Writing about those women was pretty easy because I had a strong picture of each of them as I began the first book. More challenging for me was the part of Book 1 that was more grounded in real life.

Specifically, how Tara’s friends, boyfriend, and family would react to her news that she was pregnant, but had never had sex and didn’t know how it had happened.

Being true to those characters was important to me.

My favorite occult and horror stories are the ones where in the beginning it’s unclear whether something truly supernatural is happening or whether the characters are misunderstanding the situation or being Gaslighted by someone.

Also, I wanted the ways Tara’s friends and family reacted to be realistic.

After all, if your college-aged daughter, sister, or girlfriend claimed she was pregnant but never had sexual intercourse, your first thought wouldn’t be “Oh, obviously she has a supernatural pregnancy.”

Like Tara’s friends and family, most of us would feel we at least needed to consider that the young woman might be repressing something, lying because she didn’t want to identify the father or for some other reason, or had become delusional. Our first thought would not be that she had a supernatural pregnancy.

Life Is Hard

Writing fiction is all about making life hard for your main character.

One way I did that was to create Tara as a character who is not religious. She doesn’t believe in any sort of god.

Her stepdad (whom she has always thought of as her dad), though, is very religious. His daughter’s virgin pregnancy seriously challenges his faith.

In one way, he knows he ought to be open to the idea because he believes that a virgin pregnancy occurred in the past and that Jesus might return. Yet logic tells him that such a thing is impossible, and if it were possible, the virgin mother would not be an atheist.

Tara and her mom, too, have a lot of tension even before the pregnancy. Like many mothers with oldest daughters, the two clash over Tara’s choices and aspirations as Tara becomes an adult.

Tara’s mother also fears that Tara is seeking attention because her littlest sister is very ill, and Tara stepped in to help parent the other kids.

A lot of Tara’s mother’s anger towards Tara is actually fear that she has failed her daughter and caused her to have some sort emotional or mental illness.

The Boyfriend And The Best Friend

At the beginning of Book 1 Tara plans to marry her boyfriend when she finishes college and before she starts medical school. Knowing how hard it is to be a parent, though, she’s very concerned about not getting pregnant, so she refrains from intercourse.

Minor Spoiler Below:

Her boyfriend is not too happy about that decision and his reaction to her pregnancy reflects that. While the way he treats her is less than ideal, I felt it was realistic that he wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that her pregnancy was supernatural. At that point, Tara herself didn’t believe that and was still seeking medical answers.

To make life harder for Tara, her best friend is also the boyfriend’s sister.

Tara and her friend also have a sibling -like relationship. Tara’s friend feels like she has always been the one who has messed up while Tara has been super-responsible. So it’s hard for her to process what Tara is telling her and easy for her to assume that Tara is just having a hard time accepting responsibility for her actions now that she’s done something others might see as a mistake.

Reflections

Tara’s friends’ and family members’ feelings about Tara’s predicament reflect more about themselves than about her.

Her dad, deeply religious, plunges headlong into a crisis of faith.

Her boyfriend assumes she’s behaved in a way that reflects his own life choices.

The one person who totally supports Tara from Day One is her littlest brother. Due to his age and personality he is open to and excited about the world. He sees odd and wondrous things in it all the time, and so easily believes Tara has a supernatural pregnancy.

Overall, I hope I showed realistic conflict between Tara and her friends and family rather than simply giving her friends and family who were unpleasant people (though, OK, maybe her boyfriend falls into that category).

That’s all for today. See you again next Wednesday when I’ll talk about why so many women loved The Da Vinci Code and how that inspired me.

Lisa

The post Mean Characters Or Reality? appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

For a lot of reasons, though, in actual practice men dominated certain areas. 

This was true in my area of practice, civil litigation.

I’d been a lawyer for about a year when I had a case where the young lawyer on the other side also was a woman. When we went to court, often we were the only two women lawyers in the courtroom.

We got to talking about that. After the case was over, we stayed in touch and became good friends, often sharing our experiences working for male partners.

