Why I'm Proud to Be a Female Author--Miranda Stork

Please help me welcome Miranda Stork to the blog today!!! :)

It’s the year 2012, and I’m a female author. Nowadays, that phrase doesn’t really attract much attention. But it was a very different story for the lady authors of yester-year.

While there were never any laws forbidding women to write or publish, it was seen as something lower than cleaning the outhouse. If you ask people about famous female writers, most people will mention the Bronte sisters, or perhaps Beatrix Potter, but in fact it goes back further than this, and I’ll come back to them.

One of the earliest female authors to make her livelihood from writing was Aphra Behn, who was born around 1640. She was was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first professional female authors. Her writing  consisted of the amatory fiction genre, the predecessor of the romance novel.  Felix Shelling was said to have said of her, 'a very gifted woman, compelled to write for bread…Her success depended upon her ability to write like a man.' . . .’ Many of her male contempories thought her to be a lower rate writer, simply because she was a woman.

We move on to the nineteenth century, where we meet up with the Bronte sisters again. They were female writers who famously used men’s names for pseudonyms, as was the custom at that time. Had it been known they were women, they would never have had their books taken seriously. Charles Dickens (despite being my favourite author)had a rival for Britain’s favourite author in the Victorian era, in the form of Maria Corelli. Mary Shelley had Frankenstein’s Monster published under her own name, but again it was not seen as a great book.

Now we come to Beatrix Potter. When she first wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit, it was initially rejected by the London publishers, Frederick Warne & Co, so she published it herself. Once her book began to take off, they eagerly withdrew their objections, and republished the book. It went on to be one of the most famous children’s stories in the world.

Even today, there are examples of women being expected to hide the fact they are a female writer. J.K. Rowling was told that it would be unlikely that boys would read a book by someone called ‘Joanne’, and so made her use her initials instead.

All of these examples show how much harder it is to write a book, and be taken seriously as a female writer. Even I occasionally get the brunt of it. When people ask about my book, and ask what genre it is, I always reply, “It’s a paranormal romance. But it leans heavily towards horror as well-in fact, you will find it in the ‘horror’ category of amazon.” Most women are curious about it, and want to know more. But most men…well, their next question is, “But it has romance in then? Wouldn’t you rather write romance? Not horror?”

If there is one thing you want to do to make my blood boil, it’s to call into question my ability to write horror because I’m a woman. You can ask if I’m qualified to write it because I may not have read or watched a lot of horror. You can call my writing of horror into repute because it isn’t  very good. And you can even say I shouldn’t write horror, because quite frankly, it didn’t scare you, not even a little bit.

But do not for one moment suggest it’s because of my gender.

So, to wrap this rant up, I’m proud to be a female author, because I can hold my head up high, and know that I’m defying society in some small way, that I’m writing because I’m a good author, and that I’m following in the footsteps of some very, very great ladies.

Conner

Erin is a young psychologist, with no time for anything but her work, and unable to remember anything about her past. She leads an uneventful life, but a lonely one, in which she secretly wishes for a soulmate... Conner is an unusual patient who approaches her, thrusting her into a strange world of darkness that runs beneath our own. He believes himself to be a creature of legend-a werewolf. But he also draws Erin with a roguish charm, and an irresistible feeling that seems to bind them together... Conner desperately tries to save her from an unknown evil that pursues her with a relentless passion that crosses centuries, an evil that once took her very soul away, somewhere in Erin's lost memories. As she becomes more entwined in a series of events that will remind her of who she really is, will she make it away from the oncoming darkness unscathed...?

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Miranda Stork

I was born in Guisborough, North Yorkshire in 1987 and have lived in various places around Britain, including Newcastle and Glasgow. My writing is inspired by various writers, including the vivid characters of Charles Dickens, the imagination of Stephen King, and the gothic imagery of Anne Rice. My love of horror began at an early age, when I was only three or four. I could read proficiently at the age of three, and devoured fairy-stories, but I always had a bent towards the darker stories, such as the Brother's Grimm's tales...Red Riding Hood was always a firm favourite, although I always felt sorry for the wolf, despite him having tried to eat everyone! I also had an incredibly vivid imagination, leading me to believe that the noises that the radiator in my room made, were in fact the noises of monsters hiding behind it. This led to me having terrible nightmares, in which I believed I woke up and would see them sat in my room, doing nothing more extraordinary than playing cards or reading a book. As I got older, my love of tales about unknown creatures persisted, always wanting to devour tales about ghosts or other beings. Being born in Guisborough was also a coincidence, as it is a town rich in folklore and ghosts in various places, such as the Black Monk of Guisborough Priory...whether or not any of these stories were true, I still don't know, but I love the tingle of imagining whether or not they might be. As I began school, I began to read more books, and became enraptured with the tales of ancient Greece and Rome, loving the explanations for simple things around us turned into figures and gods. To this day, I still have an avid love of ancient customs, and I have especially fallen in love with Celtic symbolism and myths, winding them into my novels whenever possible. As I got older, about ten or eleven, I had moved, to a small village, with only about 80 children or so. I quickly became the main story-teller of my friends, my favourite one being a story about a girl who buys a porcelain doll, only to hate it after a few days and lock it away in her family's garage. The doll of course, is haunted, and breaks back into the house, calling, 'I'm coming, I'm coming...!' until she reaches the little girl, who is hiding under her cover, where she whispers, 'I'm here, I'm here...!' The poor mother of course comes into her daughter's room in the morning and finds her daughter dead, with the doll sat on top of her. I have a vague memory of telling a wide-eyed group of peers one morning, and one of them running off crying...I think I got told off for telling stories that were too scary at school. At the age of seven or so, I was given two books by a relative; one of them was a large collection of Lewis Carroll, and to this day my favourite poem is 'Phantasmorgoria'. The other book was a collection of weird tales, all involving fair maids and witches, devils and wicked spirits in some form or another, a lot of them derived from eastern story-telling, where children and evil witches constantly collide-usually with awful consequences. This persisted with a series of magazines and music called 'The Magical Music Box'. At this point I began to really get into more horror books, watching all and any horrors on television, even ones that were far too cheesy to watch without laughing. Point Horror stories became a favourite on my shelf as I went into my teens, alongside my classic favourites such as Dorian Grey and Great Expectations (still my favourite book to this day). I got hooked onto Anne Rice novels as well, loving the combination of a typically monstrous creature who had redeeming qualities akin to human ones. The most terrifying book that ever made an impression on me has to be The Exorcist. The film is nothing compared to the book-I don't believe I slept the night after finishing it, waking up at every noise in my room, imagining it to be a voice or whispered giggle. (If you want to cut my bio down a little, please feel free, it's simply the author bio I use everywhere else, so I thought it would be best to send you the whole piece.)

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