Guest Post–Eileen Schuh, Author
Thank you, Lucinda, for inviting me to participate in your "Feminine Tuesday" blog. I feel I'm qualified to contribute not only because I am a female author, but also because my protagonists are always female.
My protagonists are always female, not because I'm a feminist but because even after half-a-century (or so) of living I have no clue about how the male mind works.
It's not that I don't have male characters. I do. It's just that I don't feel capable of giving them starring roles. I find it easier to entice my readers into cheering for the lady than for a man. Oh…wait a minute. Perhaps I am a feminist.
Fiction writers, myself included, often have no idea why they write, or why they write what they do. We usually blame the mystical, magical, persistent, and annoying muses for putting ideas and words into our heads and whipping us if we don't type
what they're dictating.
We leave it to the reviewers, marketers, and English teachers to find the symbolism, parse the sentences, determine the climax, and interpret the symbols. Thus, when my
publisher advised me she intended to market SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT not only to the
SciFi crew but to Women's Lit enthusiasts I was thrown for more than just a little loop.
After thinking about it briefly, I realized she was right. The story might be complicated by two universes and two lives, but the issues Chordelia struggles with in both worlds are women's issues.
I'm not sure the story provides much help to women, though. It's not like we can all skip into a parallel universe to escape what's bugging us—not that that's what Chordelia did, but it was definitely what she wanted to do. Perhaps that's the lesson
the English teachers will find—the only way women can deal with problems is to
face them. Or, depending on which alternate reality those teachers inhabit, maybe they'll find an entirely different lesson in SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT.
My heroine in THE TRAZ (my other novel—written for at-risk teens and the adults in their lives) is 13-year old Katrina. She is…well, I always want to say 'feisty'. However, I've been warned several times by agents and editors that they hate 'feisty' heroines (mostly because the word is overused). So I say Katrina is abrasive, annoying, beautiful, clever, and scores very high in psychopathy on the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory.
She uses her wits, wiles, wiggles and smiles to survive…and does it quite well. Except those traits also put her in dire circumstances—where surviving is never a sure thing. I'm not sure what the English teachers will make of THE TRAZ. Perhaps they'll tell
their young readers to examine closely their behavior and decisions because what one does in one's teen years can ruin one's life forever. Or perhaps they'll tell them nothing—just make them write a book report based on the discussion guide at the back of the novel.
After all, writing essays was the punishment Katrina's father doled out when he discovered that Katrina was….
Well, you'll have to read the novel to uncover the rest of that story. Both books are available on Amazon and Smashwords and at other fine book retailers.
Lucinda has invited me back next month to discuss my very own personal feminine issues that were the incentive to write my novels. Watch for it!
I invite you all to visit me on my website and blog.
Eileen Schuh, Author
Schrodinger's Cat Smashwords Amazon
The Traz Smashwords Amazon
blog
http://eileenschuh.blogspot.com
Thank you Eileen for sharing your voice with us.
Lucinda Moebius
