Heads up to literary critics and my future biographers

The invisible woman
OK, not this invisible woman:



A friend of mine on Facebook recently posted how someone had made intrusive and rude comments about her pale skin and sunburn, which she started overthinking, which sent her into a spiral. The conversation quickly drifted to feeling invisible, wanting to be invisible, and how invisible is easier than rude comments.

I went to a small elementary/junior high school (because it was junior high back then, not "middle"). I dealt (poorly) with a "let's you and her fight" type bully for most of my childhood. Invisible is much easier. I still almost never wear makeup or jewelry. My hair is hair. My clothes are clothes.

I really like wearing costumes though. Visible without being me!

Early on during this long journey of writing novels, I realized that many of the books I have written (most of which will forever sleep on a thumb drive) have revolved around heroines who are either invisible or who wish to become invisible.

There's a Victorian English historical I wrote several years ago that I particularly like, with a heroine based on Mary Bennett from Pride and Prejudice (you know: the ridiculous, non-pretty middle sister).
In my book, she marries an almost-invisible young man because he's the only one who offers, then it takes a while for them to fall in love.

And I wrote a contemporary paranormal with a fox shape-shifter who is ungainly and too big, too not perfect, too shy in her human form. She falls for the popular puma shifter and they finally end up together, but she still feels invisible. Their Happily Ever After relies on her seeing him, not only vice versa. The second in the series has a heroine with magic who can cast a powerful look-away spell and go invisible.


I've just got the contract for Book 2 in my Châteaux and Shadows series with Wild Rose Press, tentatively called The Honorable Officer. The heroine is not only overlooked, her eyesight is so bad that she's mostly blind. She's always had a thing for the hero, who was married to her late cousin, a girl who was the opposite of invisible. But she doesn't really know the hero, either, past his stoic display of honor and power. The next time through edits, I will be playing up the theme of seeing and not seeing. And invisibility.

I do write other types of heroines and heroes, I promise, but seeing is a theme in many of them.

So there you go, future creators of Cliffs Notes.