What’s a strong female character?

So... strong female characters. As opposite to what? Female characters? As if “weak” is implied in “female”?

Well, the truth is that female characters have not had great treatment in our storytelling tradition. And then came the “strong female characters” (SFC), and things kind of changed. Kind of, because many of these SFC fit in stories that were modeled after stories with male protagonists in patriarchal societies. Sometimes these characters are written as different from other women and this differentiation makes them unique and sometimes even special and better than other women, as if being less “feminine”, whatever that means, were a plus point to a character.

So I’m confused here. What’s the point of writing strong women if the main characteristic of these characters is to be unlike other women? I mean, doesn’t that undermine all women? And I’m perfectly fine with stories of women who cannot fit-in with standards imposed on women, but what I don’t really appreciate is when these women are made to appear superior to other women.

Something else that bothers me with SFC is that they often want to belong in a world of men, and have mainly male characters as friends. Again, it seems that these female characters are written as “better” than their female counterparts for not spending time with other women.

One final problem with “strong female characters” is the idea that a love story somehow undermines these characters. This is a lot less common than the other points, but it happens. Of course, there’s the other way around too, some female characters who are awesome, only to be reduced when finding love. There needs to be a balance there. Male characters, especially in adventure and fantasy, usually “get the girl” without any judgment on the character.

So, with all that, there comes my novel, Karina’s Silver Shoes, which is aimed mainly at girls aged 12 to 15. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I did my best to write female characters that are normal girls who enjoy being girls and enjoy being friends with girls. I think it’s important for girls to read about characters that are cool being who they are. Of course, friendships are not perfect. There are challenges. But the idea was to have a large cast of female characters dominating the story, in the same way a lot of traditional fantasy have a large cast of male characters. In fact, my original plan was to have very few male characters; they wouldn’t even talk to each other, but I ended up expanding their role, because it’s silly to do to male characters what authors have done to female characters for millennia. So there are some male characters, and I hope the readers like them.

Some readers have noted that Karina’s Silver Shoes has “strong female characters”, and it’s cool, but I was really aiming at something different and unlike most of the SFC we have seen in popular culture lately. Did I succeed? Let me know! 

Denise Marques Leitao was born and raised in Brazil. When she’s not creating worlds and characters, she’s discussing the meaning of the Universe with her son, writing unintellectual poetry, podcasting about popular culture, or teaching. She lives in Montreal, Canada, and has a Master’s in English Literature.

To learn more about Denise, get news, bonus materials and preview chapters, visit http://denisemarquesleitao.com.

Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

The home siding fulfills an imperative need. It works like insulation, shielding away the home and protecting it from the cruel weather elements. Insulation is supposed to keep the area amongst itself and the walls free of moisture, dirt, and bugs. Moisture is usually the most critical concern for homeowners. If insulation goes within the walls, it might result in blight and mold. Likewise, it can cause structural wear and tear to home by distorting and bowing any of the footings. The siding assists in preventing wreck and water from going into the walls and insulation of your house, and lessens the possibility for any moisture growth.

Here we are going to talk about 5 of the several reasons why siding adds significance to your property and why it is worthy to hire professional siding contractor Downriver Michigan.


Before anything else, your visitors will observe the siding of your house. So it bodes well to make your home's siding look great. Vinyl, fiberglass, aluminum, and fiber cement are the siding materials that can be molded and designed to suit a home with any architectural style. Siding gives a completely new look to your home and holds its beauty for years to come with minimal maintenance. Present-day siding can be finished with wood grain or smooth grain. Regardless of what style your home has, there is a kind of siding for every style that is ideal for your requirements.


Siding can face rain, hail, wind, ice, sun, and snow for decades. It neither needs to be painted nor peels, splits, or fades. Modern hard siding materials stand tough against a beating without giving a hint of depletion. Also, all it takes is a garden hose to keep clean.

Now available from GeekNation Press is the parnomral romance Handbook for Mortals by Lani Sarem. You can purchase the title on Amazon and on Handbooks Series website.

