When We Empower Women
Somewhere along the way in writing this trilogy I found that I had a mission. In my life experience I increasingly felt that our future very much depended upon women and bringing them to power. That recognition in turn led me to believe that in this story there had to be a defense force composed of women. The Tethyan people could not just be women living in cities in the sea who would sooner or later come to land. It was impossible to believe that their coming would be without incident even if Gaia wanted it to be so.

Surely there would be opposition and it would not be passive resistance. There were progenitors who could live in the sea, Primals who had come to land and, especially for defense on land, I created the women of the Andromeda. They could be loving but also brutal as necessary.

Then Came One Kind of Reality

How naive I was. As noted elsewhere I stumbled upon the book The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor. No, they are not the workers at the company which purveys books and a host of other things. They were real women who lived in the area to the east and north of the ancient empires around the Mediterranean.

What was especially intriguing was that they were not just warriors but had rich lives an partnership with men. Given the prominence of warfare on horseback they were admirably suited to the task. And so I found a rich support for the women I found essential in the trilogy.

I had to go hunting for a name for them in this series because simply calling them Amazons didn’t seem appropriate. So, the name Andromeda showed up and it meant “ruler of men” among other meanings. Close enough and I found I just plain liked the name.

An Unexpected Future

And I found I did not want them to just be warriors standing guard at the gate. I wanted richness which reflected the richness of women. And so they had a variety of roles and each of them in time had to find partnership to enrich their lives. Much of this reflected a hoped for future and there was an evolution in the story. Of course there had to be a richness in their stories and background. Each came to be a warrior because of a specific history.

Adelais

We have already covered Brigid Lynch, the flaming-haired-assassin-for-good, Luisa Penza our dangerous Italian gamine and now comes Adelais Dubois. She comes from a Provençal primal family. She was innocent enough and planning on attending LaSorbonne in Paris until her grandmother was murdered by an Overlord agent before her. That, of course, changed everything. She turns out to be a very determined young woman and in time will reveal that she has an affinity to relate to the spirit world. A perfect addition to the women of the Andromeda.

What are the possibilities you see for women in our future?

Roger B. Burt’s Amazon home page
Whatever Happened to Community Mental Health by Roger B. Burt
Creating Characters and Plots by Roger B. Burt