I am an unabashed feminist, so current events have really got me worked up.

(Now, it should go without saying that being a feminist simply means I believe everyone who identifies as female deserves rights equal to those of everyone who identifies as male. That's it.)

On the one hand, it's a good thing that all of these abuse allegations are coming out in the open. From Roger Ailes to Harvey Weinstein, I'm heartened to know that a light is *finally* being shed on problems that have been going on for basically forever.

Naturally, some people will ask why women sometimes wait so long before speaking out about the harassment they've endured. I understand what prompts that question. I think most of us like to think that if someone did something illegal to us, we'd go straight to the police and report it, or at least expose the offender.

The truth, though, as it so often is, is a lot more nuanced. When your livelihood depends on staying in someone's good graces, when your career could be toppled by a powerful force in your industry, when making it in your chosen field means putting up with the crap other people sling at you, you might not say anything. Really, you might be crazy if you do say anything, because, after all, you're risking everything you've worked so hard to achieve. That's why you might remain silent, why you might not speak up for years.

Also, there's the fact that our society casts a skeptical eye on women who do speak up about sexual abuse. Newspaper articles will comment on what the victim was wearing, or they'll include quotes from people who talk about how "mature" for her age a young woman is. What is this other than casting some doubt on the validity of the victim's claim? Do articles ever mention what male crime victims are wearing, or how "mature" others perceived them to be? If your car is stolen, do you expect a police officer to say to you, "Well, sir, maybe if you weren't wearing that Michigan State University baseball cap, your car wouldn't have been stolen"? Maybe that last statement sounds ridiculous to you. If it does, I hope you'll think long and hard about why it's equally ridiculous when applied to a rape victim's clothing.

I love being a woman--except for all the things I hate about it. I hate having my qualifications and my intelligence questioned. I hate that someone like me, who doesn't wear makeup, has a lower chance of getting a job based on that fact alone. I hate that I think all the time about how to say things in the least offensive way possible, because women are socialized to be likable and liked.

There are so many everyday indignities to being a woman. They include things like:

• Being catcalled while walking down the street
• Having male coworkers voice the opinion that mothers have no right to be working rather than staying home with their kids
• Walking through a secluded hallway in your high school and fearing for your safety because a much larger guy is walking with a friend behind you, making lewd comments about you while his friend snickers and eggs him on
• Having a man explain something to you, even when you're an expert in that field, because he perceives your knowledge as being inferior to his, solely on the basis of his presenting as a man and your presenting as a woman
• Trying to gently let a man know you're uninterested in him, only to have him turn viciously on you and call you hurtful words like "bitch" or tell you you're not that good-looking anyway
• Being afraid to go out alone at night because you've been conditioned to believe it's your responsibility to prevent yourself from being raped

I've experienced all of these things at various points in my life. I still experience many of them.

One of my favorite video game series is the Mass Effect trilogy. With the exception of an incident in Mass Effect 1, in which an NPC refers to a female Shepard dismissively as "princess" and makes suggestive comments about her (been there, experienced that too), Commander Shepard isn't questioned about her competence or her leadership. Her squad follows her, and if they have an issue, it's because of something she does and not because she's a woman. She becomes a hero, and people admire and idolize her because of her accomplishments.

A big reason why I love this game so much is because it is so liberating, as a woman, to vicariously experience a world in which I have a job to get done and no one stands in my way just because I'm a woman. No one questions my ability to get the job done; on the contrary, many of my companions repeatedly tell me how strongly they believe I can do it. When I'm tough, no one tells me to stop being a bitch. When I'm assertive, people react to me the same way they do to the male version of my character.

I want the real world to be like this, for myself, for my daughter, for every woman I know. I also want it to be like this for my son, because I work hard to teach him that every human being is worthwhile and worthy.

Writing is a good space for me, and being an independent author is particularly good for me, because it gives me the freedom to explore sexism and its insidious effects. It allows me to create worlds where women are heroes and leaders and no one thinks that's weird. In short, it allows me to imagine a place where no matter where someone falls on the gender spectrum, they are treated equally. I love the idea of that place, and while I know that in reality we'll never reach a point where every last person acknowledges and respects women's basic humanity, I  like to think we're moving in the right direction. I find all of these things coming to light personally painful because they are such a pointed reminder of how little my basic humanity is respected at times, but I hope they mean things will improve in the future. I hope they mean people will stop and think very hard about what they observe, and that they'll take small steps to change their behavior.

Where we are now isn't where we have to be.

Quick update: I just finished reading The New Yorker's excellent piece on Harvey Weinstein. It's chilling and devastating, and it really helps illustrate how backed into a corner victims feel when a powerful figure abuses them.

At long last, my newest release is finally available on several major retailers! It's a steamy contemporary new adult romance, and I hope you'll all love it!

Catalina Martinez is used to being alone. Only seventeen when her mother died, Lina has since built her life around a single purpose: honoring her mother’s legacy by seizing every opportunity her mother worked herself to the bone to provide.

Now a college student, Lina is ambivalent when she lands a part-time job that sounds too good to be true. The hours are flexible and won’t interfere with her studies, allowing her to maintain her grades and keep her scholarships, and the pay is generous. However, she’ll be helping restore an old mansion, doing the kind of physical labor her mother was determined to prevent her daughter from having to do.

When she meets Byron Eaton, her new boss, he opens up a whole new world of additional complications—and possibilities. Not only is he young, rich, and gorgeous, he’s the first person Lina has felt a connection with since losing her mother. Her growing attraction to him threatens to overrule her misgivings, but even so she can’t shake her discomfort over the contrasts between his privileged upbringing and her hardscrabble life, not to mention how reluctant he is to talk about his family.