Real Life Women Mentors v. Women in Fiction

Later in my career I explored starting my own practice (which I did about a year later). Women solo lawyers generously shared their time and advice on everything from how much I should pay to rent an office to how long it took them to get their practices into the black to how to find clients and learn new areas of law when needed.

Many men also served as mentors, but I mention the women because when I read novels and particularly when I watched movies I didn’t see my experience reflected. This was especially so in the genres of thriller, suspense, and horror.

When I did see a woman character, she was typically surrounded by men. If there were other women, they were presented as rivals either for men’s affection or for professional advancement.

The other thing that bothered me was how rarely women of different ages were depicted.

Again, this was most obvious in movies where there were few roles for women who looked to be older than late 30s. But I also noticed it in books where “middle-aged” seemed to serve as a shorthand for dumpy, frumpy, and/or dissatisfied or boring.

Age and Women in Fiction

Note: Minor spoilers ahead for Book 1 in the series.

When I wrote The Awakening, most important to me was telling a good story. I also wanted to reflect the variety of female friendships and mentors that exist in the real world, but seem invisible to many writers and directors.

My protagonist, Tara, is a college student. Nanor Kerkorian is old enough to be her grandmother.

After a short period of distrust on both sides, Nanor gives Tara information, advice, and guidance. The two don’t always agree, but they develop a relationship of mutual respect.

Tara finds great value in Nanor’s many decades of experience and accumulated wisdom.

Nanor tries to persuade Tara to adopt her views on Tara’s mystical pregnancy, but she respects Tara’s intelligence and determination even when she thinks it is wrongheaded.

Nanor’s granddaughter Kali, who is younger than Tara, also serves as a guide for Tara. She is the one who first connects Tara and Nanor, risking Nanor’s disapproval in doing so.

Former nun and professor of religious studies Sophia Gaddini also serves as a mentor to Tara. Sophia is in her mid-30s, so she is about 10 or 12 years older than Tara.

In the very first draft of The Awakening, Sophia had the thankless job of conveying historical information about the origins of religion and Christianity and about female deities. Basically, she got to speak all the research I did. I eventually cut almost all of that to keep the pace of the book fast.

What’s left of Sophia’s information, though, is what draws the most questions from readers who want to know how accurate it is. (Very, other than my embellishments of Andrew of Crete and creation of the Brotherhood of Andrew.)

What I love most about Tara’s and Sophia’s relationship is how it grows and develops.

Sophia is the first stranger to keep an open mind when Tara tells her about her virgin pregnancy. Initially, Tara relies on Sophia for practical help and emotional support. But as the books go along, the two women develop a more mutual friendship.

I loved writing a series of thrillers that featured varied and dynamic women characters who both conflict with and cooperate with one another, as happens in real life. Though The Awakening Series is now completed, I’m sure I’ll revisit that theme in future books.

That’s all for today. See you again next Wednesday when I’ll talk more about how Tara’s friends and family members react to her supernatural pregnancy.

Lisa

P.S. If you’d like bonus materials about The Awakening Series, including deleted scenes, join my Reader’s Group.

The post Women Mentors, Aging, And The Awakening Series appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

The Awakening (Book 1) and The Unbelievers (Book 2).

Second, the role of women in myth and religion fascinates me. I grew up learning about Christianity from the Catholic perspective, and the Catholic religion is filled with contradictions in its view of Mary, believed to be the mother of Jesus. I had friends in other Christian churches who told me Catholicism was wrong or evil because Catholics “worship” Mary. Apparently aware of that critique, the priests at the church my family attended were careful to emphasize that Mary is not a deity in her own right. On the other hand, though it appears nowhere in the Church’s written gospels, Catholics believe that Mary in and of herself is unique among humans. For one, she is believed to be the only human being conceived without Original Sin, which is the actual meaning of the term Immaculate Conception. And for another, she supposedly never died. Instead, her body was “assumed” into heaven. A pretty amazing feat for someone who is not divine. Many Catholics also believe she has special powers to intercede with Jesus/God and see that prayers are answered.

