Teresa Roberts shares her thoughts on Heroines with Agency

On Heroines with Agency

Earlier this month I—like most of the women I know—saw Wonder Woman. I came out of the theater babbling gleefully about bits that made my night. I’d like to see it again on the big screen, which I don’t often say, and my husband and I will add it to our collection when it becomes available. (I mention my husband here I think it’s significant that he, a long time superhero fan who introduced me to the joys of Marvel and DC, also thought the movie was terrific.)

I’m almost afraid, though, to say I didn’t find Wonder Woman the life-changing experience some fans found it.  It’s a terrific superhero movie and I love that neither Diana nor Steve becomes a lust object for the camera. The filming is done in such a way that the fact that both Gal Gadot and Chris Pine are exceptionally good-looking people isn’t a focus of who their characters are. Competent? Check. Smart? Check. Able to kick serious ass? Check. Reasonably calm while coming to terms with being in an entirely new version of reality? Check. That they’re easy on the eyes is almost a bonus feature. (Compare to the focus on Black Widow’s ass in black leather in the Avengers movies...or for that matter, any time Thor is shirtless in the same movies. The camera lingers to make sure you have time to ogle.) But I think it seemed less astonishing to me to see a heroine not depicted through the “male gaze”, a heroine who’s doing her own thing but is glad that someone competent (who also happens to be hot) has her back, than it was for a lot of people.

You see, I write science fiction romance and paranormal romance. I read romance and urban fantasy, obsessively.

I’m used to heroines with agency.

While the romance genre used to be famous for heroines in need of rescue, it’s no longer true. While the genre still has its share of capture romances and women who need rescuing by tough guys (who in turn need emotional rescue), there are plenty of women doing the rescuing. Better yet, couples bond while battling aliens, or dealing with demons—or dancing through challenging reality together. Sometimes she’ll get in over her head and need some help, sometimes he will. But they’re both strong and competent and they find each other’s abilities just as sexy as their bodies. Granted, our heroes are always hot, and they always find the heroines compellingly beautiful. It’s part of the fun. But at its best, romance shows women in a central role and celebrates true partnership between women and men (and men and men, and women and women, but in this point I’m talking more about relationships between women and men.)  In my opinion, the subgenres that deal with the out-of-this-world and the otherworldly do it particularly well. 

But whether you’re enjoying an interracial pair of Civil War spies (Alyssa Cole’s An Extraordinary Union); a pair of cyber operatives infiltrating the headquarters of alien terrorists (Cara Bristol’s Trapped with the Cyborg);  or two powerful supernatural beings from opposing factions who can’t decide if they want to shack up or murder each other (basically anything in Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series), you can find plenty of women with agency and men who love them that way, even though they occasionally want to wrap them in something soft and protect them. And even in old-school “bodice rippers”, you’ll find heroines such as sea captain Skye O’Malley in the book of that name by Bertrice Small. Definitely some rapey moments that’ll make most modern readers uncomfortable, but she’s an Elizabethan pirate...or is that privateer...who matches wits with Queen Elizabeth and wins. What’s not to like?

I’m not saying romances with tough, fierce heroines undermine the importance—or the fun—of Wonder Woman. Just saying that comics and movies, often created with a male audience in mind, are finally catching up with the heroines, and the dynamics a genre written mostly by and for women has featured for a long time. 

Author Bio: Teresa Noelle Roberts is the author of a science fiction romance series The Chronicles of the Malcolm, which is full of tough, smart heroines working with and sometimes rescuing their heroes, and several kinky romances featuring submissive heroines who are anything but outside the bedroom.

Teresa is a geeky granola girl who enjoys belly dance, superheroes, yoga, cooking, hiking, playing in the ocean, and growing more vegetables than she and her husband can possibly eat. She’d enjoy sleeping too. She thinks. But it takes so much time!

She shares her home in southern Massachusetts with her husband, a Leo in law enforcement, and three cats. She and her husband often plan vacations around food, history, and/or proximity to water.

Subscribe to Teresa’s newsletter at http://www.teresanoelleroberts.com/?page_id=1485. Learn more about Teresa at http://www.teresanoelleroberts.com. If you’d rather be conversational, follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/TeresNoeRoberts or become a Facebook fan at http://www.facebook.com/AuthorTeresaNoelleRoberts.

Teresa Noelle Roberts shares Buck Naked.

I'm so excited. Teresa Noelle Roberts is sharing her BUCK, NAKED book with us. I'll try to be mature and behave, but no promises...

So licks get to it...opps. I meant 'let's get to it.'

BUCK, NAKED

Chronicles of the Malcolm 3

Blurb:

To save him, she must strip him bare.

Security expert Buck’s senses are inhumanly keen, to the point he can see through time and space, and that’s just the start of his odd abilities—thank you, alien captors. He also experiences paranoia, flashbacks, and the occasional hallucination—thank you, PTSD. No wonder he fears he could hurt one of the Malcolm crewmates he lives to protect, the closest thing to family he has left after the destruction of his home planet.

Brilliant scientist Aleema can teach him how to use his modifications without triggering PTSD. She’s survived the same meddling aliens and suffered even more dramatic alterations. At least her unwanted immortality means she’s had time to figure out how the modifications work and use the knowledge to aid other survivors. Helping Buck means spending some serious time together.

Time enough to fall in love.

