abusive relationships

At their core, romances are about relationships. Generally speaking, their most important relationship will be sexual, whether that means with a consummation or merely suggestion. The stories are about emotions because there is no relationship where more emotions come into play than a romantic attachment.

Romances are thought to be aimed at women, but I think the stories are good for men too when they understand the romance novel speaks to relationships and emotions. Romances explore how men see things as well as women. Romances can be dramatic and strong stories.

CanStock Image

As a writer, I read a lot of human interest stories. Yes, I care if Yemen is suffering a coup or how the Saudis will be with a new king, but I also care about the stories regarding the problems real people have faced, overcome or been destroyed by. I am also a good listener to friends or sometimes even acquaintances, who want to tell me their story. This interest in relationships has gone back to being a little girl and listening to adult conversations (at least until they realized I was there). You learn a lot by listening. I also learn a lot by articles. A story like the following is one I've heard in real life more times than I care to count. The reality is all relationships are not healthy. When they go bad, what are the warning signs?

I could no longer take his abuse

I would hazard a guess that every romance writer out there wants to write emotionally satisfying books where the reader takes away a stronger sense of self and what a healthy relationship looks like, helping to make their own stronger. There are those who claim it's not what happens to those who read romances. The claim (disputed by studies) is that such readers become dissatisfied with their own lives, maybe even leave them for a relationship that only exists in fantasy.

Writers can only take on so much responsibility for what their books influence. It's not possible to control whether readers will like what we write and equally not possible to be sure what they will take away from the words. I am not sure how many romance writers concern themselves with such things-- but I know some do. I do.

I like to write about women who, even if they don't start out strong, will end up that way. I like it when their path to becoming stronger feels real to me. I have never written a story about a victim even knowing that's very popular in the romance genre. With my heroines, if they aren't admirable to start with, they will get there in a realistic way. They will grow through what they experience. I also will never write about someone who is just plain mean to others, with the expectation that will change by the end.

The story above shows how relationships can deteriorate or someone can be fooled in the beginning where the situation changes so gradually that they do not react to the changes. While it's not the kind of story I enjoy writing, it is a good warning to someone who might be in such a relationship. Get out before it's too late.

Why shouldn't books and films make us feel good?

In some ways I find it ironic how romances, which are stories of the finding of what is one of the (if not the) most important chosen relationship in our lives, are so demeaned. This happens even when it's a book like Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. She didn't want it to look like a romance because she knew how they were seen by the elites of publishing-- money cows but ill respected. 

So here came the mini-series, which follows the first book on Starz (and hopefully will eventually be available on DVD). It is demeaned also by those who think it's only for women. It's not. It's about a country and a time. It is about what a man and woman can find together-- and that isn't seen just through one relationship. My husband has enjoyed it as much as I have. If it reminds me of anything, it's the HBO series Deadwood-- not for the romance in that one but for the violence.

Here was a good article about this series and also about our society and how we see romance or sexual relationships between men and women in entertainment.

Outlander wedding goes above and beyond

So a film that shows human beings as the lowest of the low, that one is considered to be arty but one that shows them as real people where passion and love can grow into something powerful enough to get past the terrors and difficulties of life, that is not arty... 

Something is badly askew with our media or what we expect from it. 

What I liked in the article was how it made the point why should we not celebrate male beauty as we do female? Why can't women appreciate a good looking man? This is one of the darts that is thrown at romances-- the gorgeous men. Except aren't beautiful women a staple of many other forms of entertainment-- and I might add young, beautiful women?  

This leads to the question I have asked more than once. Why shouldn't books make us feel good-- well unless they are non-fiction? Why do we seek out things that show humans where none are likeable and yet that is considered 'art'? Is this really what people today want? Well if it's so, don't pretend it is real life. It's fiction too-- but just designed to upset.

Gabaldon's books are not just romances, but they have very romantic moments that come as close to real life as the less attractive view presented in say Gone Girl. I am not saying both don't exist as being how relationships can be. But I am saying that Outlander is as real as the other and one is put down as romance or chick fare and the other revered as noir or art.

What we put into our heads is what impacts our view of life. When we read non-fiction, a view say of torture and whether it benefits those who use it as a state technique, that's a very unpleasant topic to consider, but it is based on real life. It's worth getting upset in knowing what is being done to a culture, to earth, to individuals when they condone torture, [insert many words in that spot], but my opinion is only when it is non-fiction. When it's fiction, which is manipulated to feel real but is still fiction, then what goal does it have for us?

