D.B.Reynolds Day 2 - Alpha Females

Please welcome D.B.Reynolds back for her second day of guest blogging. Just before the post, here's the blurb for Raphael to whet your appetite:-

Malibu, California—home to rock-and-roll gods and movie stars, the beautiful, the rich . . . and vampires.

Powerful and charismatic, Raphael is a Vampire Lord, one of the few who hold the power of life and death over every vampire in existence. Thousands call him Master and have pledged absolute loyalty on their very lives. But when, in a brazen and deadly daylight attack, a gang of human killers kidnaps the one female vampire he’d give his life for, Raphael turns to a human investigator to find his enemies before it’s too late.

Cynthia Leighton is smart, tough and sexy, a private investigator and former cop who’s tired of spying on cheating spouses and digging out old bank accounts. When Raphael asks for her help in tracking down the kidnappers, Cyn’s happy to accept. But she soon realizes her greatest danger comes not from the humans, but from Raphael himself.

Battling Russian mobsters and treacherous vampires, and betrayed by those they trusted, Cyn and Raphael find themselves fighting for their lives while caught up in a passion of blood and violence that is destined to destroy them both.

Now over to D.B. (LesleyW)

Just a reminder to everyone that I’m running a book giveaway during my two days on the island. Anyone who comments on either day will have his/her name put in the hat for a signed copy of my first book, RAPHAEL, releasing on March 31st from ImaJinn Books.

When I was looking for a publisher for RAPHAEL, the first book in my forthcoming Urban Fantasy series, Vampires in America, I checked out all the sites to see what editors were looking for. A lot of them specified not just an alpha male protagonist, but an alpha female protagonist, as well -- which was good for me, because my heroine, Cynthia Leighton is very much an alpha. A lot has been written about the bad boy, the alpha male, and why he’s so popular. But there’s very little discussion of alpha females, even though publishers look for them.

Writing an alpha female can be tricky. You want her to be strong and self reliant, someone who takes charge in an emergency, someone who doesn’t sit and wait for the big man to show up and save the day. But at the same time, she shouldn’t be a ball buster. She has to be soft and feminine, and sexually desirable. She has to need her alpha male to protect and cherish her, even though she’s fully capable of protecting herself.

This is pretty much analogous to what women face in the workplace every day, especially women in positions of authority and/or power over men. The job requires a woman to be tough and take charge, but society, and the men she works with, expect her to be a woman. The most common criticism I’ve heard of women bosses is the dreaded “B” word. And most of the time, it’s for behavior that, in a man, would be considered assertive, aggressive, admirable. All the “A” words.

The same problem arises when writing such a character. For example, Elena in Kelley Armstrong’s wonderful Otherworld series. Elena certainly doesn’t start out very alpha-ish. Not in my view. She’s conflicted and indecisive, clinging to Phillip not because she loves him – although she does on some level – but because he’s paternal and wants to take care of her. He smoothes out the rough edges of life, so Elena doesn’t have to deal with them at all. The interesting thing about Elena is that in order to get along with the very alpha Clay, she must assert her own alphaness. Otherwise, he’ll keep her tucked safely into a velvet padded room where nothing will ever harm her. And so we see Elena grow into her role to the point where many readers now believe she’ll be the Pack Alpha successor to Jeremy.

Anita Blake, Laurell K. Hamilton’s bestselling vampire hunter, is alpha from the very beginning. She’s all bristling attitude and carries a huge chip on her shoulder that warns men not to even THINK about opening a door for her, thank you very much. And as the series goes on, she becomes even more so, asserting her alphaness over even the most alpha of her many lovers, effectively transforming all of her males into betas.

My own preference is for a sharing of power, an alpha female paired with an alpha male who respects her enough to admit her ability to take care of herself, but who still stands at her side, because he needs to protect her. Suzanne Brockmann’s Navy SEAL books are full of such women and men. Alyssa, Tess, Lindsey and all the others are strong and accomplished women who can take on whatever the world throws at them and handle it. And yet they’re paired with uberAlpha men whose natural instinct is to protect, to stand in front and never let anything touch the people he loves. Brockmann does a great job of showing the conflicts that arise when these personalities meet. Some of the women deal with it more gracefully than others, some of the men find it easier to accept than others. But every one of these couples faces that challenge and overcomes it.

In examining all of the above alpha females, I was struck by something I see in my own alpha females, as well. Fictional alpha females almost always come from damaged backgrounds. They’re strong because they’ve had to be, because life has thrown them some pretty awful curves. The loss of a beloved parent at an early age, a childhood of isolation or foster care, a brutal first husband, or even worse assault and/or rape. There’s some trauma these women have survived and come out stronger. An alpha male can have a loving and supportive family behind him. He doesn’t always, but it is accepted. Not so for the alpha female.
In my own books, my female protagonists – Cynthia Leighton in the first two books and Abbey Stratton in the third – are both survivors. Their traumas were very different, but they both come into the story already damaged by life. Which means that while they don’t mind being rescued, they don’t hang around and wait for it either. They save themselves so that when their knight shows up on his white charger all they have to do is hop on and catch a ride home, grateful for having a broad back to hang onto for the ride.

In closing, I want to thank LesleyW and Christine once again for letting me drop in on the island, and thank all of you for reading. And don’t forget, anyone who comments gets a chance at an autographed copy of RAPHAEL as soon as it’s released on March 31st. Thank you all and I hope to see you on the web at http://dbreynolds.wordpress.com/.