Just as happiness seems within their grasp, Aleema realizes one of Buck’s modifications dooms him to an unthinkable future. To save him, she must place herself in the hands of their common enemy and leave Buck to face his worst fears without her.

Buy links:

Amazon / B&N Nook / iTunes / Kobo / 

All Romance Ebooks

If you've read the previous Chronicles of the Malcolm books, Thrill-Kinky and Bad Kitty, you already know Buck's a little damaged. In this book, we learn he was the victim of alien medical experiments as a POW, and they've had lasting effects--ones that will either make him more than human or destroy him. Scientist Aleema may be the only person who can help him, but she's been warped by the same aliens. This except shows an early interaction in which they’re still feeling each other out. Buck’s jumpy about Aleema’s obvious alien differences, but still fascinated by her as a person—and specifically as a woman.

He reached for his laserpistol. Most of the time, folks didn’t catch him drawing until it was too late.

But Aleema just shook her head and grabbed his wrist. “No, Buck,” she said calmly, not raising her voice. “I’m not your enemy.”

He grabbed the knife in his other hand, raised it to a defensive position.

Then he let it clatter to the cutting board, feeling as if his hand had lost all his strength, though she hadn’t touched it.

He looked down at his trapped wrist. The hand that was wrapped around it was the webbed one, gleaming with faint iridescence in the kitchen’s light. The skin felt human, though, and right against his. Marling stars, it felt calming, as if it was slowing his pulse down by pressing against it.

Not trapped. Protected. Kept from doing what he could see now would be wrong.

“You caught my hand before I could draw,” he muttered. “Never had someone do that, ’cept for one of Xia’s men and he’s a felinoid and a martial arts champion, so he’s faster than a fold-drive when he wants to be. And we were just sparring so I wasn’t quick as I get when…when I’m listening to the horrors.”

She took a deep breath and to his shock, smiled warmly. “My hand caught your hand. The thinking parts of my brain had nothing to do with it. I’ve made myself forget most of what the Seera did to me, or ignore it, but when I’m threatened, or someone else is, it comes back.”

“You didn’t hurt me. You could have.” The knife had started out on the counter. If she could move that fast, she could have grabbed it. For all he knew, she could have done some serious damage unarmed.

“I could have. I chose not to, because I knew deep down you didn’t want to harm me. I’d just moved in too quickly and startled you. Am I right?”

He nodded. “The horrors started up, and they were right convincing. I might have hurt you if you weren’t Seera-fast like me. If I’d hurt you, I’d have come to my senses and wouldn’t want to live with myself. Then I’d remember I’d have to live with myself because every marling time I’ve tried to end it, the Seera bits take over and stop me. So thank you.”

Her grip shifted. Suddenly, instead of grasping his wrist, controlling it, Aleema was holding his hand.

He wanted to pull away.

Stars, he wanted to pick up the kitchen knife and hack his hand off to get it out of the weird, webbed grip.

But when her human hand closed over his other one, dark and warm and steady, he wanted to stay there forever. Wanted to keep looking at the lines of her face and the light in black eyes that he’d thought of as lightless. He’d been wrong about that, though. He suspected that what he was seeing in them was the capital-L Light that Gan talked about.

The horrors and those other instincts, the ones that sometimes made sense, had both fallen silent. All Buck had left to fall back on was a man’s judgment.

He judged that maybe if she could forgive him for trying to attack him, he could forgive her for wearing her Seera scars, the marks of why she wasn’t ever going to be quite easy in herself or comfortable for other folks to be around, on the outside of her skin instead of inside like he mostly did.

Fact was, now that he’d put the right words on it, something he never found easy to do and especially not when the horrors and the Seera bits ganged up on his brain, that was a damn fool thing to have to forgive. Wasn’t like she’d gone out of her way to have her body fucked up to serve her criminal intent better, like Nitari Belesku had. She was a victim like he was, only he’d venture she’d found better ways to deal with it.

The other fact was, her hands felt good clasped to his. Even though he could feel the webs on the left one, could tell it wasn’t a standard-issue human hand, it was still warm. Still felt both strong, like he’d expect from a big, competent, handsome woman like Aleema, and soft, like she used something feminine and sweet-smelling to keep the skin smooth as possible despite the hint of scaling. And the hand that was purely human felt better than that first warming hit of whiskey coursing through his veins. Just from her touch, he felt a shine worthy of a few good glasses of booze, drunk down fast.

Author Bio: Teresa Noelle Roberts started writing stories in kindergarten and she hasn’t stopped yet. A prolific author of short erotica, she’s also a published poet and fantasy writer—but sexy science fiction romances, BDSM-spiced contemporaries, and hot paranormals, and have become her favorites.

Teresa is a crunchy granola girl who enjoys belly dance, yoga, cooking, hiking, playing in the ocean, and growing more vegetables than she and her husband can possibly eat. She’d enjoy sleeping too. She thinks. But it takes so much time!

She shares her home in southern Massachusetts with her husband, a Leo in law enforcement, and three cats. She and her husband often plan vacations around food, history, and/or proximity to water.

Subscribe to Teresa’s newsletter at http://www.teresanoelleroberts.com/?page_id=1485. Learn more about Teresa at http://www.teresanoelleroberts.com. If you’d rather be conversational, follow her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/TeresNoeRoberts or become a Facebook fan at http://www.facebook.com/AuthorTeresaNoelleRoberts.