Zade Holder has always been a free-spirited young woman, from a long dynasty of tarot-card readers, fortunetellers, and practitioners of magick. Growing up in a small town and never quite fitting in, Zade is determined to forge her own path. She leaves her home in Tennessee to break free from her overprotective mother Dela, the local resident spellcaster and fortuneteller.

Zade travels to Las Vegas and uses supernatural powers to become part of a premiere magic show led by the infamous magician Charles Spellman. Zade fits right in with his troupe of artists and misfits. After all, when everyone is slightly eccentric, appearing ''normal'' is much less important.

Behind the scenes of this multimillion-dollar production, Zade finds herself caught in a love triangle with Mac, the show's good-looking but rough-around-the-edges technical director and Jackson, the tall, dark, handsome and charming bandleader. Zade's secrets and the struggle to choose between Mac or Jackson creates reckless tension during the grand finale of the show. Using Chaos magick, which is known for being unpredictable, she tests her abilities as a spellcaster farther than she's ever tried and finds herselfat death's door. Her fate is left in the hands of a mortal who does not believe in a world of real magick, a fortuneteller who knew one day Zade would put herself in danger and a dagger with mystical powers...

Handbook for Mortals is the first book in the series of this urban fantasy, paranormal romance series by author Lani Sarem.

Following Zade through the trials--and romance--of finding her own place in the world, readers will identify with their own struggles to fit in, reflected in the fantastic, yet mundane world of Zade's life.

Handbook for Mortals is in development as a motion picture set to debut in 2018.

When did you become interested in storytelling?

I wrote my first script when I was 11 but I probably had the desire even earlier than that.

What was your first book/story published?

Hmm..well this is my first book!

What inspired you to write Handbook for Mortals?

It was a few different things. I used to work in David Copperfield’s theater. I also had a fiancée that became an ex-fiancée’…and I had a need to put my emotions somewhere and I love magick! 

What character in Handbook for Mortals is the most/least like you, and in what ways?

Now available to purchase on Amazon from Candiano Books is the erotic supernatural romance Rise of the Nephilim: A Blackmoore Prequel by Marcus James.

LOS ANGELES, summer of 1987.

Kathryn Blackmoore, the 26 year old heir to Blackmoore World Corp. and the future matriarch of the Blackmoore dynasty of witches has fled the haunted old monied neighborhood of South Hill in Bellingham, Washington looking to trade in a century of rumors, superstition, and her own heartache for the sun, sex, and music of the Sunset Strip.

Taking up residence in the famed and decaying Chateau Marmont hotel, Kathryn quickly finds herself in an erotic and thrilling journey into the world of Niiq, Arish, and Kuri; members of the band Nephilim, who seem to have the women of the Strip enthralled by their dark and sensuous sound. When bodies begin to turn up all over town and a mysterious and haunting figure fixates on Kathryn, she quickly learns that you can never escape your destiny.

RISE OF THE NEPHILIM is the first of a two part erotic paranormal romance/thriller revealing the beginnings of one of the most captivating characters in The Blackmoore Legacy series. It is a standalone prequel of eroticism, romance, and suspense.

When did you become interested in storytelling?

At a young age. I remember I was in the first grade and I wrote a story about a young vampire that refused to go to sleep in his coffin and was determined to try to sleep upside down as a bat, but he couldn’t figure out how to stay as a bat long enough. I was six, so I can't imagine it was that great! When I was eleven is when it came on me quite suddenly that I could do it professionally, and that really it was the only thing I was meant to do.

What was your first book/story published?

I acquired my first literary agent at the age of nineteen for a novel called Instructions In Flesh. It didn’t go anywhere and I wish I could say that it got cannibalized into other things, but it never really did. At this time I got my first short story deal with Alyson Books (for decades they were the Knopf/Random House of LGBT publishing houses) for a story titled The Politics of Gray, for an anthology called Ultimate Undies: Erotic Stories About Underwear and Lingerie. A year later, my first novella, Following The Kaehees was published after winning a writing competition. I was really out of the gates running from that point on.

