Have readers ever interpreted your message differently than you expected?
Of course they have.
You might as well ask me if I see what others see when I look at myself in the mirror. I doubt it. I’m used to my mug. After—mumbles—years, I’ve grown accustomed to it. But strangers might not feel the same way. And while I don’t see the reflection of a suave matinee idol in an ascot gazing back at me, neither do I see Quasimodo. I’ll take that as a win.
No, I don’t expect people to share my opinions on anything I see in the mirror or in the world. And the same is true for Ellie Stone. When my first book, Styx & Stone, came out, I thought people would love my plucky, damaged, twenty-three-year-old heroine the same way I did. Despite her flaws and occasional bad decisions, I was sure readers would see her as an immensely likable and principled person, the smartest one in any room. She has great charm and wit, after all, exhibits tremendous bravery in the face of horrible, bullying men—especially when considered against the period she lives in (early 1960s)—and she truly feels empathy for the victims whose murders she investigates. She’s a small, unimposing woman with great courage, conviction, and a head of unruly hair.
And yet, to my chagrin, not everyone saw her that way. Many readers didn’t warm to her. Some found her unlikable because of her wicked sense of humor. (She once removed a hated colleague’s IBM Selectric type ball and dropped it out the fifth floor window to the street below just to see how high it would bounce.) Other readers disapproved of her “congress” with males of the species, stating that, of course, it was obvious a man had written her. Hmm. Perhaps my name on the cover of the book was the first clue… And more still expressed horror that she drank and smoked like a man. But here’s the thing: that was my intention from the start.
Right or wrong—naively perhaps—I had set out to write a female character who challenged the tropes of the genre. I wanted readers to reflect on why it’s perfectly fine for a male protagonist to smoke, drink, and sleep around, refusing to grow up or settle down, but a woman? Heaven forfend. No woman ever slept around before the sexual revolution. Read Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl (1962) if you believe that.
With time, readers—at least those who stuck around—embraced Ellie more willingly as a character they liked and cared about. Or maybe my books got a little better with each new installment. Who knows? At any rate, some readers now said they worried about her drinking or her future, just as we all might do for a loved one who struggles with addiction and suffers from bad choices. Fans wondered when Ellie might tame some of her more reckless impulses. And I believe she has. Some of them anyway.
Later, in Bombay Monsoon, I encountered similar reactions from readers. Maybe they were expecting a more traditional hero. I thought my protagonist, Danny Jacobs, was endearing in his naïveté and lack of good sense. Many readers liked him too, but others wanted something more along the lines of James Bond or Jack Reacher instead. Danny, on the other hand, trusts the wrong people and falls for the wrong girl. I wanted him to be that way. I wanted to write a character I saw as a fairly regular guy caught up in events bigger than he is. It was fun watching how he managed to get out of dangerous scrapes with his neck and principles intact. That’s how I saw him.
Of course, readers have their own ideas, their own preferences. That’s what makes a horse race, as I’m fond of saying. And yet every time I write new characters, I hope the public will love them as much as I do. I hope they’ll see the same face I see in the glass. But of course they won’t. And I’ve accepted that. I’ve had to. No choice, really.
So I’ll soldier on, writing the kind of stories and heroes I want to read about. If readers love them, I’m thrilled and flattered. But if they don’t, well, any mirror will tell you that you can’t please all the people all the time. (By the way, I’m the guy in the mirror wearing the ascot, not the other one.)
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