Ode to Women
I want to say something about women.
Recently updating my website, I decided that the picture that has decorated my landing page no longer really fits my writing. The gorgeous, pouty-lipped woman in her bra, her head tipped back…I love this image. I love it because she’s gorgeous and the greys and the pinks appeal to me—in fact they’re the colours I’m working with on my newly formed Instagram account, and they were the colours I wore when eventing my silver-white gelding as a teenager.
But the picture definitely screams sex, and I’m leaning more towards psych thrillers these days.
All my books feature amazing women. Not perfect women. Women who have a lot to learn—but are willing to learn it. And I just frigging love women. I love how they think, how they reflect, how they laugh, how expressive they are. I love Clementine Ford and Catherine Deveny, Brene Brown and Glennon Doyle. Elizabeth Gilbert and my circle of friends. I love feminism and female writers. And I write strong, smart, flawed women. Women who have been through stuff and grown and learnt. They’re not going to fall off the page, smart and kind and wonderful at age twenty-two for you to love. They’re earning their knowledge and that is hard and messy and not always loveable. But they’re my people. I love these women.
And the pictures I choose—for covers or Instagram or my website—I know they’re beautiful women and conventional beauty standards can be troublesome on so many levels. But while I think that from a commercial point of view, beautiful people on covers is required (though it’s really more man abs in the romance genre that sells), I also love their body language. There’s something that has drawn me to all of these women. The look in their eyes, the confident abandon in their head thrown back, their exposed décolletage. They look strong and awesome and self-aware.
And I just love them.
That is all.
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