I write historical fiction about women, primarily for women. I choose protagonists who inspire me with their strength, courage, intelligence, and cunning — women who recognize the limits of our patriarchal world and seek ways to work around and within it to achieve their own highest potential.

My historical fiction is not, however, about gender equality. It’s about the superiority of women, who are invariably smarter, stronger, and more courageous than any man in my books.

This I believe to be true in life, as well. Ask most any woman who is partnered and she will tell you: She is the competent one. She does the planning and execution of the important tasks in the partnership/household because he simply cannot, or because she can do it better.

Men know that women are the smart, strong, capable ones, which is why their egos are fragile, causing them to resort to elaborate tactics to hide their own incompetence. They rape us to steal our power. They abuse and even kill us to intimidate us into silence. And, their most effective tactic of all: They teach us to hate ourselves.

A child of abuse

I grew up in a household with a pornography-addicted father who beat my mother, took the entire family to watch X-rated movies when I was very young, and otherwise buried himself in the television and his bottle of Jim Beam.

My mother, too, routinely beat, betrayed, lied to and about, abandoned with the “silent treatment,” harangued, deprived of sleep, and otherwise emotionally and psychologically abused my sister and me as a way of venting her rage. She continued her abuse into our adulthood. I feel compassion for her now, but I barely mourned when she died on Christmas Day in 2024.

Still, without intending to, she taught me a lot. I watched, listened, and learned from an early age how women suffer, placate, equivocate, and live in fear of men and a male god (My mother was also a devout Christian), even while knowing in our hearts that we are not less-than. We call for “equality” because we can’t admit—even to ourselves—that we are superior to men in every way.

Like my sisters around the world, I was groomed to live as an inferior being. The porn movies taught me that, despite my formidable intelligence, my true value lay in my sexuality. Men reinforced this notion by sexually harassing and assaulting me throughout my life, in school, on the job, in relationships — even in my own family.

Men have accosted me against my will many times, but I also objectified myself, re-enacting the porn scenes I’d watched and debasing myself with humiliating acts as I was programmed to do. I never understood what I do now, that Pussy has the power.

At church, I learned that men are closer to God than women, that women must submit to their husband’s will, that God is male, that women must not teach men, and more.

But even in my most devoutly Christian years, I knew these claims to be false. Because I knew myself. I could plainly see that I was not inferior to boys or men; quite the opposite was true. And yet, for most of my adult life I believed my true value lay in being sexy and sexually available. Like my sisters and daughters everywhere, self-objectification had been imprinted into me at an early age, like the mother’s image onto a duckling.

Be the subject of your life, not the object.

This is how growing up female distorted and diminished me. I’ll bet you have similar tales.

Today I live as the subject of my life, not an object designed for male desire. The women whose stories I’ve told have shown me the way. My books are about finding that path and following it.

My story is one of rising up to break free of patriarchy’s constraints, including those that appear self-imposed but that, in fact, were forced upon me by a society that prizes men and devalues women. It’s one of learning to listen to my inner voice, which is the voice of the Goddess, and to honor myself as a divine being.

I’ve felt at one with the Goddess many times. Whenever I engage Her I wonder why I don’t do so daily, and the answer is that I have so much to do just to survive every day.

And part of that work—the most important work I do—involves writing stories about women who’ve claimed their own power and potential, to light the way for others on the path to individuation and autonomy.