Why I Like Women Protagonists
My first book, The Sequence, is done. Well, I’m done with it. The book is at my editor whom I am sure will find one of two mistakes in it…
The protagonist in this book is a woman named Shawna Davidson. She is a recent widow, having lost her husband to a plane crash. The insurance company won’t pay out because they think the death was a suicide. The loss of her husband’s income and a lack of savings force her to quit graduate school (she was going to Duke to become a genetic scientist). Quitting school means she has abandoned her dream of using her knowledge to develop a life saving drug that saves thousands of lives. To make ends meet, she gets a job working for a gene sequencing company that is under contract with the government to sequence the DNA of every US citizen. She is not miserable, per se, but she is not living up to her potential either (as measured by her standards). I think a lot of us can identify with Shawna.
I have started my next book and the hero in that is a woman as well. This got me to thinking about why I have chosen women to play such important roles in my first two novels. Here are my answers…
1- I like women. Soft and sensual on the one hand and tough as nails on the other. I like the extremes.
2- I don’t know women very well. Having made the trip around the sun 45 times and being married to one for over 18 years and you would think I would know something about women. Nope. But writing about them and giving them interesting roles let’s me see the world through their eyes. Perhaps when I am 90 I will understand them.
3- Women are complex and interesting. Men, on the other hand, are dipshits. Feed a man and give him an opportunity to release his seed from time to time and life is pretty damn good. Sit him on a LayZBoy in front of a sports channel displayed on a 60″ LCD and he’ll drool all over himself. If he could lick his testicles like the family dog, he would never leave the house.
4- I like feisty women. They scare the hell out of me but I like them. I remember a girl from high school. Her name was/is Michelle. I teased her one day about dating a younger guy (I was a dork and dating no-one at the time so I had no room to run my mouth but facts like this rarely stop me). She smacked the shit out of me for teasing her. It was at that point I realized that women are amazing. Michelle was/is for sure. (and no, I did not develop a fetish where I like women to beat up on me…at least one that I am willing to admit).
So there you have it. Four simple reasons why I like making the protagonist in my stories women. Not saying it will always be that way, but as you can tell, I have a lot of issues to explore. At least a dozen books worth.
