Category: Writing

Feminism in W.E. Books

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Valentine

                         Haverdy  Oyama , Val Entienne &   Amy Edwards

 


Thinking about W.E.’s 22 anniversary, I can’t help but think about the primary part of W.E., which is the books. Thinking about the books, led me to think about the characters in them. When I was a child, I gravitated towards books with stories about female characters who weren’t afraid to do whatever the male characters did. I was never a big fan of stories about princesses. I was a bit of a tomboy, so stories about ultra-girly characters didn’t interest me.  When I started writing, my female characters were bold, brave, and they weren’t afraid to do any of the things the male characters would do.  The definition of feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social and economic equality to men.  I didn’t want to create female characters who were “damsels in distress”.

 

Take Haverdy Oyama of Fortune’s Wing, for example. Haverdy is a tomboy, through and through.  She wears her hair short, like a boy, and she even wears the boy’s uniform to school. When her brother and his friends find themselves fighting monsters created by the Winged Seven, Haverdy has no problem picking up a sword and running head-first into danger.

Val Entienne of Valentine is equally as brave.  Despite her pink hair, when her father needs help, she’s a regular “ride or die” kind of girl. She arms herself with a pair of handguns and drives all the way to California to rescue him. She gets caught in a gunfight on more than one occasion, but she doesn’t run and hide.

Even when some of the guys in her life doubt her abilities and her talent, Amy of Our Lady of Righteous Rage learns to play the guitar and become a rock star.  She’s also a firm believer in the idea that girls can do anything boys can do.  And the person behind the concept for the retail store in the series, the “Urban Collective”, is Vanessa, another female character.

Should the sword-wielding hero always be a boy? Certainly not.  What about the gun-toting Patron Saint? The badass guitarist? I enjoy creating female characters who succeed in male-dominated situations. In Fortune’s Wing, all of the girls are ready to stand with Fortune and fight. In Valentine, it’s Val the members of the Syndicate are afraid of.  The female characters in the W.E. books have demonstrated the meaning of feminism and redefined what it means to be in a “woman’s place”.

http://www.woolastonentertainment.com

Woolaston Entertainment’s 22nd Anniversary!!!

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Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Monday Blog. This is the first blog for the month of December, and it’s also the 22nd anniversary of Woolaston Entertainment. This month, I’ll share information about W.E.’s books, artwork, and comics.

The birth of W.E. began with the creation of the very first character, Vanessa Vance, who is currently one of the characters featured in the Our Lady of Righteous Rage series. I had been working on several characters since the Summer of 1994, but I hadn’t drawn any of them yet. The image featured here, is the very first drawing I ever made of Vanessa, or any other character. Drawn in December of 1994, I used charcoal and water color.  Vanessa’s design has changed over the years. I finally found a design I liked in 1999, and I have pretty much kept the same design for Vanessa since then.

Aside from the Our Lady of Righteous Rage series, Vanessa also appeared in the sci-fi series I wrote, Enos, and several individual books as well.

Next week, I’ll share some info about the WE books, both published and unpublished.vv1994

Preview of “Rowdy”

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“Rowdy”, part three of the Our Lady of Righteous Rage series, is coming out at the end of the month. Here’s a little preview: Chapters 1-2. Enjoy!

 

Chapter One

Amy

 

            I was sitting on the couch inside the recording studio at Urban Collective, scanning an article in Alternative Press magazine. If anyone had asked me what the article was about, I couldn’t have told them. I wasn’t reading it; not really. There were words and pictures on the page, but all I could see was red. I’d never been so pissed off in all my life. My friends and I had been busting our asses to make a name for our band, and my idiot ex-husband was working to destroy it all! Who the hell does that?

            “Did you know Kurt Cobain died on my sixteenth birthday?”

            I looked up from the magazine to see Aidan, sitting across from me on a stool, scrolling through his phone. He looked up from the screen and smiled at me. “That’s pretty trippy, right?”

            I shook my head and sighed. “I’m sorry, Aidan,” I said. “I completely forgot you were here. I’m still so angry about this whole thing with David.”

            “I know,” Aidan said. He slid his phone into his back pocket, and clasped his hands in his lap. “So, what are we gonna do about him?”

