Let Fiction Be Fiction

I'm probably not the first new writer to obsessively read their Goodreads reviews. I know that it's not good for me, but, well, we've all done plenty these past few years that isn't good for us. My publisher's sales force preferred to use initials on the hardcover. Many reviewers wrote that they didn't realize RJ Hoffmann was male until after they finished the book and read the bio or noticed the picture on the jacket. That pleased me. Some of the most impactful characters in the book are women, and the assumption that I was also a woman suggested that I had succeeded, at some level, in writing those characters well. My favorite reviews remain those that refer to me with female pronouns. I was troubled, though, by the reviewers who found it problematic that a man wrote the book.