Strong Female Protagonists

I created a strong young woman protagonists because I that’s what I like in a novel. My main character, Jessica James, is full of doubts and flaws. She’s clumsy, smart-mouthed, and always getting into trouble. But, she also has heart and grit and tries to do the right thing. More than just having one strong woman character, I wanted to create a world of tough women who have each other’s backs. I wanted to show solid friendships between women as the basis of their actions and the foundation for how they deal with corruption and violence.  So, in addition to Jessica, we have her best friend Lolita Durchencho, a black belt in karate who runs a high stakes poker game and is known around Chicago as the “poker Tsarina,” along with their friend Amber Bush, a lovable rescue-remedy pushing hippy who’s not a spacy as she seems. Together the three friends bust an art theft, bring down a Russian mafia boss, catch a murderer, and beat up some would-be rapist frat boys along the way.

Although there are serious themes in the novels, I also think humor is important. It makes reading more fun. And, it makes it easier to navigate difficult issues. So, I make sure to add large doses of comic relief, especially through quirky minor characters like Wolf’s Vanya Ivanov, a wiry chain-smoking mobster who turns out to have a soft spot for dogs and grandmas. In my second novel, Coyote, the Blackfeet Tribal Police Chief, Madge Blackthorne, is quite a character. She doles out hard candy from her squad car, and steely slugs from her Beretta Storm shotgun. And even though the Jessica James Cowgirl Philosopher series is a mystery series, it’s also got a large dash of fun, and a splash of romance. Hopefully this makes for an appetizing cocktail.

In addition to page-turning entertainment, the novels take on ripped-from-the-headlines women’s issues.  Wolf deals with the timely issue of party rape on campus, while Coyote takes on the human trafficking on Indian Reservations that comes along with hydraulic fracturing (Fracking). These are important issues that don’t always get as much attention as they deserve given the magnitude of the problems and the numbers of people--especially women--affected. Although my main goal is to tell a good story, hopefully the novels raise awareness about some of these issues along the way. A lot of my nonfiction has revolved around women’s issues, and some of those same issues make it into my fiction.

Kelly Oliver is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and well-known philosopher. She is the author of fourteen nonfiction books, most recently, Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Rape on Campus (Columbia University Press, May 2016). Kelly’s new mystery trilogy features kickass heroine Jessica James, a Montana “cowgirl” and philosophy grad student taking on ripped-from-the-headlines crimes like rape drugs on campus, sex trafficking, fracking, and more. The adventure begins with trilogy debut Wolf: A Jessica James Mystery #1 (Kaos Press, June 2016) and Jessica’s adventures continue in Coyote: A Jessica James Mystery #2 (August 2016). Read more about Kelly and the Jessica James Cowgirl Philosophy Mysteries at www.kellyoliverbooks.com