As any of you who’ve been brave (or bored) enough to read my bio know, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was the first book that I truly enjoyed. If not for The Hobbit, I wouldn’t have become a lifelong reader. Tolkien’s work also inspired me to inflict my writing on others. That’s a lot on professor Tolkien’s ledger.
A product of his time, Tolkien’s work lacks strong female characters, particularly in his more popular works The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Peter Jackson (and no doubt his accountants) recognized the glaring omission and addressed it. They replaced Glorfindel (poor guy gets cut from every LotR film) with Arwen. They also enhanced the roles for Galadriel and Eowyn. In their adaptation of The Hobbit, they had virtually no female characters to enhance. So they reached further into the cannon. They added scenes with Galadriel. They also created a new female lead out of thin air. The latter has spawned quite a debate across the web.
Original Cover of The Hobbit & Tolkien’s Illustration of Rivendell
My point is not to enter that debate. Rather I want to avoid having it when one of Misaligned’s fans wins the lottery and funds the movie version. Okay, that’s not the real reason, but just in case one of you does fall into a ridiculous sum of money, I wanted to let you know that I am open to the idea.
This short-coming is not limited to Tolkien alone, but is common throughout the fantasy/adventure genre. There are many wonderful books with female leads, written by authors with more talent and larger audiences than me. Tamora Pierce comes to mind. My daughter can’t get enough of Ms. Pierce’s books, but my voraciously reading boys have shown no interest in them. No doubt that’s more a comment on their upbringing than on the quality of the books, but something about it bothered me.
I had several goals when I began the Misaligned series. One of them was to showcase a female protagonist in a story that appeals to boys as well as girls. I also wanted to feature elements of science and history in an accurate, but fun way. I decided to write a contemporary Arthurian story with a twist – Arthur is a girl. Thus I created Penny Preston, an academically gifted thirteen year old girl, as the lead character. To be sure the story contains traces of boy-girl adolescent angst, but not as the story’s focus. Misaligned is a fantasy/adventure series with a female hero, not a coming of age romantic awakening.
Here’s an excerpt from the just released second book, Misaligned: The Silver Scepter, featuring Penny closing a pocket of folded time:
Master Poe’s advice to her the last time they spoke had been that once she started mending the fold, she needed to finish at all costs. He didn’t say what would happen if she didn’t, although she got the impression it wouldn’t be good. But she couldn’t untie the knot, and without untying it she couldn’t return all of the strands. She could either release the sorted strands back into the time fold, or she could return them to their rightful time and leave the knot for later. Either way, she’d alter the fold and possibly send Mr. Potter and her friends back into the distant past.
The boys have left and are only steps from the park, said Simon.
She just had to find a way to free the strands from the knot before the boys entered the time fold. She looked at the knot once more, hoping to see a quick solution. Then amidst the tangle of yellow and blue strands, she saw one that was different. It was red. Not knowing what else to do, she reached out her right hand, grabbed the strand, and pulled. As if by magic, the knot came undone with the yellow strands in one bunch and the blue in another.
The boys are at the gate, said Simon.
She quickly grabbed the blue with her right hand, the yellow with her left, and released the bundles to their proper time. In her rush, she completely forgot about the red strand, which nestled itself among the blue strands in her right hand.
The fold vanished and everything returned to normal, but not before Gene Shoemaker crossed under the park’s gate. Fortunately, he remained in present day Piper Falls. He wasn’t one of Penny’s favorite fellow eighth graders, but she was happy all he encountered was some residual extra-dimensional energy. She wasn’t sure how to explain that, but she knew it would be easier than trying to explain his disappearance into a time fold. Other than her inner circle of Duncan, Mr. Myrdin, Simon and Master Poe, no one in Piper Falls knew the truth about time folds, extra-dimensional happenings or their connection to Celtic myth. Gene’s scream snapped her attention back to her present predicament.
Thanks for reading
Armen
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