Let me be clear upfront that, no, I am not the one who set myself on fire. I did almost set my house on fire once. Pasta sauce-making incident, we’ll leave it for another time. But I did not set myself on fire.
So where did that nigh clickbaity title above come from? If I’m not the one setting myself ablaze, who is?
Marybelle Flint, the protagonist of my most recent anthology contribution, that’s who. If you’ve followed my newsletter or blogs from a couple of months back, you might recall that fighting against a log jam anyway, I elected to take a brief break from working on the third Roc Rider novel to focus on getting this anthology story that’s due in April knocked out.
Not only does Marybelle defeat the antagonist in part by setting herself on fire, she does so with both hands quite literally tied behind her back. Does that make Marybelle the most badass female protagonist ever? Now that I’ve not so subtly implanted that idea in your minds, I’ll say I’m going to leave it up to the readers to decide.
A character setting herself on fire isn’t the first first this story represents for me. This as-yet-untitled story is also the first time:
- I’ve included magic with a necessary verbal component.
- Sewing something has been a necessary part of the plan to defeat the antagonist.
- I’ve had a maximum word count limit and actually stayed UNDER it in the first draft. Seriously, how did that even happen? My mind is still reeling.
There are some things that it isn’t the first time for in this story. Having a female character come to a male character’s rescue is a good example. In fact, as I was composing this blog, I came to the interesting realization that the first Roc Rider novel is the only book I’ve written wherein there isn’t a scene involving a female character coming to the rescue of a male character.
And then, as I was typing that last sentence, I remembered that Marta saves her son Randal from being assassinated by the Skull-Eyed Man in the first Roc Rider novel. This means there is literally no book I’ve written so far that doesn’t include a female character coming to a male character’s rescue.
The patterns you discover in yourself can be fascinating sometimes, can’t they? This is one I have no desire to break, although I’m not going to try and force it either way. If it keeps happening, awesome. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too. It can be a trivia question about me someday. “What was the first book of Aaron Volner’s where a female character doesn’t rescue a male character?”
Funny, I’ve never before considered the possibility of there being trivia questions about me someday. I guess there really is a first time for everything.