I know what the goal was with The Wedding episode in Outlander. It was how it can be between a man and woman. It was to celebrate beauty. It was to delve into what makes it work between a man and woman who are mated for life. Nobody can say it's how it always is. This is for a couple who will be together through a lifetime with as difficult of circumstances as today or in any era, a time of powerlessness and the ruthless behavior of those who seek power over others. It is though about the strength of a real love that will keep these people bonded even when it's not easy. Why isn't that a better aspiration than a very well written story, excitingly paced but admittedly of two despicable persons and a marriage that was a disaster?

After I wrote this piece, I came across the following article where it discusses showing men fully nude in films and how it's been the no-no. Well given how women react to a sexy man's chest, as a no-no on a book cover (at least if it remotely suggests sexuality), I wonder if it's men here who, in a film, don't want the full Monty or it's women... anyway here's the link:  

confronting one of cinema's last taboos-- in the US that is...

Politics in a book?

 creating business cards while it storms :)

Politics in your book or not? Discuss politics anywhere and lose readers who disagree with you? You can insert spirituality there just as well. How controversial can you get before it costs you readers?

Well in our culture, with people putting up enemy lists every time any celebrity dares to speak their mind, I'd say it's pretty obvious that to put politics into the books or talk about your beliefs can infuriate some enough that they won't buy your books or if they did and found a political agenda in them with which they disagreed, they'd throw them back.

So does that make the answer to the question easy? Keep your mouth shut? Especially if you are a woman and everybody knows women don't have political sense. Look how long it took for them to get a right to vote. In Oregon that would be 1912. The year my mother was born was the first year her mother could have voted in any federal election. Wyoming women were given the vote in their state in 1870, When they went into the Union in 1890, they famously said they'd not go if they could not take their women.

There are assorted reasons given for why Wyoming men were so adamant but many think it was the pioneer lifestyle where women were so important and strong-- where women often did a man's work. If so, how to explain Oregon?

Whatever the reasoning, the thinking of many for not letting women vote was they would only do what their husbands said, that women didn't have minds that could think politically and hence should not be allowed to vote. Silly creatures. Since women hadn't always even been allowed to own land, I guess they were used to being held down. Some today still think politics is an inappropriate subject for a woman-- hence since most romances are written by women, it's not for them either.

Alas I recognize that they might be right about politics not being popular and losing readers when an author or book expresses strong views. However, I grew up hearing politics discussed and without fistfights. To me politics isn't just about government but about all interactions between humans which means business, community, family, the arts, etc.  How boring a book would be to ignore a lot of the essence of why things happen as they do. If we write a story about a community today, can we ignore the dynamics within it?

Yes, we can write pablum and sweeten our stories to ignore the reality of the times through which people live. I've done stories with very little political thinking in them-- where I have characters caught up in their own dilemma to the point they can't really get beyond to anything more until it's been solved. If you are struggling to survive, politics aren't high on your list of important issues-- unless, of course, politics is what got you there.

I've also taken a rodeo story like Luck of the Draw and inserted into it some of the issues of 1974 which involved the Vietnam War. I used some of the arguments I heard in my own family during those years and I think it added meat to the story. Will it offend some readers? Possibly. Just as Moon Dust being about our educational system, sexual abuse, and extreme right ideology probably has cost it readers. To be honest, if I had to write formula type stories, I'd not want to write fiction at all. I like encompassing the problems we face with a love story and in my stories-- some outside danger.

and bookmarks hopefully to find places to leave and give to friends

Every writer has to work this question out for themselves. Do they let the political thinking of the times (today or history) find its way into their book? There isn't one answer for everyone. There is for me-- when it fits, it goes in, but I won't force it to try and proselytize.

As for speaking my mind politically as a citizen, I will always do that. I have grandchildren and care about the world in which they are growing up, the world where they will build their own lives. I have to speak up.

mysteries in the eBook world

If you are a writer of eBooks, you are familiar with Amazon's policy of allowing someone to keep an eBook one day short of a week and return it for full credit with no reasons needed other than you were dissatisfied. So basically the reader can read it, decide it wasn't one they'd want on their device and return it. Writer will then not get the money which doesn't cost writer anything as writer didn't have it anyway; but Amazon is out some money for those transactions.

Most of the time I haven't had that happen except in the UK system where I am pretty sure there are those who regularly buy the books, read and return them as a way of economizing. From what I had heard, they cannot do it forever as Amazon will cut them off if they begin to see a pattern. Not sure though how many they can get away with before that happens-- or do they just open a new account? I hope they aren't also the ones who have taken some of my books, copied them and then put them on a site that gives them away for free.

