When the Violin Sings

Author's Note

Dear Reader,

Thank you for clicking on this story. I have been working on this novel for many months now, and I am excited to be back writing wlw fiction after the success of my last novel, Autumn Leaves and Teenage Dreams.

(You can read Autumn Leaves and Teenage Dreams here: https://www.wattpad.com/story/210039549-autumn-leaves-and-teenage-dreams)

Before jumping into the story, however, I do want to make clear a few disclaimers and notes:

This originally started out as a fun, cutesy idea with the title "Lesbian Murder Mystery" as a placeholder for the longest time, but as I kept on brainstorming and thinking about these characters, I also started thinking of the criminal justice system and racial inequalities, and it transformed into something a little bit more real and a little more dark.

The Black Lives Matter movement of this summer was a time for me of personal reflection in how I have reinforced racial stereotypes/formed biases/failed to acknowledge my privilege/and the list details on. Though I am a queer woman, I am also white, and I want this fact to be made clear: Being a member of the LBGTQ+ community does not make me or anyone else "not racist." While I am a minority in terms of my sexuality, I am privileged in nearly every other aspect of my life, from being white to cis-gender, able-bodied, and so forth. While examining my racial biases, I also took the time to reflect on my writing.

Up until now, I have written stories that are either solely made up of white characters or, if my novels do include characters of color, they are often there to offer the illusion of diversity. I have done a lot of research in the past months of what it means to be a white author and what it means to include POC characters in your work. While white authors writing POC characters is a contentious debate, I do not want to exclude POC characters entirely from my work, as I think that fails to recognize the diversity of the society we live in, but I do recognize how few POC authors are published, and how few novels there are circulating around with POC characters that have actually been written by a POC author.

While I include POC characters in this work, I have felt it is best not to write from their own personal point-of-views, as no matter how much research I can do and no matter how many personal stories I can listen to, I will never fully understand what it means to be a racial minority. Instead, I have done my best in this novel to write about racism from a white perspective. What I write will not be perfect. No matter how much research and self-reflection I do, I will still make mistakes, and I recognize this, but at the same time, I will always be trying to find ways to improve.

Because I am aware of the lack of recognition that POC authors get, (particular queer POC authors), at the end of each chapter, I will be providing links and summaries to QTPOC stories that you can check out, as these stories are deserving of recognition as well. The links will be at the END of the chapter right above the comments section. (There will be a button that says "Buy on Amazon"). Unfortunately the ability to view links is not available on mobile, but you can easily Google the book to find a way to purchase it :)

Thank you to all who have patiently been waiting months for the premiere of this novel. Updates will be weekly on Fridays. I hope you will look forward to reading it, and I hope you'll check out some of the book recommendations I make in the chapter each week.

Keep on reading,

~Maeve