My Kind of Heroine: My Daughter by Sydney Jane Baily #lovehistoricals #MFRWAuthor

I think I'm the last writer in this month’s themed Snarkology blog run about heroines. I'm honored to bring up the tail end. First, thanks to Melissa for hosting all of us this month and to the many writers from whom we’ve learned a lot about heroines.

Right now, my daughter is my heroine. She started college this past September at her number one choice for university, and then went right out and found a job a week or so after moving into her dorm. She intends to help pay for her tuition, and she has learned a new skill as a barista. Good grades, a good work ethic, and her eye on a promising future. What more could a proud mother ask for?

I also want to introduce you to my latest fictional heroine, Miss Josephine Holland, a self-made, independent lady. I tell her story in An Impassioned Redemption, which I dedicated to my daughter (though the similarities stop at the feisty personality and sharp intelligence). Jo is a partner in a successful saloon and bordello. She apologizes to no man for making money, especially for making it in a way that is frowned upon by more polite society and particularly by her own gender in the late 1880s.

#171130181 / gettyimages.com

My Kind of Hero: #1 Hero is My Father by Sydney Jane Baily @sydneyjanebaily #lovehistoricals #giveaway

My first and still number one hero is my father, James George Baily. I love him to pieces with all my heart even though he’s gone where I can’t hug him anymore. I still talk to him and think of him daily. He was an Englishman, born and raised in the Cockney east end of London, and evacuated to the countryside during WW II.

During the German blitz of London, my dad, in his true spirited fashion, made the most of his new situation in a country manor, enjoying picking fresh fruit and running around on the grass. At only age 10, he made sure to take care of his little brother, Vicky, who was about 6 or 7; while they were evacuated and away from any parental supervision, my dad worked as a paper boy and a choir boy to give his brother pocket money for the bakery and sweet shop.

This is the East end of London where my dad and his four brothers and four sisters grew up. There were only four of them during the war, and this little fellow, with his sisters, is about the same age as my father was.

Attribution: By Sue Wallace at en.wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Here’s a more central part of London during the German blitz.

Attribution: This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code

Drawn from rainy London to sunny southern California, my father ended up living most of his adult life there, playing tennis, still enjoying fresh fruit, skiing in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and being a wonderful father to my sister and me. He is a hard act to follow, but I think all of my fictional heroes have some of my father’s finer qualities, as well as his more adventurous traits in them. And as he was always a gentleman, I make sure that my heroes treat women well.