Obviously, some returns are just accidents where someone clicked a button, didn't mean to and immediately retracts it. That one makes the most sense as reading a book, then deciding you didn't like it, is cheating and the equivalent of going into a clothing store, buying a nice dress, tucking in the labels and wearing it to an affair, returning it the next day to get your money back. It's stealing whether someone wants to call it that or not. I've read a lot of books I hated or at least the part before I quit reading. I delete them from my device or throw them in the garbage. I wouldn't even think I had the right to ask for a refund since I did read it (most of it) and had chosen it.

There is another kind of return, which might reflect a deeper level of disdain. It's where someone buys a book, and then just before a week later, they return it. I had one of those last week and it's the kind where I wish writers were given the information on the reason given for the return-- not who but why. It could turn up on a vicious review but often in my experience, it hasn't. It just disappears from the list of sales leaving a mystery.

Were they gaming the system? Or did they get some kind of misleading feeling from the blurb, sample chapters and cover that led them to purchase it and then be actually angry at what it really was about. I can see how the recent book might've been the latter. It wasn't a book I had been promoting; so its sale had been a surprise when I saw it. Remember one thing about the author lists (if you aren't one) that refund shows up. Maybe the returner wants it that way as the ultimate insult.

Hidden Pearl is a story about cults. It involves a mystery of sorts but it's not a real fast moving, filled with adventure story-- more of a building to recognize what happened and then what can be done about it. It involves our own inner search. I suppose where it could mislead is using a term that is in the Bible because Jesus was giving a parable about how we should look for things of great value and not be duped by those of lesser. Saving me writing the essence behind it here, below is one of my dialogues on it.

I could imagine a fundamentalist or even someone in a cult might be offended by that book except it seems they'd have recognized what it was about before they ever bought it, let alone had it for days. Maybe it was just a scam that cost Amazon some money and left me scratching my head.

Three things

After watching a particularly violent film (we liked it), that night my dreams were full of images of action. At one point in a dream I was told-- there are three levels in a book that a writer has to understand-- action, characters, meaning. When I woke, I thought about how this fits into my books and is equally true of movies I watch.

The action is the plot. It is what will happen to get the story from the beginning to the end. It won't be every action necessarily but every important action. Characters are self-evident-- who are these people? Finally comes the hard one-- meaning or theme. Does every book or movie have a deeper meaning? Maybe some are just action and characters or even with very superficial characters, just action.

So taking one of my books and in this case because it happens to be one I just did some more editing to make it tighter, Hidden Pearl--

Action: a murder, photography, building a relationship, solving the mystery of a disappearance and suicide/murder, avoiding the clutches of a cult leader, finding friendship, choosing to enter danger for a higher purpose, wrestling with emotional issues, and small events along the way.

Characters: Hero is half Navajo, half Scottish from a split home, carries baggage from childhood even though he is now a big success as a builder/architect. Heroine is photojournalist from a successful family, very into her career. Cult leader is more complex than meets the eye as he has goals which don't all appear obvious in the beginning. Best friend is Irish in heritage, photographer, married to a cop in an over 20 year gay marriage. Other characters are those in the cult, and the hero's friends. Oregon and its beauty, the city of Portland all are characters in this story as it goes down the valley and into the mountains for part of its action.

Meaning: What makes something a cult? When is it worth risking your life for a higher goal? When you carry around baggage from a childhood, when is it time to let it go? Relationships are built on what?

Before or while I am writing them, all of my books will have deeper meaning-- sometimes a similar life lesson illustrated in different ways. For me much as I love writing about romance, I consider it to be a vehicle for deeper truths that will be sandwiched in between action and character development.

Trailer for Hidden Pearl:

Right now, I am trying to decide what the meaning of the fourth Oregon historical would be as I begin to get a feel for the action and have the characters in mind, but that higher meaning is illusive-- although since I haven't begun writing, it might become obvious once I start next month as I finish up the research for it.

Taking this to a movie, I looked at the film we watched the other night which got mixed reviews despite being based on a true story and with a stellar cast. I sometimes like action films with what seems like no meaning-- just going along for the ride. This one, at first look, could have been one of those.

Gangster Squad stars Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, and Emma Stone-- all enough reason to watch it. Their characters were cop, cop, gangster, and kind of moll who falls in love with cop. Some of the critical reviews were that the characters were thinly developed. I didn't agree but definitely the main thing was the action-- bringing down the gangster Mickey Cohen before he could take over LA. (There are those today who have figured out how to do it without gangster tactics.)

