BookWenches

Kick-Ass Action Heroine, Loves Shoes…

First off, a sincere thank you to the Bookwenches for letting me play on their blog today!

I decided to blab—oops, I mean blog—about my fascination with strong, active heroines. Maybe it’s because as a kid, I always liked playing with the boys (no, not like that!). The boys always played better games--games with guns and swords and mortar rounds (okay, sticks and rocks, but nevermind). Games where people were in danger, where good battled evil and the bad guys had to be stopped At All Costs, or at least before the streetlights came on. I was never big on the Barbies, unless they were being tied up and tossed over the side of the pool to be rescued from pirates or sharks. 

But lest you think I was an awkward tomboy, let me clarify. I was not. I was a regular old girl, and even though the boys were more fun to play with, I also enjoyed girl stuff. I studied ballet and gymnastics. I wrote and read a lot. I loved horses and Tiger Beat. But I also played ice hockey and skateboarded. And then… it happened. Puberty. Suddenly the boys were obsessed with Barbies of another kind (the living, five-and-a-half-foot-tall kind with a boob-to-waist ratio of like 42 million and who ran like…well…girls). I mean, what the heck!  These creatures were turning the boys into brain-dead moaning zombies.  Suddenly, just being good at everything was no longer enough. We non-Barbies now had to be good at everything in thigh-high leather boots.

And I’ll tell ya, it’s damn hard kicking vampire butt in four-inch stilettos.

I’ve never felt women needed to sacrifice their femininity to be strong. I hate to admit my rather Barbie-like compulsion to collect shoes (although mine don’t usually get sucked up by the vacuum), but there it is. I can be a fru-fru from time to time like everyone else, but it’s the character’s strength that I find interesting to write about. Even in historicals, where the time period is often not female-friendly, I always get a rush when a heroine lets her inner strength shine through, or when she realizes her strength and uses it to achieve her dreams, be they finding her fortune or her true love. And for those who argue that you can’t have kick-ass action heroines in historicals, if it please the court, I’d like to introduce into evidence Exhibit A: A Very Early Kick-Ass Action Heroine (KAAH):

Joan of Arc miniature, ~1450-1500,
author unknown

You gotta love Joan of Arc, even if she did have a habit of going off her Thorazine.  And getting the blessing of the Catholic Church to leave the kitchen or the convent was no easy feat for a chick back then. Between her and some of the more recent KAAHs: 
romance authors have some mighty big thigh-high boots to fill. But that’s where it gets tricky. These characters can’t just be death ninjas (well, except for Uma Thurman). They need to be women. Real, live women with wants and needs and cramps and all. A girl shouldn’t have to choose between the perfect pair of pumps and kicking a little bad-guy ass. But she still needs to be real. And that’s the challenge of writing these characters for me, walking the line between reality and fantasy. She can’t be so hard she’s impervious to romance. Deep inside, she has to have that gooey caramel center—she just needs a hero who’s strong enough to reach it and tender enough to melt it.

But Alpha Heroes are a post for another day.

In Red Rio Blue, Aubrey Hunnisett knows what she wants and doesn’t hesitate to pursue it. It just so happens that she wants to buy Club Lunar, owned by the distractingly handsome Michael Lennox, who just so happens to be a vampire. Sparks fly between them—both competitive and sexual—and the situation heats up quickly when Michael begins to see her as more than just a business rival. I wanted Aubrey to be strong, determined, yet smart enough to change to meet the challenges that get in her way—such as falling in love with a vampire who might be involved in a series of murders. Sure the sex is hot, but she knows there’s more to life than that. Although it’s hard to remember that when Michael seems to know her deepest fantasies—and just how to satisfy them...

Here’s an Excerpt. To help you out, Jackson is Aubrey’s friend and club manager, Michael Lennox is the hero, and Sands is the villain…

