In two days (Saturday, 4 September 2021) my new book Compromised, the third Quake Runner: Alex Kayne thriller, will release worldwide! I’m happy. And from the emails and other responses I’ve gotten, I think my readers will be happy. This series has been a lot of fun to write, so far, and I’m looking forward to more books down the line. 

I wrote about some of the reasons I started writing Quake Runner in another post. The gist was I had a popular series that was exclusive to Amazon, and as part of a strategy to expand into “wide distribution” (ie “distribution to all stores, everywhere, if they’ll have me”) I started writing books that would only be wide, from the very beginning. Various hiccups happened along the way, various changes and alterations to the plan occurred, but for the most part that strategy is playing out, and Alex Kayne has been hugely helpful in resolving some of my exclusivity woes.

That’s just so like her.

I’ve been asked before, on a podcast or two here and there, why I chose to write a female protagonist. I’ve answered that, when asked, but I don’t think I’ve ever elaborated on it here. 

The truth is, when I first wrote the name “Alex Kayne,” I had a male protagonist in mind. And far from being the creator of an advanced, quantum-based artificial intelligence, he was just going to be a very smart and clever man who was framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and who took it on the lamb. To make a living while on the run and in hiding, he would take on various tough jobs, helping people solve problems that law enforcement either ignored or couldn’t solve. 

Not too dissimilar from the Alex Kayne we’ve all met.

At that time, I was also pitching a series concept to James Patterson—starting with a book I titled “Run, Jane, Run.” It felt like a Patterson book to me, with that title and the premise. And the foundation of the story provided some now-familiar elements: Jane was the VP of a successful technology company, a brilliant programmer who creates a quantum-based encryption system. This digital security is uncrackable, and data protected by it can only be unlocked if two users, in two very specific geographic locations, both input their unlock codes at the same time. The two locations are located on the West Coast and the East Coast, respectively. And Jane, our titular heroine, has to get to the East Coast location, break into the the secured vault, steal the second device, and then do as she’s told, unlocking it at a precise time so that the bad guys can get the data they’re after. If Jane fails, her daughter dies.

Does that not sound like a Patterson plot?

He didn’t think so. Or didn’t feel strongly enough about it. And so he turned down my pitch.

I kept it, though, and figured I’d write it someday anyway. And, despite giving away the meat of the plot just now, I still might. It’s kind of an exciting idea.

But a few years back, sitting in a restaurant at one of the Disney Resort hotels in Orlando, Florida, I started working on my male Alex Kayne story when something clicked. And in a rush of enthusiasm I looped back, changed all the pronouns, and started adding a dash of Run, Jane, Run to the plot.

The result of this union of ideas was the female protagonist, Alex Kayne, along with her unique super power—the AI known as the Quantum Integrated Encryption Key, or QuIEK for short.

True confession, I had in mind (and believe I worked in) an homage to the joke from the Avengers (one of the related films, anyway... I can’t recall which one), wherein someone asks Agent Coulson what “S.H.I.E.LD.” stands for, and when he explains it they reply, “It sounds like someone really wanted to be able to use the name SHIELD.”

I really wanted to use the name “Quake,” for reasons I cannot now recall. But it turned out to be perfect, in my present-day opinion. And the acronym I came up with is so engrained in my fingers now, it’s an automatic. Even spell check recognizes it now.

So that’s the origin of QuIEK. What I’m supposed to be sharing is the origin of Alex Kayne. And though part of her origin includes being an amalgam of ideas and characters I already had in mind, there was and is something deeper at play.

My wife (Kara) and I used to love watching Castle. Nathan Fillion is one of our favorite character actors, and we’ve loved just about everything he’s been in. But I was particularly in love with his character in Castle, because he was, in essence, the type of thriller author I wanted to become. 

Fame, wealth, a penthouse lifestyle in Manhattan, fast cars, poker nights with other famous authors—who wouldn’t want that life?

Plus, the opening line of each episode was always, to me, one of the best ways to sum up being a thriller or mystery writer:

“There are two kinds of people who sit around all day thinking about killing people...mystery writers and serial killers. I'm the kind that pays better.”

I love that line, and frequently steal it as my own.

But there was something that always bugged me and Kara about the show: Specifically, Kate Beckett.

The thing about Kate is she’s the “typical strong female character” from film and TV. Meaning, for some reason Hollywood film and TV writers think the only way a female character can be “strong and independent” is if they’re portrayed as rough, aloof, damaged. They have to be scowling and intolerant of humor—unless it’s their own wry joke at the expense of the male lead. They have to always be smarter than everybody else, but only at everyone else’s expense. Which often means the writers dumb down the men in the scene so the female protagonist can roll her eyes over their stupidity and ineptitude, correct them, bark orders at them, and then leave them to go fumble and screw up so she can come rescue them later. 

