D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

fantasy

War is Coming

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I am going to war.

I have been diagnosed with a left kidney stone that will kill me. Literally. Another infection caused by this stone blocking my left ureter could be the infection that turns into sepsis and kills me. So the stone must go, and my urologist believes the only way to get rid of it is to remove the kidney. But the surgery could kill me. So I’m going to war.

I write fantasy. I read fantasy. Ah, hell, I watch Game of Thrones religiously. I view my world through a veil covered with medieval figures loving and warring, and as I contemplate what I’m facing, I realize it’s a war, and I will either fight to the death or fight to survive.

I must train for this war. Hence, I must exercise my obese body. I must eat well in preparation for this war, and so I must cut certain foods from my diet. And as I step onto the battlefield (the OR), I will gird my loins to fight the good fight.

I cannot know the outcome. Everything in life is random. I may fall. But if I prepare the best I can, the odds may turn in my favor. I will not return unscathed, and the war will continue as I struggle to regain my life.

But damn it, I’d really like to survive to April 14, 2019 (actually late May 2019 when the series ends) to see the final season of Game of Thrones. So I prepare for war.

One Book or Two?

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I have found myself recently running a back-and-forth in my head surrounding the efficacy of splitting the final book in the Lisen of Solsta series into two separate volumes. I’ve just passed the point where I would break it, and I certainly do not have enough “story” apparent in my remaining notecards.

books-glasses

But here’s the thing. The number of notecards left to be brought to life in the text has little relation to the amount of writing left to be done. My notecard system (previously described) continues on in an abstract configuration until I begin to narrow in on the sequence of events noted in a single card. Then that card, like a living cell, splits into two, into four, into eight—you get the picture.

So, do I have two books in this story? Or, will I end up with but one, slightly longer than the last but not long enough to split up? Stay tuned. Only time will tell.

The Build–Writing a Worthy Ending

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I am not a Led Zeppelin fan. In the 70s and 80s, whenever a radio station would present the top 300 or 500 of the entire history of rock-and-roll on Memorial Day or Labor Day weekend, I’d cringe as they approached #1. It was always, inexorably, inexplicably, inevitably “Stairway to Heaven.” I hate “Stairway to Heaven.” I do, however, have a Led Zeppelin guilty pleasure. “Kashmir.” I crank it up on my car radio when it comes on. I’ve even downloaded it from iTunes and am listening to it right now as loud as my Walkman will allow me.

What, you may ask, intrigues me about this song? The build. The slow build of drums  and bass into brass and other orchestral wonders. And that relentless beat. My body moves with no conscious participation on my part.  And then the lyrical pauses with the taste of Eastern  delights.

As writers, we can learn from “Kashmir.” At the moment, I am in the middle of what could be a powerful ending to my latest novel, but that power, I realized last night, lies in the build. Don’t go too fast. I’m tempted to just rush in and then leave myself with nowhere to go because I’ve already crescendoed to the peak. I know where we’re going, and I want so badly to get there because it’s going to blow the reader’s mind. But I must slow down, allow fate to tickle at the reader’s heart but leave as little trace as possible until the fullness is revealed. This is a delicate balance which must be respected. Nuance is everything. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

73 words

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I’m not the first to write on this topic, and I certainly won’t be the last. But I’m going to be short but sweet.

“Strong female hero”

Seriously?

“Hero,” definition #1a in Merriam-Webster:  A mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability (emphasis mine).

Have you ever once read or heard someone say “strong male hero”?  Or, even, “strong hero”?

Point made. Thank you for your time.

The Tales of Eowyn’s Bard

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eowyn

Eowyn of Rohan opened my eyes to a new kind of hero. It was the summer of 1966 when I first read The Lord of the Rings, and I would be graduating from high school the following year. Eowyn epitomized “hero” for me—confident, courageous, willing to run into the fray, filled with empathy for Merry (another favorite character) and, most importantly, female. The fact that she had the hots for the cutest guy on the block was a bit of a hindrance, and her exclusion from the final face-off after being scuttled off the battlefield in dire need of healing almost made me stop reading. But, in the end, Eowyn rocked, and her determination and tenacity gave me hope that a woman might one day be able to stand at the front of the story as the character propelling it forward.

By the 70s, female heroes had begun to emerge. And I sought them out. But they were almost always one of two types—buxom beauties with their “accomplishments” prominently displayed on the book’s cover or tomboy girls whose elders sought (and usually managed) to reduce to a medieval Stepford prototype once she’d completed her quest. Neither of these was the hero I was looking for.

