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Bad
reviews—the author’s bane.
They’re
never fun, but they can be useful. I examined my treatment of male secondary
characters more carefully after reading an insightful critique from a
thoughtful reviewer. They can sometimes be hilarious—my favorite negative
review was short and not-sweet: “Cursing and homosexuality. One star.” And they
are sometimes baffling, like the one reviewer blisteringly mad that he picked
up The Dangerous Edge of Things only
to discover that my protagonist was—shocker! —a woman! And a feminist! Who
could have suspected such from a book with a pistol on the cover!
But
there’s one comment I don’t find useful or hilarious, and that’s criticizing a
female character for being “unlikable.” Such a dismissive comment smacks of the
same sexism that plagues professional women in the real world, especially women
in leadership positions. The identical qualities that earn men praise—being
assertive, decisive, competitive, driven—are considered flaws when women
display them. Women are supposed to be the “tend and befriend” gender, not the
“kick ass and take names” gender. And when a woman dares break the
stereotypical mold, she gets dinged as stern, demanding, humorless…
Unlikable.
My
protagonist Tai gets tarred with this brush regularly. I understand why—assertive
to the point of aggression, Tai is smart, capable, determined, and confident.
She doesn’t worry about her waistline or how her butt looks in certain blue
jeans. Direct and often confrontational, she looks people right in the eye and
only smiles when she feels like it. She’s sometimes loud, always opinionated,
and occasionally reckless, but she’s also compassionate, good humored, and not
afraid to cry. Unlike her partner Trey, her moral compass doesn’t have a true
north, but she unswervingly follows in whatever direction it points her. She
can be challenging, true enough, but if I ever got in trouble, I’d be grateful
to have her by my side, especially in a bar fight.
Well-behaved
women rarely make history. I’d also argue they rarely solve crimes.
I’m
grateful that I have readers (and editors and a publisher) who appreciate Tai.
I try to write her exactly as she wants to be written, which can be difficult
at times. I have to watch her make mistakes, hurt people, get in someone’s face
when silence would be a better tactic. Her way is not my way, which is a good
thing—if I were a crime fiction protagonist, my story would be over in the
first chapter when I stumbled on a corpse and immediately called the cops and
fled for home. The End.
The
world has many women like Tai, women who laugh and love and spare not one brain
cell on whether or not they’re likable. They do not bend to sexist ideas of how
they should act or who they should be. They are fierce and fine and free, and
they don’t give a hot damn about the opinions of tiny-minded misogynists.
So
here’s to unlikable women—may we know them, may we be them . . . may we read them.
* * *
PS: If you'd like to meet Tai and decide for yourself, the e-book version of the first in her series, The Dangerous Edge of Things, is being offered FREE for a limited time. Find it HERE!