So lots of action, beautiful characters, but what was the theme? One possible is when you are fighting a war for existence that becomes the meaning. Everything else is sublimated to that greater cause for a period of time. Hence a WWII movie doesn't have to have secondary meanings beyond surviving the action. This one though had a meaning beyond that-- All it takes for bad to succeed is for good to do nothing.

Except, how do you define that? Isn't that the justification for terrorism and operating outside the law for a higher goal. This film [had key scenes and its release date changed after the Aurora, Colorado shooting].  I think the questions it raises about how good succeeds will challenge a viewer who stops to think. All the time we are cheering the 'good' guys who are using bad guy tactics, we have to think-- there might be those encouraged to do exactly that when we won't be cheering.

Because the film was [loosely based] on something that actually happened in 1949 but was kept secret for many years, it makes the whole thing dicey in an era where we know we have big problems but what justifies ignoring the law and using something unlawful to fight something unlawful-- and in the case of the film-- violence to fight violence?

I personally believe that we have to work within the law. But, what if the law has been distorted? Then we have to get enough voters to change it. The Wild West answer still makes me uncomfortable even though I enjoyed the movie. How about the tools his granddaughter said her grandfather actually used-- brain not brawn but not under a legal umbrella?

I ran into that in the book I mentioned above, Hidden Pearl, which was the objection a reviewer had to the action. The lead character did do something that was illegal to achieve a higher aim. That made at least one reader uncomfortable. He was trying to acquire enough evidence to catch a murderer-- did that justify his action? Some would say no.

Understanding the meaning, the life lesson behind a book or movie, is important-- it's not always comfortable.

ethics and dialogue

As long as I'm writing about ethics, I might as well get into another area where writers do have to make decisions. It involves use of obscenities, curse words, foul language, and being politically correct for the time in which we live. What was acceptable even five years ago may prove very offensive today. The problem a writer faces is staying true to the characters but what about when that would offend today's readers? How to deal with that?

 photo taken at Oregon High Desert Museum, January 2013-- doesn't relate to the topic but will be a factor in the historic romance I am currently writing.

To illustrate this, I can't even use the words that are most coming to my mind because this blog is PG rated. Some of them I have never used. A few I used to never use but now once in awhile do in discussions because they have become so mainstream. I can think of one that I didn't learn its meaning until I was in college and my aunt explained it to me after a boyfriend had used it. My daughter asked to have that word explained to her when she was in second grade.

When I write dialogue for men, I know most of them use far rougher language than I give them. Sometimes I get around that by saying they cursed crudely or something that lets the reader imagine what that meant. And a lot of young women today talk that way also, and it's not the shocking thing that it was when I was a young woman.

An example of a word regarding the politically correct or incorrect, that is a good example, is squaw. That was a word which was taken for granted for years. To many people, it was just a word for American Indian women (which might should be Native American women instead of Indian but that's not a given as it varies with tribes for what they prefer. Safest is to use their tribal name if it's required in a book). Squaw though, commonly used back in the 1880s or not, I wouldn't use today in any book I wrote as it is a very offensive term regarding women-- showing total disrespect.

Throughout the west we have all kinds of geographic places with names that have had to be changed as our world became more sensitive as to how they were perceived. It's a tough one for a writer as not many people want to offend others, but writers like to use dialogue in way that seems fitting to the character. 

It's something each writer has to work out for themselves. I have several swear words I do let my characters use, varying with their personalities, which I know offend some people; but I feel they are needed-- even knowing I might lose readers over them.  If I used some of the rougher words, it might seem more realistic to the times and characters-- but I don't for my own sensitivity as well as that of readers.

I also run into this when I write sex scenes also and yes, I do write sex scenes. I don't want to go too graphic but I do want to make it feel like it was what happened and give the reader an enjoyable read which for me means nothing crude there either.  I also avoid euphemisms used more frequently in the older romances when they first began to write about sex. This isn't because they offend me but because they make me laugh instead of think about a romantic encounter.

Ethics and fiction writing

When writing a story from ideas in your head, a lot of things come into play that will vary with genre. Readers expect certain things from a mystery that will be different than from chick lit. If you are writing in a genre that is action oriented, a lot of emotional reaction isn't required. Some stories barely give you the motivations of the main protagonists; and you see what they are by what they do-- if the writer stays consistent.

