Within reason, of course: I'm not doing anything with lolis.

[seriousfic]

So here’s my plan. After I get published and have a few novels under my belt, I come up with a bare-bones premise and outline for a story. I write some character descriptions, very broad stuff, nothing specific about race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality. Like, uh—‘Love Interest A: The child of Villain B, a canny person with an interest in AI programming and an extremely literal sense of humor. Drawn to Sidekick C.’

Then I put what I’ve got online and let my fans vote on who the characters will be. So if you want the hero to be a gay Muslim paraplegic, you just vote for that. And when all the votes are tallied, I write the novel, having left the specifics entirely to the internet. If the Hero and the Love Interest are both male, it’s a gay love story. If the internet has voted that every character is a woman, then it has an all-female cast.

Then, whenever anyone asks why I don’t have, I don’t know, an Eskimo in my stories, I’ll just say “You should’ve voted for an Eskimo.”

Also, votes cost one dollar a piece.