After meeting Violette Malan at ConFusion in Detroit a few weeks back, I wanted to find out a little more about her take on the genre near and dear to my heart, sword-and-sorcery. I asked her if she’d be interested in dropping by Black Gate to say a few words about how she approached her own work in the field, and here’s what she had to say:
When I found sword and sorcery in my teens, there weren’t a lot of strong female protagonists for me to relate to. Jirel of Joiry comes to mind, maybe Red Sonya – but they were already very old by the time I got to them. When I think now of the books and stories I read then, I’m hard pressed to come up with female characters, let alone female protagonists. There must have been some. You know, needing rescuing or marrying or something, but I didn’t find them memorable then, and I don’t really find them memorable now. Okay, I do remember the women that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser loved, they were well-drawn, significant people. But we all know what happened to them, don’t we? They pretty much continue the tradition of female characters in western literature: if it’s a comedy they marry, if it’s a tragedy, they die. (Hint: for all their humorous elements, the F&GM stories aren’t comedies)
Flash forward a few years and I’m a writer of sword and sorcery, not just a reader. I’m a woman, living in a post-feminist western society, a person who’s written feminist literary criticism (okay, on 18th-century pastoral poetry, but it still counts). Now I get to actually create the kind of female characters I used to imagine when I was young. Protagonists, mind you, real, more-or-less human women. Not the good (or evil) fairies, queens, and goddesses that sociologists and feminist critics call examples of women as “other”.
How was I going to do that? Keeping in mind that – unlike the men – I didn’t have a lot of models I could use as a guide. And keeping in mind that I wanted to avoid either caricature, or cliché. (I think the phrase “no chain mail bras” will cover what I mean by that). I’m not going to talk about how a writer goes about forming any strong character – there are certain elements that apply no matter who or what the character might be. Instead, I’m going to address my own particular dilemma, how to create a strong, female, sword and sorcery protagonist.
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Delia Sherman is a phenomenal writer. It doesn’t matter if it’s a short story or a novel – she’ll getchya, getchya, getchya. If Delia Sherman were a city she’d be called Awesometown. If she were a drink special she’d be a Red-Headed Bookgasm. If she were a bare knuckle boxer in a space western her name would be Elly Gant McWinFists. But thankfully she is a writer and, Eris on fire, where have you been if you’re not reading her books?
This week Black Gate picks up where we left off in 
Nathan Long is a novelist best known for his work in the Warhammer universe, most notably for his Black Hearts series and Ulrika the Vampire series, as well as penning the new adventures of the classic Warhammer duo, Gotrek & Felix. Recently, Nathan’s
The first time I saw 
The thing is, I love 
