Pax asked Nicky James:

Why is it the first time you cast a black male MC in your books and on a cover, the story is focused on the MC being in prison? This is what we call representational racism. Despite any intent you had, you perpetuated racist ideas to your readers and fans through your imagery and words, of which I was one until this book.

Nicky James I'm sorry you feel that way, although I'm not sure if you want an actually answer or are simply expressing your disappointment, I do want to explain my decision regardless. I've had a handful of people ask me this, African American people included, for curiosity sake, and it's a fair question.
I also know those people have gone on to read this book and have touch back with me saying they were more than happy with how I deal with this and had no issue after the fact. But that in itself is individual.

I hope I don't get too long winded answering but I do want to explain my reasoning and the root of my decision.
Firstly, I'm an author that focuses heavily on portraying realism in my books. I do tons of research and write heavy topics not everyone chooses to read.
When decided to write a death row/prison book I drown myself in research on prisons in the US specifically one that held death row inmates. Texas being the worst and my first choice (because I like the heavy angst and knew it would be the biggest challenge) So when learning statistics, it showed Caucasians were less than 30% of DR population. So I questioned what I wanted to show in my story and how.
I knew picking a MC who was African American was perhaps "feeding a stereotype" and I feared sending the wrong message. But the plot and what I wanted to build in my story was showing the injustice of how people are treated because of the color of their skin or their social status.
Bishop, my main character, was wrongfully accused of a crime. He was given unfair treatment with the justice system, the police, and society as a whole. Had he been Caucasian, I think his story would have been different.
We live in an unjust world and there will always be hatred, and I personally can't stand it.
I wanted to write a story where, yes, the MC was unjustly punished but where his soul is shown to be pure and the heart of the man is gentle and kind and he gets a chance to rise up and fight back against that injustice and live the life he deserved.

I have written characters of other races in my books and you're right, they didn't appear on my covers. I create my own covers and chose them carefully with the emotion of the book in mind and weaving in symbology that might not been seen by other. But to not give Bishop the spotlight on this particular series would have been more of an injustice to his story in my opinion.

So I know it dances a line, and my intention was never to be offensive. Perhaps on the surface that is how it appears, but when you get to the root of the story, what I wanted to show was the opposite. I did discuss this with a few friends ahead of time and have a couple of sensitivity readers who I also touched base with on these choices ahead of time too.

I hope this answers your question somewhat and gives you a clearer picture of my intent.

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