Here come the girls.

I enjoying writing strong female characters in my books, which you may find a strange thing to be said by an early thirties man, but it’s true. It probably comes from being around strong women while I was growing up. Both of my grandmothers and my mother have been examples of taking on the troubles of life and not backing down against them. My younger sister is the same. These types of characters are all throughout my books.

When I was staring my novel Ritual of Blood, the first character that came to me was a strong female: the vampire Lucinda. She was stronger, more beautiful and extremely more vicious than any other vampire that was going to be in the book, either male or female. Though she takes a subservient role to her vampire master, Sebastian, it is because she has chosen to do so, and she still manages to do things on her own terms.

In Killing Time, Nicole Hutton finds her own inner strength as she moves out of her mother’s house to her own place. Plagued by her troubled early childhood at the hands of her step-mother, and an oppressive ex-boyfriend, Nicole’s confidence grows with her new found independence, and helps her stand up to the demons of her past, and face the demon of her present – the Dark Man.

It is Shauna Spinner in the Ramton Gallow Mysteries series that I feel really stands out in The Witch of Primrose Hill as the strong one of the three main characters. She keeps a level head when Daniel Grade is so convinced that Mrs Harris is a witch, and the one responsible for the death of a boy from their school, that he wants to rush off and tell the police before having anything more substantial than just rumour, and convinces him to get proof first. She is also good to have around if they need to get their homework done or escape from those under the Witch’s spell. I do have a story idea just for Shauna, but whether it will be a novel or just a short story, only time will tell.

The current young adult horror novel I’m working on, Falling Star, also has a strong female character driving the plot, Katie Jenkins. Though I do have some concerns about my ability to make her come across as a believable fifteen year old girl, I am having a lot of fun writing her, and watching her grow as a character.

I do believe that strong female characters are not to be overlooked, especially in the horror genre, and I look forward to meeting many more in my novels to come.