Empowering Entertainment ... and Why it Matters to You

Image credit Empowering entertainment?  Hope you had a great New Year's holiday. I took a wonderful, luxurious holiday break with my family and feel refreshed and ready for the new year and all the great things it holds! 

Today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the phrase, "empowered entertainment." Now you might be wondering what I mean by that or more likely, why it should matter to you. 

I've been doing a little research into the "why" of my business. Why do I write books? Easy--because I love to tell stories and adore taking you along on the journey with me. But why do I write the type of books that I do? Novels, fiction, entertaining--yes, yes and yes--but there are other stories I could tell. What I realized as I looked back over my works thus far is a common theme: empowerment. 

In all of my books, bad things happen (just like in real life). But it's what the characters do with that bad thing that makes all the difference. If you're like me, you enjoy reading books where the protagonist ends up a little bit of a changed man or woman by the last page. Maybe you love the Jack Reacher novels because Jack always serves up justice. Perhaps you're drawn to books by Sue Grafton because Kinsey always gets herself into crazy situations and somehow always manages to extract herself in creative ways.  
Why it Matters to You So why does the fact that my books have an "empowerment" theme  matter to you? Because empowered readers tend to be adventurous readers. The type of reader who not only wants a good story, but to learn something, too. As a reader you don't just want to sit back and be passive. Instead, you're seeking truth, justice, victory--whatever the case may be--in addition to being entertained. 

I've planned some other blog posts about this topic, and you'll see a lot more posts from me in the next several weeks. In fact, my goal is to share a post each weekday until the end of January. Stay tuned, and as always I'd love to hear from you via a comment, on Twitter or Facebook.  

Take care, 
-J.P.