do just what I described above–help me stretch and deepen my imagination and empathy.