Red Rio Blue
By Marianna Lauren
Get it Now at Loose Id

               Aubrey woke in the strange hotel room, completely disoriented and covered with a clammy sweat. She fumbled at the nightstand, slapped at the gun, and finally grabbed the clock. She had to stare at the blurry numbers for a long time before finally figuring out that it was ten thirty--ten thirty p.m--and that she’d slept away an entire day. She pushed herself up and sat on the edge of the bed in the semi-darkness with her head in her hands, concentrating on keeping her breathing steady, trying to calm herself. First she’d lost all that time after Lennox had bitten her, now her rhythms had turned decidedly nocturnal. The sunlight had been bothering her lately. Something was clearly wrong. She’d been stupid to think a bite from something like Lennox would carry no consequences. Lennox had changed everything.
               She lifted her hands and stared at them in the dim illumination of the bathroom light that she'd left on. What had Michael Lennox done to her exactly? Hadn't Sands told her that she'd changed somehow when Lennox had fed on her? That she had the power to resist him?
               Lennox’s handsome face appeared in her mind, complete with his striking, lightning-bolt eyes. What would it be like to be a vampire? That power Lennox had displayed... the strength and that heightening of her sexual response, that was... intriguing. And the speed and ability to just vanish, like Sands. Was it true that they could live forever like the legends said? How many of the legends were true, anyway? Did they die in sunlight? Did you kill them with a stake through the heart like in the movies? Did garlic work? Could they change into wolves? Into bats? Into mist?
               She smiled softly at the absurd thought of Lennox turning into a bat. She kept swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other—thinking the whole thing terrifying one moment, seductive the next.
               But even as she lay there trying to think her way through all that had happened, her thoughts grew more chaotic instead of less, fluttering from fears of Sands to uncertainty and lust for Lennox. Finally, she gave up. Jackson’s cross slapped almost painfully against her breasts as she rolled out of bed, and she looked down at it, wondering again where legend and reality met. She slipped back into the fuzzy robe and went into the kitchenette to make coffee.
                Someone knocked on the door. A sharp, double knock, and then silence.
               Her heart began to thud and her eyes flicked first to the door and then to the window. Darkness outside. Which meant Lennox or Sands could be up and roaming the earth. She sat very still, her ears straining to hear any sound.
               The knock came again—the same double strike. If anything, more insistent.
               She ran to the bedroom, leaving the light off. Her hand slid along the cool surface of the nightstand and closed around the pistol grip. She turned slowly, trying to make no sound, and headed back into the sitting room.
               The door was a dozen feet away. Her eyes locked on the thin door handle, waiting to see if it would move. It might be Jackson, but something deep in her mind whispered that it wasn’t.
               She flipped off the pistol’s safety with an unsteady thumb. Whoever it was couldn't have a key card, could they? Was it someone who had the wrong room? Was it a clerk? And if so, why the hell hadn't they called first?
               Silence. No more knocks. But she could feel someone on the other side of the door.
               She walked toward it, step by soft step over the carpet, until she stood in front of it. The pistol dragged at her shoulder muscles, heavy in her hand. Already she could feel... something... power, charging the air like static electricity. Her heart beat even faster, making her blood roar in her ears.
               There was nowhere to run. She was on the fourth floor of the hotel and there wasn't even a balcony to escape to. The gun sat in her hand feeling dangerous and strange, not a part of her, almost as if she held a serpent that would turn and bite her if she dared point it at someone. But there was the phone. Jackson. She had to call him. She spun away from the door, toward the phone on the little table against the wall, and then the knocks came again. Two rapid strikes. And then her name. Whispered.
               “Aubrey...” The whisper seemed to drift beneath the crack of the door, so soft it was nearly lost in the hum of the A/C.
               Aubrey moved toward the door again, as if in a dream. Blood roared in her ears. She placed her free hand on the wood, so cool to the touch, and then put her eye to the peephole.
               Michael Lennox stared back at her, his purple-blue eyes shining in his handsome face.
               Her hands clenched tight around the rough pistol grip, and she had to take a deep breath to get enough air. Seeing Lennox brought back all the old arousal, mixed it with her fear, and threw it back as a sudden, tremendous surge of relief. 
               She shook her head to try and clear it. Relief? Lennox was just like Sands. She should be terrified. But even as she thought that, she knew it wasn't true. Sands and Lennox might be of the same breed, but they were as different as winter from summer. Then again, he had bitten her, and he had sifted through her thoughts.
               “Go away,” she whispered. Her body grew more aroused, heat pooling between her thighs, her pussy growing wet. Damn him for being able to do this to her so easily. Truth of it was, she didn’t think he was doing anything on purpose this time. It was just her body reacting to the thought of him.
               “I need to talk to you, Aubrey.” His voice was low, resonant, but she heard him as clearly as if he were in the room with her. 
               There was a long silence. She risked a look through the peephole again and saw him staring back. There was something in his eyes... sympathy?
               “Please,” he said. “I'm sorry.” And the simple earnest feeling in the words had her hand on the doorknob. Not because he was controlling her with any mind power, but because she’d heard his heart in his words. 
               A voice in her mind gave one more feeble protest as she flipped back the bar and turned the knob, pulling open the door. Lennox stood there with his hands in the pockets of his dark slacks. He glanced down at the pistol she held pointed down at the floor. One eyebrow quirked up.
               “Well?” She didn’t trust her voice to say anything more.
               A faint smile turned up his lips. “Thank you for not shooting first and asking questions later.”
               “There’s still time.” She stepped back and opened the door wider, and a faint surge of electricity seemed to flow from him as he passed.
               She shut and bolted the door behind him. His aura hit her full force when she turned back toward him. Her face flushed, her lips, both her upper and lower, felt swollen with blood, hot, aching to be touched. Worse was the schoolgirl lurch of her stomach, as if she waited for him to ask her to dance.
               Ha. Aubrey Hunnisett didn’t wait for anybody.
               She smiled her brightest, most seductive smile and took a step toward him.

So what’s your take on KAAHs… too much? Not enough? Love em? Hate em? Give me some ideas in the comments and we’ll kick ‘em around *snort.*

Oh…and before you go, do these latex pants make my butt look fat?

(End)

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Learn more about Marianna Lauren and her work by visiting her website at http://mariannalauren.wordpress.com/