For all the interest in Mary in the Catholic Church, the Bible coverage of her is limited. If she were real, what was her life like? In her time, far more than now, being unmarried and pregnant did not bode well for a young woman. Yet the Bible says nothing about what she told her parents, relatives, or friends about her situation. The only mention is that Joseph initially intended to reject her, but changed his mind after an angel visited him.

Perhaps because I ultimately found I didn’t believe most of the stories I grew up with, I’m intrigued by the reasoning of those who continue to do so, which is the majority of people in the Chicago area where I live. What I found myself asking is how literal people’s beliefs are. Are they convinced that a little over two thousand years ago a woman named Mary actually one day found herself pregnant despite never having had sex? And, if so, how would they react to a young woman who made that same claim today? It’s one thing to believe that in Biblical times Moses parted the Red Sea or Jesus was born of a virgin, but it’s another to believe anyone who claims to perform miracles today.

Along with that “What if” came my other issue with the major monotheistic religions—that God is represented as male. So when I began putting together my plot idea for The Awakening series, I considered not only what opposition and disbelief a pregnant virgin today would face, but how that might change once she revealed her child would be a girl.

I also wanted to explore many potential causes for such an event, as not all the world is Christian. In fact, my protagonist, Tara Spencer, is not herself religious, though her parents are, which adds to her confusion and makes the issue more complex. The event that starts the story could have been caused by some sort of god, an adversary to god (such as Satan as he is traditionally depicted in our culture), a different supernatural being or force altogether, a scheming scientist, evolution…the possibilities are endless. All these causes remain on the table for most of the series, so the answer to the other question often asked of me, which is whether the series is a Christian one, is no.

I chose to go beyond one thriller and into a four-book series in part due to my original thought that the Biblical character of Mary gets short shrift. In the end, her value is mainly as a Mother with a capital M. (Though Catholicism borrowed a lot of goddess lore in its depiction of her, attempting to draw in believers in goddess culture with some success, thus its contradictory stance on Mary.) Likewise, in stories that flip the narrative and portray a supernatural pregnancy that is a danger to the woman or perhaps to the world, such as Rosemary’s Baby (one of my favorite books), the woman’s role also is primarily as a mother/victim/woman in peril. In contrast, I wanted to explore Tara Spencer, my protagonist, as a protagonist. As a person who is a force in the world who has her own goals, powers, and challenges. Her own friends and enemies. In short, her own life. The Awakening series is primarily about Tara as a person, not as a pregnant woman.

All of the above sometimes leaves me at a loss at cocktail parties or in interviews when I’m asked how I categorize The Awakening series. Books 1 and 2 have spent significant time in Amazon’s Top 100 Occult and Horror best seller lists, though I admit the series has as much in common with The Da Vinci Code as Rosemary’s Baby, as one reviewer pointed out. Religious conspiracy series also seems to fit, though it bothers me because it puts the emphasis on the religious order opposing Tara, the Brotherhood of Andrew, rather than on Tara herself. But the people whose eyes light up when I describe the concept often also love books described as religious conspiracy thrillers, including those of Dan Brown and Joanna Penn. I’ve used the term paranormal thriller, but “paranormal” for the last decade or two seems to call up visions of the Twilight series or paranormal romances. Science fiction/fantasy fans often also like the series, though I don’t usually read the genre. (One exception is that I love Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series which, perhaps not coincidentally, includes a female messiah-type character.) Recently Amazon added a category “Supernatural Thriller,” and that may be the best fit of The Awakening, The Unbelievers, and the last two books in the series.

The reality is, of course, most of us read in more than one genre. I love horror, suspense, mystery, occult, thrillers, and supernatural books. Further, all of us also tend to sub-specialize in our genre reading. I like horror but not gore. I like mysteries and particularly detective stories but not cozies. Other people love suspense but won’t read anything with any hint of the supernatural. In the end, I suppose that’s why I love reading and writing fiction so much. There are so many great stories, and so many ways to tell them.

If you’d like to read more about M.O.S.T. (Mystery, Occult, Suspense, Thriller) books and movies and receive news of my new releases, click here to join my email list. (If you join today, you’ll receive free a short horror story, Ninevah, published exclusively to M.O.S.T. subscribers.)

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