Romances have action, dialogue, and the inner workings of the character's thinking. These books resolve how people will do certain things, what their reactions will be, how they will feel after they make choices, and that's an important part of any romance from Jane Austin to Nicholas Sparks. There might be different styles involved, some with more emphasis on dress and behavior and others with even violent actions, but in the end, a romance (the best of them) will be about emotional reactions and even ethical choices.

When I have the most problems reading someone else's romances is when they ignore ethical actions. They might let a hero or heroine behave in a way that is an abomination, but it's supposed to be okay because they are the hero/heroine. Say what! I suppose some with male heroes has come from the rise of the anti-hero. But even an anti-hero has to have an ethical code to find sympathy from most readers/viewers.

So when I am writing a story as I am right now, ethics is an important aspect with which I off and on wrestle. Sure I need to get tenses correct, spelling right, sentence structure making sense (although perfecting of that comes later with editing), but ethics are big to me. I want my characters to act logically-- even when they sometimes make mistakes. And when they have acted unethically, I want them to be aware of it at least eventually.

 Image rights purchased from CanStock

On the current book, I have a lot of this kind of thinking going on as there are some big ethical questions for the hero and heroine. She faces hers not only because of her period in history but from those any culture puts onto its people. Cultures encourage obedience and punish by different methods disobedience of its rules. Some of this probably is human nature and some about power and survival. The more options a culture permits, the more confusing life can be.

As a woman of the 1880s in the West, my heroine has lived by rules and pretty much edged around what isn't okay-- like visiting an occult shrine or going to a psychic. She is 25 and unmarried by choice, again something a genteel lady would not be doing unless she's staying home taking care of aging parents. Obviously by her choices, she is going against the stream but how far is she willing to go in doing that?

She might have been able to avoid resolving that question except life isn't letting her on several levels. A big one is when she is attacked (won't go into details of what happens but it's not a rape), and she must decide whether to bring charges against the perpetrator or hide what happened to save what's left of her reputation. It's not exactly a problem unique to her times but made harder when women had less rights, couldn't vote, certainly not hold public offices and even the right to own property hadn't been held all that long.

So the story had gone along quite well until I got to this sticky situation. It's easy, as a writer, to turn a major protagonist into a symbol for what is right to do and make it turn out that way... or even go the other way... but better writing is to make it seem inevitable as a choice and that the character would actually do this-- whether it's the best choice or not. That's something I am taking some time to decide. It's not exactly a road block as I know what comes after, but I want to get this part right-- which to me is what good writing is all about.
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Writing and ethics

When I start figuring out a book, there are a lot of things I take into consideration for plots, characters, points of view, grammar, theme, setting, etc. One that is always there will be my personal ethics. Every book I have ever written is impacted by my own view point as to what is moral, what is wise, and what do I owe as a responsibility to readers even as they know these stories are fiction.

There are several examples of the kinds of things I wrestle with before the writing begins. One is the use of cigarettes. To some nobody should be portrayed smoking in a book or film. Reality is some people do smoke, and they do it for various reasons. When I am putting together these characters, their persona, I think about whether they would smoke.

As part of this piece, I went looking for how often my characters smoked-- five of the contemporaries. The heroine never smokes, and disapproves of the hero smoking and tells him so expressing her reasons. The heroes who are doing it know it's bad for them, but they are in high stress positions and do it anyway. They do not smoke around children as part of their responsibility to others while being irresponsible for themselves.

In Luck of the Draw, set in the '70s, it was more common that cowboys, really many men, smoked; so it's less questionable. Political correctness police won't like the idea anyway. My cowboy hero doesn't smoke a lot, but he's not talking of giving it up either. Even though it's set before so much information was available on the dangers of smoking, my heroine does express her distaste for it.

In both From Here to There and Evening Star, the hero has quit smoking when the reader comes across him in the story, but as he moves into a more high pressure situation, he takes the habit back up. In From Here to There, the hero quits again as he realizes it's not going to help him in dealing with his drug using brother. When he appears again three years later in A Montana Christmas, he is not smoking.

Her Dark Angel has a hero who is smoking to begin as part of his life but quits and stays quit through the book. He doesn't quit for himself but rather because he's going to be around the heroine's small children. If their relationship doesn't work out, it's hard to say if he'd go back to cigarettes in the future, but for now he knows he's kicked a habit that is hard to kick.

Desert Inferno has a hero who smokes, and it's not clear he'll ever quit although he off and on has given it a try. The heroine again admonishes him but she doesn't make it into a me or them issue.

