Our week two topic from the Marketing for Romance Authors 52-week blog challenge: Childhood Memories: A Walk Back in Time. This is a blog hop, so pop over to the MFRW website and check out other musings on this topic. https://mfrw52week.blogspot.com/
At age fifty-six, I became a published romance author with the release of Through the Red Door. At age ten, I started writing romance.
I remember sitting cross-legged on the family room floor, the pebbly linoleum digging into my skinny butt as I goggled at the black and white TV. Batman! I’m talking about the old Adam West version, already in syndication in the early 1970s. Biff! Bam! Pow! What could be more thrilling that two guys in leotards vaulting into a sleek sports car and racing off to vanquish villains? And they had an English butler, and cool gadgets galore. I was mesmerized.
Alas, the series’ most interesting female characters were villains. So my childish storyteller brain added an original character, a young relative of Catwoman who climbed buildings, slashed bad guys with her lethal claws, and lent a hand to the Dynamic Duo when she was in the mood. Both Batman and Robin were completely smitten with this deadly kitten. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.) I was too young to know what a threesome was, but think of the interesting possibilities there…
The margins of my school notebooks filled with doodles of this character. Alas, I long ago lost the episodes I wrote, but they were legion.
Later, just as puberty smacked my brain senseless, I fell hard for Captain Kirk. Dad and I were total Trekkies, much to Mom’s chagrin–the show always aired at dinnertime. Again, this series didn’t provide much female agency, just sultry green girls waiting to be smooched by Shatner. So I created my own, a Starfleet officer so brave, bold, and stunning that Kirk forgot all about those green girls.
Star Trek fanfic was a thing back then, but I didn’t know much about it until later. Nowadays, fanfic is a huge phenomenon, and many authors get their start writing it. I guess, huddled in my bunk bed with a flashlight, I did too.
And now I populate my fiction with fascinating (I hope), strong women determined to blaze their own bright path—and the strong men who adore them. Like Clara, heroine of Through the Red Door, who struggles to keep her indie bookshop afloat when faced with corporate competition and rising rents. Still devastated by her husband’s death, she must fight her way back to the land of the living—and sexy professor Nick is eager to help her do just that. So is Doug, a loyal friend and cute, quirky giant.
Hear an echo of my Batman stories, perhaps?
Buy links:
https://wildcatalog.thewildrosepress.com/all-erotic/6283-through-the-red-door.html
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/through-the-red-door-sadira-stone/1129705434?ean=2940161713808
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Love the post, Sadira! Nicely done. You had me hooked at Mandy Patinkin’s GIF. I love Captain Kirk, too! I wasn’t ever much for Batman, but I wrote Zorro fan fic as a kid based off the old black and white Disney vault version with Guy Williams.
Zorro–swoon! What an ideal romantic hero. I loved Antonio Banderas in that role.
This was a fun post.
But I’ve gotta admit, when I read your book, I most definitely was NOT thinking of Batman. 🙂
Thanks, Susan. Nick would’ve looked smashing in a leotard and cape, though.
I love this look back, Sadira. I used to write fanfiction as a kid, too. A lot of mine centered around Darth Vader (I always loved the villains and antiheroes). My dad and I were Trekkies, too, and my crushes were on Spock and Sarek (gotta love those Vulcans!). It’s great to put the kind of characters you always wanted to see as heroines of your own books!