Just as she’s finally on the verge of reaping the rewards of her years of hard work, she finds herself on shaky ground. Does Byron trust her enough to tell her the truth about his past, or will his secrets prove too great an obstacle for their love to overcome?

As if releasing a new book wasn't enough, I'm also participating in a group giveaway on instaFreebie. You can snap up a whole bunch of SFF romances (including A House Divided, the first Astoran Asunder book) to warm your e-reader. Click the image below to browse the titles.

Happy reading!

So I’m going to give this blogging thing another go, mostly because I’ve disconnected from social media but still have stuff to say. (God, I have SO much to say—whether people want to hear it, that’s a whole different matter.) I do say things in my newsletter, so if you’re not a subscriber, you may want to be (plus, you know, you get free books, so that’s cool), but since my newsletter only goes out twice a month I wanted somewhere to collect my thoughts. Plus, blogging gives me a whole lot more leisure to develop my ideas and better express them.

Here goes. Strap yourself in. I have opinions.

I spend a lot of time writing stuff.

That goes without saying, right? The thing is, I don’t write just anything. I mean, I write a lot of things, but not just anything, if you get what I’m saying. I’m an avid reader, have been my whole life, and I love stories in a way I can’t fully articulate or quantify. However, I have beefs with stories. Oh so many beefs.

In college, I majored in French and minored in English, which means I read a LOT of books and plays. Like a metric crapton. Most of the stuff I read was stuff I frankly didn’t want to be reading. Yes, I love literature, but I don’t love all literature. (Hemingway. *shudder*) Sure, I did love some of it (Shakespeare, you masterful bard, you), but when you’re forced to read four books a semester, none of which you want to be reading, it ends up taking a toll.

College temporarily killed my love of reading—which shouldn’t be interpreted as me saying I hated higher education, because I am a nerd and I loved college. I’m one of those people who would probably be an eternal student if I had endless money and endless time. But after having been force-fed so much literature, much of it excruciating for me to read, I just lost that reading spark.

I can’t tell you how good it felt to dive back into books, once I was free to read what I wanted to read when I wanted to read it. I inhaled everything I could get my hands on.

Then I started noticing things that really annoyed me. There were some tropes I couldn’t stomach, and if I stuck with any particular genre long enough I started to feel like I was reading the same books over and over.

Now, I’ll take a timeout here to say I am NOT trying to insult other authors. I love other authors. I love reading their work and being surprised by how different their minds are, by how they write things I would never have thought of writing, by how some of it is so gorgeous and delicious and perfect that I wish I had written it.

That said, genres have their tropes. This is true of books, movies, video games, and TV shows. I get tropes, I do. I’m like everyone else in that I enjoy predictability in certain aspects of my life, so I get wanting the assurance that if you pick up a book, you’re going to get what you expect out of it.

The thing is, *I* don’t like predictability in my media. I don’t like it at all.

Because of this, I am almost gleeful about blowing up tropes and defying genre conventions. This is to my own detriment at times, as it makes my writing particular, and I understand this. Maybe I’ll never write anything that appeals to a mass market. I’m okay with this, because I am a niche reader, which makes me a niche writer. I know I’m not alone, and I want to reach those other niche readers who, like me, are frustrated by the challenge of trying to find just the right book.

One of my absolute favorite genre tropes to slay is anything—ANYTHING—to do with gender stereotyping. I am a woman. I am a woman who wants to imagine myself in the role of superhero, chosen one, savior of the world. It is sometimes extremely hard to find this kind of woman in literature, sadly. I think things are changing. I’m finding more amazing female characters with each year that passes, I’m happy to say, but for sure one of the reasons I started writing is because I wanted to see different, more diverse female characters out in the book world.

I have a particular beef with fantasy. Again, there are exceptions to this, I know (The Broken Earth series, I am looking with particular admiration at you), but, ugh, the female tropes in fantasy fiction.

(And do not, DO NOT, tell me that, “Well, this is the way things were in the past, so the author is going for authenticity…” No. Just, no. By definition, fantasy worlds are completely made up—I mean, they often have DRAGONS, for crying out loud—so there is NO reason for them to bear any resemblance to our culture, past or present, unless the author is using that culture as a way of exploring a specific issue.)

One of my favorite things to do is make my female characters warriors, rulers, and leaders, and have other characters not only accept this, but not even question it. It’s not even weird to them because it’s the norm. Oh, so the Captain of the Royal Guard is a woman? Yeah, that makes sense. No big deal.

In other words, I love to write female characters who do the same things my male characters do. I imagine worlds where female characters can be anything and everything without anyone saying, “But you’re a woman!” or “You’re good at ____ — for a woman”.

A world like that would probably look something like this:

To this end, I have written a five-book fantasy series in which my female characters have magical, gods-granted gifts—or they don’t. They’re leaders and loners, prickly and friendly, strong and weak. I’ve written a YA dystopian trilogy in which female characters are engineers and revolutionaries who work in concert with their male counterparts to better their world. In short, I try to make my female characters multifaceted human beings. Because, you know, women ARE multifaceted human beings.

Bye, bye, damsel in distress trope. Don’t let the door hit ya. See ya later, women in fridges. You really irk me.

You want genre tropes? That’s awesome, and I definitely want there to be books for you. I’m just probably not going to write them is all.

But if you don’t like genre tropes, if you’re looking for something a little different, a little outside of the box, well, I’m your woman.

(But not THE woman, though. That title is reserved.)