Being an author, it’s amus­ing to see the type of feed­back you get on your books, espe­cially your char­ac­ters. Sins & Nee­dles has been get­ting some pretty var­ied feed­back, some of it which has me scratch­ing my head. Look, obvi­ously peo­ple see things dif­fer­ently and have dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of what they read. But from where I’m sit­ting, a lot of peo­ple have the same interpretation…and it’s kind of disheartening.

What am I talk­ing about here? My main char­ac­ter, Ellie Watt. She’s a real con artist. A liar, a thief, self­ish and inse­cure. She’s single-minded and holds grudges. She’s had a tough life and uses that as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what she does. Do I con­done her actions? Hell no. Do I think she has a lot of issues to sort through, that she needs to let some things go? Hell yes. But, I mean, come on…she’s not a drug run­ner, she’s not kid­nap­ping peo­ple and sell­ing them into slav­ery, she’s not phys­i­cally abu­sive, she’s not rap­ing any­body, she’s not cheat­ing on loved ones.

And yet, quite a few women HATE her. I see their updates, their reviews…they can’t stand her, they don’t get her, they don’t give a shit if she’s had a tough life. And this is all because she’s a crim­i­nal. I have never in my life seen peo­ple get so worked up over a char­ac­ter before. Women are freak­ing LIVID over Ellie Watt.

AND YET if Ellie were a man, women wouldn’t say shit. Look at all your heroes these days: you have cheaters, abusers, killers, kid­nap­pers, rapists…women go nuts for these men, yet you make your FEMALE char­ac­ter a con artist and OH NO that’s the last straw.

If Ellie Watt were a hunky, hot man no one would com­plain. All would be forgiven.

And that’s the hon­est and sad truth. Women, whether it be in fic­tion or in real life, are so god damn nasty and judge­men­tal to each other. I’m not talk­ing about this book specif­i­cally, but just every­where. Blogs, the media, movies, TV shows, even in books. Women can be down­right cruel.

Am I a fem­i­nist? No. Not by a long shot. I remove myself from any sort of fem­i­nist move­ment, just like I remove myself from veg­an­ism or chris­tian­ity or any­thing really extreme. I’m a mid­dle ground type of per­son. I like clean eat­ing, but I eat meat. I believe in God but I don’t go to church. I am all for women’s rights but I still think a man should be a man and hold the doors open for us.

And I believe that women should learn to be a hell of a lot nicer to each other.

This hatred of how a female can be so manip­u­la­tive and self­ish is com­pletely justified…providing that a man would get the same treat­ment in that sit­u­a­tion. But for the most part they don’t. It’s kind of like when you have a boss who’s a woman…the minute she acts harsh and author­i­ta­tive, she’s labeled a BITCH. But the minute a man does the same, he’s called powerful.

I mean, look at Javier. With­out spoil­ing too much, he freak­ing kills some­one in cold blood…and yet women still like him. Could you imag­ine the out­cry if a woman did the same?

This hatred goes so far, that even Ellie’s own per­sonal redemp­tion is over­looked. She sac­ri­fices her­self at the end of the story and I’ve seen peo­ple say that was really self­ish of her…I’m sorry, but what?…hoooooooooow did you come to that con­clu­sion? 0_0

I’m always going to write char­ac­ters that are real and flawed, peo­ple that read­ers won’t nec­es­sar­ily like.  It’s just what I do and I’m not immune to con­tro­versy. But if bad boys get all the love, why not bad girls? Why can’t read­ers find the redeemable qual­i­ties in a bad girl if they can do the same for a boy?

I know this is just a fact of life, but it doesn’t have to be. The world be a lot bet­ter if women could be nicer to each other, more com­pas­sion­ate and sup­port­ive, instead of view­ing each other as the enemy. I know it’s kind of the way we are, and I’ve been guilty of this too, but we deserve to treat each other better…fiction or not.

Aaaaaaaand end rant

Pick up the intrigu­ing Ellie Watt today, still 99 cents on Ama­zon until March 1st