Pocket Rockets (write advice)
November 7, 2019 9:10 am Leave your thoughtsFormer UFC Bantamweight Champion Miesha ‘Cupcake’ Tate signed this in front of me when we got a picture together.
I met Miesha Tate while the current premier of our state was greasing wheels trying to get people to vote for him. There was a ban on “cage-fighting” by the former premier and it seemed to coincide with the first UFC events in this city and this guy’s campaign. He turned out to be a douche, like they all do when they actually get into power, but that’s another story.
Miesha Tate is taller than me and at the time, way thinner. Why this matters is because on television she looks real tall sometimes and when she’s scrapping and taking names in the octagon, she just seems…bigger. In real life she looked like a regular girl. She seemed like an old friend, waiting at the table for me to get there and start drinking. There were so many thirsty males lining up to hug her, but it was okay. I was lucky and went with a group of friends and we made it an adventure.
Meeting Miesha was a reminder that you never know. You don’t know what someone’s going to bring if you start shit with them. She was still pretty, cute and super nice, she was like anyone else, in jeans and a t-shirt just hanging around next to a pint of beer. But she can destroy you.
That time I scrapped with Meisha. #IWON lol #UFCgame
There is a scene in the Darkrose Novels, which I took out, involving a random man hitting on Cleo. Standing next to Miesha, it got me thinking about how many times she’d probably been in a seedy bar and had unwanted attention from both sexes and how that played out. Did she think about going into beast-mode or did she think about the setting, the reality that she might not be able to take someone on where there are no rules or Herb Dean? If she was a game character (which she kind of is lol) or in a fictional book/movie, would the author make her 100% realistic and flawed, a superhero who has powers and can’t lose, or a mixture of both – reality and something just a little our of the regular/normal realm?
If you don’t know Cleo Darkrose, I would tell you these things about her…
She is tough, she is usually fair, she is skilled, she is ambitious, she is beautiful and she is afraid to feel like shit again. This post is going to be about her skills in the grand scheme.
Cleo can kick your ass. Probably.
Female leads in action/sci-fi/fantasy books usually fight and take care of themselves. Cleo can kick ass, within reason. I’ve read a few books and watched enough movies to know that it’s difficult (apparently) to create a respectable female lead without her being able to display some sort of martial arts skill or magic power that lets her dominate others.
Cleo was always going to be a character on the edge of being naturally gifted and have some sort of hint to preternatural ability. She wasn’t the usual type of character I saw frequently when I started writing her, and it wasn’t that she had magical powers or was essentially ‘special.’ It was about being raised in an environment where advanced medical enhancements and good old fashioned regimented brutal training was a part of her life.
I’ve seen female characters in a realistic setting stand at about 5 ft tall, weigh 115 pounds and be able to bring down a 300 pound man who was trying to grab her goodies.
It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility, look at the strawweight or bantamweight divisions in the UFC, those women will fuck a regular dude up…but it’s unlikely. (Unless the character has supernatural abilities etc.)
I’m not anything like those amazing athletes, but I can tell you that even just sparring with a full grown man a foot and a half taller than you and weighing near double, you get to thinking it probably wouldn’t end well if things turned serious.
Artistic license etc is one of the most amazing things about fiction…but sometimes it’s hard to stay engrossed when you can tell that the author didn’t really think the scene through or doesn’t know the way certain things work then kind of dwells on them a lot so you notice.
Cleo does some Matrix bullshit too though!
King of Spades has a scene in which Cleo has breached a home in order to extract two civilians. While she is there, she is confronted by two armed men who are there to kill the civilians. She. Kicks. Their. Asses.
And…she runs up a wall.
Can someone do this in real life? Apparently.
Can I run up a wall? Nope.
Can you? I dunno, maybe.
But the Darkrose Novels tend to be mostly(?) reality-based until you get into the things a lot of people consider advanced tech/ sci-fi. It seems to work for this type of story. Everything that happens in the novels is a life that you don’t live, but one that is probably going on somewhere in a classified installation in an undisclosed location you will never know about…!
TLDR:
*Make characters possess qualities that aren’t completely unbelievable or unsuited to your chosen genre.
*I met Miesha Tate and stuff once. I fangirled out HARD and only regret it 97%
KING OF SPADES is available at these places and more: https://www.bookdepository.com/King-of-Spades-Ever-Eden/9780648052401
https://books.apple.com/us/book/king-of-spades/id1273946073
https://www.booktopia.com.au/king-of-spades-ever-eden/ebook/9780648052432.html
RED COWBOYS STUFF:
The **RED COWBOYS Title Trailer is a simple lil thang, just to whet the appetite of those hanging on and missing Agent Cleo Darkrose and Agent Trent Starr. Red Cowboys picks up where King of Spades left off.