Eventually I gave in and decided to create a female hero worthy of the title. It took over 30 years to fully realize my quest, but I did in Lisen of Solsta, a young woman who steps on the stage without the usual baggage young female characters too often carry into the fight. (It helps that she lives in a world where sexism and division of labor and duties by gender have never existed, but that’s a story I’ve explored several times previously and will not further explore it now.)

One shero (thank you, Maya Angelou) from the 80s comes to mind. Sarah Connor in the original Terminator. She was the hero of the movie. Her hero’s journey begins with her as a frivolous college student/waitress and ends (for that moment, of course) as a warrior on the run from future terminators like the one she (not Kyle) destroyed.

And in the past few years, I’ve had the joy of discovering several female heroes who bash the stereotypes bloody and stand tall amidst the muck. It seems our day has come. Finally.

So, in the hopes of opening discussion of and promoting books and other media featuring female heroes, I have created a page on Facebook. I look forward to learning about more strong women in fantasy, sci-fi and paranormal settings. I also want to encourage discussion of what makes a healthy and realistic female hero as well as discover who’s slamming stereotypes up against the wall. If you’re interested, feel free to check my new page out. That’s The Tales of Eowyn’s Bard.

We Need a Hero Who Looks Like Us

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It began in 1977. Somebody…God, the Goddess, whoever…said, “Thou shalt,” and I did. Thirty-seven years later, and finally, I can say, “It’s done.”

I wrote a story about a girl with a mythical destiny. Along the way I learned all sorts of stuff—like, there is a male model of myth. Male heroes fight their way out of things, killing a lot of people along the way and making a huge mess which someone has to clean up, and you know who, right? Not that Lisen doesn’t fight; she does. Not that Lisen doesn’t kill; she has. But after every step I went through to get here (write a book, check; write more books, check; rewrite the first book, done; self-publish, start all over again, self-publish again, start all over again, all check; self-publish all three books for real in the end, check) I realized that something had to give.

Back in 2005 when Revenge of the Sith was released, a short documentary appeared on the extras DVD. It was called “The Chosen One.” In it George Lucas explained how Anakin Skywalker was, indeed, the Chosen One of the Jedi prophecy. As he showed us why this worked (something I already understood), he spoke of how Anakin/now Darth Vader lost some of his power with the Force when he was maimed to the point of near-death.

Wait a minute, whoa, that’s not how I see it. Power comes from within, not from the physical body.

Snap.

That’s it. Who came up with these myths—the ones on which we base all our fantasies and life-changing stories? They may come from myths from the times of matriarchy, but they’ve been redressed and retold for the profit of men so many times that they now follow the very-much-physical male model.

Snap.

So I asked myself, “Self, how can I change this? What must I do to take my female protagonist without female baggage from the point of being the ignorant-young-person-with-no-idea-who-he/she-is and turn her into the hero of a myth based on the power-from-within female model?”

Oh, and then there was this other thing. A reviewer of book 2 (Tainted) said, “In leaving her parents and childhood on Earth behind, Lisen has been forced to rise to the occasion and prepare herself to become the adult her empire requires. This transition parallels the mental and physical changes of puberty, and thus might especially appeal to the young adult reader.” – See more at: IndieReader.com.

Well, that was an assignment I hadn’t anticipated. I was the kid who, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, replied, “Peter Pan.” And I was going to have to make growing up look like a good thing? I sat back, considered where Lisen was going to end up at the end of the story. Did it play up the perks of adulthood, you know, the good stuff? What good stuff you ask? Oh, let’s see, responsibility, freedom that isn’t freedom, life choices that wring your heart. Yeah, that sort of thing.

Okay, so Lisen ends up…oh, wait, I can’t give that away. Not now, not ever. You have to read the books. But I looked at the ending, and here’s what I decided. There’s resolution to the turmoil she suffered throughout the books. Life ain’t perfect, but she’s able to look at what she’s been through with calm acceptance. And there are rewards for her hard work and commitment. Which is the way life is when you’re a grownup, if you accept being a grownup.

So, let’s see, given the mission of telling a story, with a female hero in search of a metaphorical grail, with an alteration of the traditional male-dominated paradigm of myth and with an ending that makes becoming an adult attractive, did I succeed? Only time will tell, but if you’re interested, read Fractured and Tainted, the first two books of Lisen of Solsta which are free until 2/26/2015, and then check out Blooded, the final volume.