BookWenches

Wenches, Nymphs & Other Wonderfully Defiant Women

by Stephanie Draven

Since I'm blogging here today at BookWenches.com, I took the liberty of looking up the word wench. It apparently means: loose woman. A bimbo, a damsel, a doxy, a hussy, a strumpet, a floozy, or a trollop. A minx, a vamp, a tramp, or a tart!

In other words, a wench is a woman whose strong will and independent sexuality threatens society so much that conventional folks resort to calling her names.

The ancient Greeks had their own notion of such a powerful female--and she didn't exist within civilized society. She existed in nature alone, and they called her a nymph. (You may recognize that from the word nymphomania.)

Now, maybe it's the rebel in me, but nymphs may well be my favorite mythological creature because they represent the primal nature of women. You see, I love all kinds of nymphs. Frolicking river nymphs, dark nymphs of the underworld, and spirited mountain nymphs. But for my latest Nocturne Bite--WILD, TETHERED, BOUND--I chose a tree nymph for my heroine.

She’s a beautiful dryad named Dessa who guards one of the last forests in Afghanistan until a fateful encounter with an American soldier.

I loved writing about Dessa because she uses her powers of seduction to hold things together, to bind nature and to heal the soldier that she loves. Our hero suffers from an exaggerated form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that turns him into a modern day chimera. No matter how hard he fights her, no matter how hard he tries to shame her or hold her down, Dessa's essential femininity triumphs.

Because I love rewriting mythology and giving it a modern, sexy edge, I couldn't be more grateful to Tara Gavin, my editor at Silhouette Nocturne. She was incredibly receptive to this unusual tale--one that combines ancient lore, modern war, and environmental concern for the dwindling ecology of war-torn Afghanistan.

In light of the struggles women in Afghanistan face every day for their independence, I think it's appropriate to hail the one genre that celebrates a woman's sexuality and tells her, explicitly, that her desires matter whether they fit into cultural norms or not. That genre is romance, and, for that reason, I'm honored to write it.

You can read an excerpt here on my website. Check out my book trailer and enter the contest I’m running, and you could win an advanced review copy of WILD, TETHERED, BOUND and a $15 gift certificate to Amazon.

So, in conclusion, they say that well-behaved women don’t make history. What’s the most unconventional or rebellious thing you’ve done in your life?

********

Stephanie Draven is the author of Midnight Medusa, a Silhouette Nocturne Bite that we at BookWenches reviewed in June 2009, as well as the new release Wild, Tethered, Bound. For more information on Stephanie and her work, please visit her website at http://stephaniedraven.com/. You can also visit her author page at the eHarlequin.com website right here.