No smoking would be acceptable for someone who hates cigarettes, and they have a point. It is estimated in the United States smoking kills 443,000 people a year including from secondhand smoke.  My heroes are young men though, and my belief is they will all quit before they get out of their 30s. I cannot bring myself to write about a woman smoking because it just seems wrong for their characters.

My family had a lot of smokers in it. One grandfather smoked cigars. The other pipes. My father smoked cigarettes until he finally quit after I got married... what was that about?  I had female cousins who always smoked. After we got married, we didn't allow cigarettes to be smoked in our house; and when the bigger family came for a holiday dinner, it caused some hard feelings. We valued our small children's health more than their irritated feelings.

When I put a cigarette in one of my character's hands I think about it for the story but also the ethics of it.

There is another issue, currently an even hotter button than cigarettes-- guns. After the most recent shootings and my reading here and there how guns, all guns, were at fault, I thought about this a bit more than maybe I had when writing the stories. From a few people, hard to say how many, there is a sense of near hysteria that all guns must be eliminated in the hands of private citizens because they are too dangerous.

Statistics say that there were 32,367 deaths in auto accidents in 2011. There were 12,664 murders of which 8,583 were with a gun. I don't look up the deaths from suicide with guns because if someone wants to kill themselves, there are many ways. I don't see them in the same category as being murdered when you didn't choose.

Such statistics and those from countries with less guns and gun fatalities have led to our culture re-evaluating the use of guns period. The anti-gun crowd would argue higher death rates from autos don't figure in as autos have a purpose beyond killing-- even though you are far greater risk of being killed in a vehicle than by a gun. People fearing guns will not be convinced by those statistics.

Most likely such rabid dislike of guns would cause someone to not want to read at least some of my books, maybe avoid me as an author since I have guns in any of them. It has made me think perhaps I need warnings on the books regarding both the gun and cigarette use so that those who dislike such won't be making the mistake of buying the books.

Since I write adventure, suspense, western romances, six of my contemporaries had a gun owned by hero or heroine although not routinely carried and no assault rifles of any sort.  In my as-yet-unpublished historical novels the men all owned and used guns but not all carried them on their hips-- that depended on the cultural aspect of where and why. Knives are used also-- as they are in some of the contemporaries. Hey, adventure/suspense implies danger, right?

There were guns fired in all but three of my contemporaries, sometimes owned by villains and used by hero or heroine. With three of the heroes (Desert Inferno, Bannister's Way, Evening Star) the men were in law enforcement-- one branch or another. They all fired those guns in the stories, but I considered in what to me were responsible ways.

A few times my heroines use a gun. One is given a gun by her father-in-law which considering the dangerous situation she and the hero are facing, she takes it as she was given a gun safety course as a teenager by her wealthy father. In the end she uses that gun to save the hero's life.

None of my heroines end up killing with a gun which I cannot say the same thing for the heroes. In all cases the shootings are with hand guns and in self-defense. As to caliber of each-- right now I am clueless as I am not into guns that way and receive all that info from a repository-- my husband.

In one book, the heroine uses a gun in what she considers self-defense, but she uses it poorly when she really should not have which the story makes clear.

Okay, leaving that, there is another ethical aspect I think about when writing. I don't write about heroes who are brutes but become sweethearts through the love of a good woman. My men might be wild ones, those who don't want relationships, they might be tough, but they never brutalize anybody emotionally or physically.

That one is critical to me because I think women too often have romanticized the love of a good woman changing a man. To me, that's bunk. When one of my heroes changes, it's because he wants a different life and he changes himself (personal examples come from my father and father-in-law). He doesn't change his basic character which was always what it is but maybe turning some of his qualities in new directions. I don't think it's healthy for women to think that a mean man will change for her. Too many women get killed that way.

The other ethical aspect for me is regarding rapes. None of my heroines say no when she means yes. To me that is despicable of a woman to play that kind of emotional game. Yes means yes. No means no. I am not about to write about a woman who likes to tease with no intention of following through. Likewise I won't write about a man who won't accept no. It's her loss if she wanted it but didn't want to admit it. Although romances are a bit of fantasy, there are some things that I think are damaging emotionally for us to expect.

While I recognize authors write stories that are not about their own personal ethics and tell stories of people doing things they'd never do, I think it's important that the ethics in any book tell the truth about life in a way that benefits the reader. I like my stories to have an overall theme of empowerment which comes through the actions and events. It's not empowering to have someone, we're supposed to admire, acting unethically.

Photos from Tucson, Arizona