Auryn Hadley's Blog, page 3

Sorry, but that’s not sexy

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It’s everywhere.  No man seems safe from the accusations, and everyone is being sexually harassed.  Why?  Why now? What the hell is going on?

As a writer of strong female characters, I’m not shocked at all by this.  It’s called equality.  As women gain even more acceptance in our society as true equals (as opposed to being equal enough) certain privileges are being challenged.  What bothers me is that we Romance and Fantasy writers haven’t necessarily caught up.

C’mon, we all know the tropes...

The sound of color

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The turn of phrase.  An eloquent description.  Sarcasm, puns, and rhetoric.  Words are the color of our communication.  They’re what we notice first when talking, allowing body language and situational awareness to seep easily into our subconscious.  They’re picked apart, debated, and slung like weapons.

In other words, they’re powerful.

As an author, I’ve become much more aware of my word choice over time.  I’m amused at the difference between how I “speak” in text as compared to when I act...

It’s a whole new life!

[image error]As many of you already know, I quit my job in August.  This means I’m a full-time author.  Since then, things have been changing at light speed.  One of my big home renovation projects is basically done, and I have a whole new living room (with an office in it).  I also have decided that it’s time to fight against the “sit on my butt for 18 hours a day” spread.  I’ve been exercising.

And I’m so bad at it!

So, moment of truth here.  I have an elliptical.  When I first got it, I had these big v...

How do I make a world come alive?

[image error]A quick glimpse at social media shows that every author has their own way of taking an idea and making it into a book.  I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking about mine, until someone asked last night, but it’s pretty easy.

I drown.

My goal is to lose reality, immerse myself in the mythos of the story, and bring the whole thing to life with just 26 letters organized onto a page.  I want my readers to forget there are words and allow themselves to see through space, time, and reality into a...

From there to here, the lessons I’ve learned.

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Once upon a time, I was poor, broke, stressed out, fighting depression, and pretty desperate.  My career had just become very un-fun and my income had dwindled down to catastrophic failure levels.  Pretty much the only thing I had left was the solitude of my mind and a strange fondness for enjoying the act of typing.

To me, typing has always felt like my fingers dancing.  The keys are like tapping of shoes on a hard floor, the choreography of my fingers finding the right letter is complicate...

What does it mean to be a Strong Woman?

[image error]In every movie, every book, and quite a few TV shows, we hear people talking about “strong female characters” but what are they?  Is a strong woman someone who can lift 100 pounds?  200?  More?  Is she the person who can’t feel hurt by something as pathetic as an insult?  Are these fictitious creatures able to bend steel with their mind?

Maybe – or maybe not.  You see, a strong woman is one that fails and tries again.  She’s the one who took a risk because the chance of reward seemed worth it...

Love – in a good way

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I’ve been writing lately.  A LOT of writing.  Between Rise of the Iliri #7 and Wolf of Oberhame #3, and all those annoying ideas that pop into my head and HAVE to be jotted down so I won’t lose them, I’m basically a writing machine.  Interestingly, almost all of these books have some aspect of love in them.  Love of friends, love of family, and of course, lovers.

And, because one can not live on writing alone, I read.  All too often, I get so far and just can’t take it anymore because the re...

I keep thinking about writing a male lead…

[image error]Most of my released works are from the perspective of a female character.  This is for two main reasons: 1. being a woman, I understand that point of view and 2. Women are still underrepresented as heroic figures (sad as that may seem with the rise of YA novels).

But, I haven’t gotten there yet.  I do have a few stories in my “to be released” folder with a male main character, but they always get sidelined.  Often, like in the Rise of the Iliri series, or even in some chapters of The Wolf of...

How I earned my stories (and why I write).

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I have experienced all that life has to offer.  I’ve been fat and thin, fit and soft, old and young.  I loved and lost, then loved again.  I pondered, feared, and wondered.  In the end, I earned the stories I have to tell the hard way: by living them.

The irony is that I never wanted to be a writer.  Oh, I didn’t try to avoid it or anything.  I just always assumed that writing was something that other people did.  I mean, one hundred and twenty thousand words, all in a row?  There was no way...

If Boys will be Boys, then what will Girls be?

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We live in a time where equality is a light at the end of the tunnel.  We can see it, reach for it, but never quite know what it feels like.  We’re so close that it will only take a few more steps to get there, but we aren’t sure which direction we should be walking, and everyone is yelling at us to go a different way.

Our place as women is confusing.  I’m not saying that isn’t true for men as well, but their issues are best left for a different post.  Today, I want to think about the subtle...