            “I don’t know yet,” I replied. “Nick said he wanted to talk to David, one on one. And Rob…well, Rob just wants to kick his ass.” I set the magazine down on the cushion next to me. “So does Jon.”

            “Well, you can add my name to that list, too,” Aidan said. “Piece of shit. What was he thinking?”

            I shook my head at the idea. “To think we used to be friends,” I said. “I mean, I always believed we would still have that, you know? I believed, even if we didn’t work out as a couple, we could at least hold on to our friendship. I guess I thought wrong.”

            Aidan smiled at me. “David never knew what he had when he was with you,” he said. “That’s why he’s so pissed off. He lost the greatest thing that ever happened to him.”

            “Aidan?” I said, feeling my eyes becoming watery. “Dude, don’t say stuff like that! You’re gonna make me cry.”

            “It’s the truth!” Aidan insisted. “Losing you fucked him up.”

            At that moment, Nick walked in, and plopped down beside me. “Hey,” he said, with a sigh. “What’s up?”

            “The ceiling,” Aidan replied. “What’s up with you?”

            Nick smirked at him. “Trying to figure out what to do about this David situation,” he said. “I could just have him killed, you know. The Lianetti name carries a lot of weight in Sicily, and all I have to do is make a phone call and pay for a plane ticket—”

            “Stop,” I said. “We’re not having anyone killed. We’re going to be rational adults about this.”

            “I don’t want to be a rational adult,” Aidan said, flicking his tail. “I wanna put my foot up David’s ass.”

            “So do I,” I said. “But that’s not the way to handle this.”

            Nick reached up and scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “What we need to do, is keep doing what we’ve been doing. We need to keep making music.”

            “We need to release another album,” Aidan said.

            Nick nodded in agreement. “I’m going to start working on some songs. If you guys come up with anything, let me know, and we’ll work on it.” He paused for a moment, then added. “I did try to call David, but he wouldn’t answer his cell or return any of my calls. I know he got my voice mails.”

            “Don’t worry about him,” I said. “Like you said, we need to focus on making music.”

Chapter Two

Nick

 

 

 

            It’s always the ones you least suspect, who screw you over. If a total stranger had been behind all of our problems, I could live with that. But my cousin? My own family? How am I supposed to feel about that?

            When I left the studio, I went home. Nyda wasn’t in yet, so I had the place to myself. With so much idle time on my hands, I figured I could get some writing done. We needed a new album; one that would blow all of our haters out of the water. I had a lot of work ahead of me.

 

 

Aidan is not to be messed with…

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You tell David,” I began, “If he does anything to hurt Amy, I will rain down on him like a fucking biblical plague.

Yeah, you don’t want to mess with Aidan from Our Lady of Righteous Rage. I’ve had a few readers tell me he’s their favorite character from the “Our Lady” series, and it’s no wonder. He’s funny, sarcastic, and very protective of the people he cares about. Get to know Aidan and the rest of the “Our Lady” cast in “Rowdy”, the third book in the series, coming at the end of October!

 

 

 

http://www.woolastonentertainment.com

Get Ready to Get Rowdy

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Hello, dear readers. It’s October: one of my favorite months of the year. Fall has arrived, there’s a chill in the air, and Halloween is on its way! There’s something else on its way: Rowdy, the third installment of the Our Lady of Righteous Rage series (third, because Novocaine is a companion book).

So, I’m sure by now you’ve read the other books in the series. If you haven’t, fear not. There’s still time before I release Rowdy to the public. Plus, I will provide a very brief recap of the previous books.  Of course, I still recommend reading the other two. Sort of the way you can only get so much info from Cliff’s Notes.

What can you expect from Rowdy? More song lyrics, of course. This story will touch on some real issues, such as alcoholism and racism (didn’t see that coming from a story with a feline cast, did ya?).  Some familiar faces are going to resurface, but not in a good way.

That’s all I’m going to tell you for now! I don’t want to spoil it for you. Check this blog throughout the month, along with my social media pages, for updates on Rowdy.

