27 September 2021

Female of the Species



Last week, Rob Lopresti posed an intriguing question on the Short Mystery Fiction Society thread. He wanted the titles of peoples' favorite noir-ish short story with a female protagonist. Many people responded with stories I will check out if I haven't read them already, but it made me think long and hard before I answered. Many of my favorite novelists are women, and I read so many short stories that it's insane to keep track. 


Rob's question made me look at my own work, too, because I prefer strong female characters. According to my spreadsheets, over half of my short stories feature women who do bad things (often very well), even if it's in the name of "justice." Nearly a third of them are the protagonist of their particular tale, but only four are narrators. There's some overlap, of course. I made an arbitrary decision that unless the woman was the 1st-person narrator or the story used detached-3rd person through her, she wasn't technically the protagonist. 

Six of my sixteen novels involve women who resort to violence, sometimes for the home team, but sometimes for personal gain. I suspect that male and female writers might have different percentages on that issue, and mine lean more toward women than some other male writers would. On the other hand, several of my favorite male crime writers introduce women who kick serious ass, too. 

I've been around strong women my entire life. My grandmother still drove at age 86, and my mother kept control of her finances until a stroke incapacitate her at age 83. My sister and I didn't know she was a millionaire until I gained power of attorney only months before she passed away. My sister was the valedictorian (and ace softball pitcher) at her private school--where she won the state Latin prize twice--and graduated from Harvard law School. The family joke when she's out of earshot is that she got the brains and I got the looks.

Those are the role models I grew up with, not to mention several of my teachers.


When I drifted into theater, I met many strong and intteligent actresses (my wife, of course), one of whom I met through her brother, who was a member of Mensa. I directed twenty productions in several theaters, all with a female stage manager and several with a female producer. If you don't do community theater, you should know that the stage manager is the absolute boss in the building while a show is in production, and that the producer oversees finances and all personnel working on a show, although I hand-picked my tech crew.

My favorite lighting designer, lights technician (also a great actress), and sound technician were women. So was our theater photographer for several years. That lights designer started as one of my favorite stage managers and became an excellent director, too. And wrote a couple of short plays.

Women tend to be smarter than me--the men on the blog are an exception, of course--possibly because the last several centuries have forced them to find creative and flexible ways to get around restrictive rules made by men (See me avoid getting political here). The could shop, take care of the house and kids, maybe even balance the household budget and pay the bills, and maybe haold a part-time job, but they couldn't vote. Directly.

These women certainly influenced my writing. I can't take a bimbo character serioulsy, and the helpless damsel makes me squirm. My characters like puppies, kittens, cooking (within reason) and sex, but several of them have concealed-carry permits.


Shoobie Dube, Rasheena Maldonado and Valerie Karpelinski are or were police officers at one time. Valerie stripped to earn her college tuition, and that helped her learn to read people, especially men. She and Rasheena are also bi-lingual. Severa of my favorite characters skate in roller derby under names like Annebelle Lector, Grace Anatomy, Ginger Slap, Denver Mint Julep, Raisin Cain, or Desolation Rose. 

Few of my short stories really qualify as "noir," and two that feature viewpoint female protagonists are still awaiting publication, one not for about another year. But my first seven published short stories all feature a woman who commits a crime. Sometimes, it's not murder...exactly.

I have interesting imaginary friends.

6 comments:

  1. I love your last line. Imaginary friends are exactly what favorite characters become.

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  2. Janice, after I'd posted this, I thought of a better line: "My imaginary friends can lick YOUR imaginary friends." But I was stumped for a topic until the last minute and kind of threw this together after seeing Rob's post. You can probably tell by all the typos I failed to fix. :-(((

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  3. My favorite of my strong women characters is Matt Stark, who, in her 60s, can and will kick anybody's butt (one way or another) who threatens her or her family / friends. She's based on my Aunt Katty who, back in the 1930s/40s, when some fellow Chicagoan killed her dog went out with an axe to find the SOB. And found him...

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  4. My favorite strong woman is a character in a cozy mystery I'm writing. Moriah Knowing. She is based on my Aunt Reba who taught school for 30 years, all the while farming 40 plus acres with a horse drawn plow, milking cows, raising hogs and chickens, developing the basic super sweet corn of today, and prize winning dahlias--and oh yes being the town mayor, police chief, post mistress, and barber. Two counties full of judges, lawyers and police had her trim their hair and listen to problems they needed a little advice on solving.

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  5. Good stuff, Steve, but just to be clear: It was Mysti Berry, not me, who started the discussion on this subject at the Short mystery Fiction Society. It certainly got a lot of chatter going!

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  6. Oops. The thread was so long I probably missed the original post. Sorry, Mysti. And thanks for a good discussion topic.

    I love that most of the comments here cite other real women who inspired fictional characters.

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