My Kind of Heroine: Role Models, Past and Present by Kryssie Fortune #Romance #Fantasy #Giveaway

Kryssie is offering an ebook of GIVING IT UP FOR THE GODS to one lucky commenter to be drawn at random. So leave a comment for a chance to win!

Historically, heroines have been eye candy. In 1740 Samuel Richardson set the bar low in his novel Pamela or Virtue Rewarded. The fifteen year old heroine is kidnapped and imprisoned by the so called hero. He attempts to seduce and rape her. Okay, we know he’s a low life, but poor Pamela fell in love with him. Maybe she was a masochist or something.  Not my kind of heroine.

Fifty years later and women were still victims. In Mysteries of Udolpho, Emily suffers for love—but she doesn’t escape her terrible situation until her secret admirer helps her. By then her true love has lost all his money—and he failed to rescue her. Obviously he hasn’t read the Hero Manual.  Finally this much put on woman develops a backbone, and takes control of her own finances.  A glimmer of hope for heroine, maybe.

Almost twenty years later,  a lively, likeable woman reared her head and took the world by storm. Thank goodness for Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Austin. Heroines had just moved up a gear.

Then the movies stepped in, and things went downhill fast. Pearl White starred in the Perils of Pauline, and gosh, did that woman suffer. (Through  twenty cliff hanger episodes to be exact.) Her evil guardian,  Mr. Koerner, must have been the inspiration for Dick Dastardly in Wacky Races – although I always preferred Mutley myself.

Valantino didn’t help matters much either. As the sheik, he kidnapped the woman he loved, and he held her against her will. He almost broke her spirit, and her dearest wish was to escape – until she fell in love with this overbearing bully. Talk about the first ever case of Stockholm syndrome. Maybe she’s Patty Hearst’s first cousin of something. 

I remember my mother chortling over John Wayne chasing Maureen O’Hara though the streets, in the 1963 film, McLintoch. He tore layers of clothing off her as she ran. When he caught her, he spanked her with a wooden paddle while the whole town looked on and laughed. Whilst it might be an early instance of BDSM between consenting adults, what was going on with the townspeople. They laughed while he abused her. At least with O’Hara, heroines got spunky.

Fast forward to 1968, and Jane Fonda brought the comic book heroine, Barbarella to life. A woman who thought sex happened by taking pills. Of course one of her rescuers taught her otherwise. She was still eye candy, and she still needed rescuing—a lot.

Compare any of these to Katherine Hepburn in African Queen, and see who you prefer. I’d take Hepburn every time. She’s gutsy, independent, and challenges her man. Yep. That’s my kind of heroine.

So, looking at my books, who’s my  favorite heroine?

It has to be Meena in Curse Of The Fae King. She’s a witch with added on extras who was banished from the Otherworld for having no obvious powers. Now she’s based in Whitby, near the abbey, and she works in a Goth shop. Or she did until she told a toffee-nosed teenager that working sky clad—or naked—on the bleak Yorkshire Moors was fool hardy at best. 

When she goes up to the Abbey to think, she finds a dragon. He’s as cute as he is naughty – and boy can that dragon be bad. The dragon adopts her, but his owner—Leonidas, King of Fae—wants him back.

Sparks fly, and not from the dragon. Meena’s mother is missing and the Fae king is desperate to return to the Otherworld and bed a fresh woman. Otherwise he’ll turn feral.  Circumstances throw them together, but Meena’s the one that saves the day.

Find out how in Curse of the Fae King.

Kryssie is offering an ebook of GIVING IT UP FOR THE GODS to one lucky commenter to be drawn at random. So leave a comment for a chance to win!

Leonidas’s nightmare: when he inherited the Fae throne, he inherited the curse a witch cast on his bloodline. No wonder he hates witches. His dirty secret: if he doesn’t bed a different woman every month he’ll turn feral – and he’s bored to death with mindless sex. 

When he hunts down his escaped war dragon, his enemies trap him on earth and strip his powers. His month’s almost up and if he doesn’t bed someone soon, his beast will rise. 

Meena’s dream: to be good at something. Anything. Even sticking to a diet. Her secret: she’s a failed witch masquerading as human. She accidentally bonds with Leonidas’s escaped dragon. Sparks fly when he wants it back. Plunged into a world of stuck-up Fae, evil elves, and high-adventure they must solve a twenty-two year-old mystery. Along the way, they tumble into bed, and lust leads, unexpectedly, to love.

When Leonidas’s curse kicks in again, he’ll have to abandon Meena and bed another. Is their love strong enough to survive their secrets and break the ancient curse?

Excerpt:

“That’s my bloody dragon!” The Fae stalked across the cliff top, his emerald shirt billowing beneath his black leather waistcoat. “And I will be having him back.” 

Meena’s curls tumbled over her shoulders, an ebony waterfall streaked with rainbow colors. She’d come up to the abbey ruins for solitude and peace, and as usual, she’d found it. Unless you counted the little lost dragonet at her feet. A large dog would have dwarfed him, but he was definitely the cutest otherworld creature she’d ever seen. And now his owner wanted him back. 

She glanced back toward the main entrance to see who’d provoked the Fae’s fury. There wasn’t another soul to be seen, which meant... 

Sweet Hekate. He’s yelling at me. 

Okay, her life was... Well, it wasn’t good, but no one snarled at her like that. Meena clenched her fists and squared her shoulders while the dragonet rested his head on his paws and took another bite of her sandwich. 

The Fae’s arrogance chafed, but she refused to take her anger out on the dragonet. The way he mewled and flopped down at feet made her smile. 

Meena removed her gloves and fondled his pointy ears. “Cheer up, Lipstick. Daddy’s finally come to take you home. What a pity he didn’t take better care of you in the first place.” 

 “Lipstick?” Leonidas thundered. "You named a powerful war dragon Lipstick. He should bear a noble name like Dreadnought or Valiant.” 

With his uptight expression, corded muscle, and stiff spine, he had to be Fae royalty. That didn’t bode well for an outcast like her. 

Meena smiled her professional customer-service smile--the one that had let her down earlier. “But he's the same color as my new lipstick. Scarlet Kisses, see?” 

She brandished it like a talisman. She expected smoke to come out of this overbearing Fae’s ears. How satisfying was that? Whenever Fae passed through Whitby, they dissed her completely--but that wasn’t always a bad thing. Eight years ago when her powers didn’t manifest at puberty, the Witch Council put a price on her head. Her mother moved them to the mundane world, but it had taken Meena forever to adjust to life in Whitby. A life without magic. 

Despite his bad temper, the Fae’s sculptured cheekbones and kissable lips made a dangerous combination--one she struggled to resist. His voice flowed over her like melted chocolate. She loved how he’d braided his hair back in a neat queue at the nape of his neck, and now he stood like a Spanish hidalgo--all uptilted chin, disdainful pride, and gleaming white fangs. Only how dare he look down his nose at her? Carved of granite and steel, he radiated menace. Definitely not as cute as his dragon. More mouthwateringly masculine, but otherworld creatures usually dissed a reject like her. 

She stared at the bullwhip coiled Indiana Jones-style at his narrow waist, then at the black-handled dagger sheathed on his right hip. An obsidian rapier--Fae-forged and unbreakable--almost merged with one of the taped seams that ran down the sides of his pants. He even wore a dagger gunslinger-style at his hip. Dear Goddess, the man was a walking arsenal, but he was sexy as hell. 

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Coming soon, To Mate a Werewolf – Book three of the Scattered Siblings series.   Please note, although the Scattered Sibling’s books are connected, each one is a standalone paranormal romance.