What inspired you to write Rise of the Nephilim?

Well, I have this series, The Blackmoore Legacy (the first two books are Blackmoore and Symphony for the Devil) about this tormented and cursed family of witches, and one of the most popular characters is Kathryn Blackmoore, the central character's (Trevor Blackmoore) mother. I had been interested in both writing an erotic paranormal horror romance with a woman at the helm, as I normally write gay male main characters, and to tell the story of Kathryn as a young woman. A glimpse into the person she was when she was young, not a mother, and living her life somewhat carefree in the 1980’s, And Sunset Strip and that whole L.A. hair Metal-Gun’s n' Roses-partying scene was exactly where I knew she had been. It was a place of reinvention back then, and Kathryn was a young woman escaping a lot of stuff.

What character in Rise of the Nephilim is the most/least like you, and in what ways?

For the age and the sort of devil may care attitude I would say Kathryn is most like me. At 25/26 I was a live-by-night kind of person. I went to bars, saw bands play pretty much every night. I shopped and drank and rebelled. For the first part of my twenties I didn’t really act ‘my age' for a variety of reasons/circumstances that were going on, so I started living it up later in my twenties. There was a great exercise in freedom/adulthood that made life a sort of adventure every night.

The least like me would have to be Sheffield Burges-Kathryn's love interest and future husband in the main series (deceased)-he was simply everything I wasn’t in school. Popular, a jock, prom king, etc. I probably would have lusted after him growing up, but we are nothing alike.

What is your favorite part in Rise of the Nephilim?

I really love the first couple of chapters that take place eight years earlier in 1979. In Symphony for the Devil, it is mentioned that Kathryn was stalked by-and she later killed-a serial killer that had been named The Campus Slasher towards the end of her senior year. That whole scene is an homage to Halloween and to the Friday the 13th films. I had so much fun writing it, and it really plays like a classic slasher in your head, with witchcraft of course. I love Kathryn Blackmoore as my Final Girl. The Final Girl is such a great piece to the horror mythology, especially in slashers, and the fact that she is really the thing to be feared in the night because she’s a witch just makes it all the more awesome.

What was the hardest part to write?

Really just trying to capture the feeling and imagery of Los Angeles in the eighties. I wasn’t there. I was a toddler, so it required hours upon hours of research. I love research. I do it for all of my books, and I get obsessive with it. But this was about finding places/parties/shops etc. That don’t exist anymore. Like Scream, which was a goth party at the Embassy Hotel on the weekends. I had to track down flyers, dates of shows, who preformed on a specific night, etc. And that research for one thing took hours of combing through pictures and articles, and the comments on articles and so forth, to try to piece one chapter together. It’s important to me that if people who were there read Rise they will say “God, I remember that.” Or people who were at The Rainbow or The Whiskey will get the same feeling.

What would your ideal career be, if you couldn't be an author?

When it comes to choosing a birthday present for a friend, it can be difficult to know where to begin. If you're going to a party to celebrate their big day, you know you need to bring something, but you may worry that it's not the right sort of item. If you're not going to a birthday party, you might want to get something nice for your friend, but don't want to put them in an awkward position. However, you shouldn't neglect your friend just because you're unsure of yourself.

First of all, think about your friend's hobbies and interests and try to get them something tangentially related. This shows that you've been paying attention to the things that matter the most to them, but it also keeps you from trying to find something in a field that you know little about. So, if they are avid golfers, get a humorous mug about golfing, but don't try to buy them the latest golf club. Similarly, if your friend loves to swim, find something clever like personalized hooded towels from a respected company like Purple Pumpkin Gifts, which they'll enjoy every time they go swimming.

An alternative to buying your friend a traditional present is to get them an experience instead. Recent studies show that people remember and value experiences more than physical gifts most of the time. Find an adventure that you can do together, or get your friend something they can enjoy alone or with family. Consider a wine-tasting trip, river rafting, or tickets to a museum exhibit your friend has been wanting to see. These are gifts that your friend will get to enjoy twice, once while given and once while used.