The Origins of the Woolaston Entertainment Books

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Happy Monday, everyone! I hope your day is going well. Since it is Monday, its time for a new blog post. This week: the origins of the W.E. books. In keeping with this month’s nostalgic theme, I’ve been thinking back to how I started writing my books, years and years ago.

I wrote a lot of books for myself when I was a kid. In first grade, I’d staple several sheets of typing paper between to pages of construction paper, I create my own picture books. By the time I was in sixth grade, I began to develop stories with chapters, characters and plots. A few years later, I started collecting journals and unlined sketch books, and wrote my manuscripts in them. I created front covers for each books, spine labels, and summaries on the back covers. I didn’t have a computer at home, so hand-writing all of my books became a natural step. I wrote all of the time anyway, so I had no trouble working on two to four books at a time. To this day, I have 125 hand-written books. This may sound strange, but doing that, is what led me to publish a real book.

So, Valentine started out as a book I hand wrote inside of a journal. Fortune’s Wing and Our Lady of Righteous Rage were written in composition notebooks. When you don’t have access to certain materials, you learn to make do. I didn’t receive a computer in my house until the middle of my senior year in high school. I didn’t have access to programs such as Adobe Photoshop until several years after that.

Questions? Comments? You know how to reach me!

#TBT: Before They Were Rockstars

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I like to think of some of my characters as actors and actresses: I used to move them around, from series to series, casting them in different roles. Most of the cast of Our Lady of Righteous Rage, appeared in two of my science fiction series: “Enos” and “Degenerate R”. Both series featured characters who could transform and use special powers to fight evil. I recently came across a poster I drew sixteen years ago, for the “Enos” series. Featured on the poster, are Nyda Summit, Amy Edwards, Vanessa Vance, Carmen Portez, Yvonne Vance and Delfino “Dee” Seybrook. All six appear in the Our Lady of Righteous Rage series. EnosCivilianPoster

#TBT: Anatomy of a Song

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Hello, everyone! Since its Throwback Thursday, I decided to upload one of my old blog posts. This one is about Our Lady of Righteous Rage. Enjoy!

Thursday, June 12, 2014: Anatomy of a Song w/ Our Lady of Righteous Rage

One of the most important elements of Our Lady is music, and by music, I mean the lyrics to the band’s songs.  The first full set of lyrics to appear in the book, are the lyrics to “Wish You Well”.  It’s the song Amy writes in reference to her father.  In reality, it’s a song I wrote for my father.  The line, “I wish you well”, sounds like she’s wishing her father luck.  The truth is, she’s being sarcastic.  She doesn’t wish him well at all.  More or less, what she’s trying to say is, “Hey, you were never around when I needed you, but I’ll move on, so forget you”.  The lyrics, “This would be so easy/ If you were just deceased”, doesn’t mean she wishes her father was dead.  What Amy is referring to, is if her father was dead, at least that would be an excuse for him not spending time with her.  The fact that he is alive and well and just doesn’t see her, makes the situation harder to deal with.  Another important song in the book (and my personal favorite) is “Come for the Wake, Stay for the Funeral”.  Amy writes this song after her mother’s aunt’s funeral.  Disgusted by the way her family is acting during the wake and at the burial site, Amy begins to view the service as a sort of “Spectator Sport”.  The opening lyrics to the song, “All you spectators please gather ‘round/The dearly beloved is barely in the ground” relates to the conversations Amy overhears during the service: people simply wondering if the aunt left them anything in her will.  No one seems to care that she is no longer living.  In reality, I wrote this song in 2009, after my mother’s Aunt Dorothy passed away.  Same situation: people just wanted to know who would get her house or her money.  Next, is Nick’s song, “Smoke and Glass”.  The complete lyrics do not appear in the book, however, the song is a tribute to September 11th.

 

The lyrics that the characters write in the story run parallel with the events in their lives. But, this is what most songwriters do: use the events in their lives as inspiration for their music.  I suppose this is true for writers of any sort.  Charles Dickens is a good example.  Some of his best work involves young men born into unfortunate circumstances, and later, their lives turn around for the better.  I wrote the lyrics for all of Our Lady’s songs, and bits and pieces of my life can be found in the lyrics.