Not "strong female character" holds their ground. Actually holds it. The kind who make terrible decisions and pay for them. Who don't get rescued by the love interest in the last act. Who hold the line even when their hands are shaking — and sometimes drop it, and have to pick it back up.

I came up reading Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Kim Harrison, Jeaniene Frost. Women who could throw a punch and break your heart in the same chapter. Then I started noticing how often the new books I picked up handed their heroines a destiny dragon and a fated mate and called it a story.

So I write the ones I want to read instead.

My books pick fights with inherited stories. Angels were never good until fiction made them so — before that, they were a-holes. Demons aren't evil; that was a decision someone made for a reason, and the reason wasn't holy. The Chosen One used to earn the title. I'm interested in the line between who we're told we're allowed to become and who we actually are, and what it costs to close the gap.

That's what Trauma Llama Slayers read. Books with teeth.

I write the Whiskey Witches universe — Paige Whiskey Chronicles, Dexx Colt Files, October Sky, Shifting Hearts, and Alaskan Witchguard — and the Devices of War sci-fi series. I'm a USA Today bestselling author with 53 books over 22 years. I live in Wasila, Alaska with my husband, and I write from the woods up here, where the dark gets dark and the questions get bigger.

If you've ever closed a book wishing the heroine had been allowed to break something — or be broken and survive it — start anywhere. I'll meet you there.

— Frankie