Basically, Hollywood writers appear to think women are only strong and independent if they’re also unlikeable, and that showing a woman’s strength has to come at the expense of everyone else around her. Especially the men.

Worse, Hollywood seems to prefer the stereotype of strong women as basically being “men in dresses.” They’re usually either asexual or overly sexualized (never anywhere in between these two extremes), and are typically brooding, quiet, contemplative thinkers with a complete disdain for everyone around them, keeping themselves so locked up and silent that no one ever knows what they’re thinking or planning, or why they’re seemingly going out of their way to do everything BUT what their superiors tell them to do. Or, my least favorite, they’re constantly doing things no one can figure out, keeping all information to themselves, so that no one else could possibly help them out of whatever dilemma they’re in. They’re closed off and they refuse to talk, so their irrational actions only make sense once they’ve managed to survive what probably could have been avoided if they’d just talked to someone.

That, in a very large nutshell, was Kate Beckett. 

Over the course of the series, we found out that Kate was at various points in her life a fashion model, a sci-fi nerd, a tattooed motorcycle rebel, a hard drinker, a big fan of Castle’s books, the top of her class at the Police Academy, a kickboxer, and I think maybe an Astronaut or something? My memory is hazy. Mostly because it was such a long and ever-growing list of remarkable accomplishments to explain Kate’s character and strength, and yet she was still somehow such a profoundly two-dimensional character. A caricature, really, upon whom the writers tacked any and every cliché they could come up with in an attempt to add “depth” and make her “tough.” Instead she came across as shallow, unlikeable, and unbelievable as a human. A parody of a strong woman.

And this, in my opinion, is just one extreme version of the Hollywood idea of a “strong, empowered, capable female protagonist.”

I hate it.

I hate it, because I grew up with actual strong women in my life, who could run circles around Kate Becket in just about any venue. They were capable, smart, funny, clever, resourceful, and brave, and yet still soft, feminine, caring, and loving. Some of the strong women in my life were brusque, stern, tough as nails. But they weren’t “damaged.” They didn’t need Kate’s litany of personal tragedies and haunting backstory to make them who they were. They were tough and resourceful without a laundry list of personal problems that bordered on psychological disorders.

I wanted to write a female protagonist who was more like the strong women I had in my life. Someone who was resilient and resourceful and clever, who might have some tragedy in her life but who was not really “damaged” by it, and who might have mitigating circumstances determining her actions, but who nevertheless acted with agency and autonomy. 

Alex Kayne represents that woman, as I’ve known her in various forms all my life. 

When I was a boy, maybe around six years old, I was chased by a horse named Rebel. I had gotten too close, and every time I tried to walk away he followed me, nearly walking over me. He stepped on my bare toes, which hurt, and I became afraid.

I cried out, shouting, trying to get someone to help me. But we lived in a rural area, and there was no one around. No one but my mother.

She heard me and came out into the pasture, and she told me to start moving closer. And when it became obvious that I wouldn’t be able to get to her without Rebel possibly stepping on me, she told me to run. 

“Run straight toward me!” she shouted. “Go past me and get in the yard!”

I ran, straight toward her, and when I’d passed her I climbed through the barbed wire fence and into our yard, and then I turned and saw what was happening. 

My mother, standing at maybe 5’8”, weighing at best a buck-ten, soaking wet, was standing there with her arms out wide, facing down this young horse that was galloping toward her, chasing me.

She didn’t move.

He did.

When the dust settled, Rebel had peeled off and was running across the pasture, and my mom turned and shakily walked to the fence, climbed through, and hugged me.

My mom has no tattoos. She doesn’t wear leather pants, doesn’t ride a motorcycle. She was never a super model or an astronaut. She never free-climbed the side of a building or wrestled a cougar. But I think she could have. And would have, to protect me and my little brother. 

That’s the kind of female protagonist I wanted to write. 

Now... Alex Kayne is kind of a badass, I won’t dispute that. She knows Krav Maga, and she’s a multi-dimensional thinker and planner at a scary level. She’s brilliant enough to create an AI that can do things no computer in the history of the world (so far) can do. So she does have her mythic side.

But at heart, when you boil her down to her root character, Alex Kayne is a tiny woman standing with her arms spread wide, facing down a charging beast five times her weight and three times her size, refusing to budge, refusing to even blink. All to protect someone who couldn’t protect himself.

Alex Kayne is my mother, my Granny, my aunts, my friends, my wife. The greatest women I’ve ever known, some of the most capable people I’ve ever known, are reflected in Alex Kayne.

As this third novel in her series launches, I’m proud of the way she represents the women I’ve known. And I can’t wait to see where she grows from here.

YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES

Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books. 

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