Bookburners is a supernatural adventure story about a group called Team Three, part of a secretive Vatican organization charged with preventing magical incursions into the real world. It’s written as a series of novelettes by a team of writers who take turns crafting each installment. As though the chance to collaborate with talented writers like Max Gladstone, Mur Lafferty, and Brian Francis Slattery wouldn’t have been enough to get me onboard, our fictional team is also populated with some awesome female characters who I love writing for.
Margaret Dunlap
First of all, there are three of them!
While former NYPD detective Sal Brooks is the closest our ensemble has to a lead character, she’s not the lone woman surrounded by a bunch of guys. Instead, Grace Chen keeps an eye out for everyone in the field (including computer-expert Liam and Father Menchú), and Archivist Asanti is head of research and support back at the Black Archives.
Sal isn’t afraid to jump in with both feet.
I am a planner. Whether it’s looking up three alternate routes for a trip across town or outlining a story before I sit down to start the first draft, I like to know what I’m getting into before I get into it. So it’s a lot of fun to write for Sal who is almost constantly in over her head. For example, in the very first story, her brother gets possessed by a demon that had previously been locked in an old book. Sal didn’t even know magic was a thing when she woke up that morning, but she doesn’t let that stop her from doing everything she can to save him. Even when it’s not her family in trouble, if Sal sees someone who needs help, she doesn’t wait for someone else to take care of the problem.
Asanti proves that you can be both a grandmother and a badass.
Asanti speaks and reads multiple languages, and she knows more about magic than her bosses might always be comfortable with. Basically, she knows the answer before most people can form the question. While I’m a ways off from having grandchildren of my own (for one thing, I’m told that having children is usually a necessary first step), none of us are getting any younger, and there’s something reassuring about writing a character who is a respected expert at the top of her field, even if she is “a woman of a certain age.”
Grace is an avid reader.
Grace’s primary role is as the team’s muscle, but one of the first things that Sal notices when she joins Team Three is that whenever Grace isn’t punching something, she’s got her nose in a book. Over the course of the first two stories, Grace reads the complete works of Jane Austen and moves on through the classics from there. I love books, and while I’m not as fast a reader as Grace, I enjoy coming up with what she might be reading next, and why. Especially because her hyper-literacy is in contrast with…
Sal’s lack of pop-culture savvy.
The fact that Sal clearly does not read the genre that she’s living in is endlessly amusing to me. She’s familiar with The DaVinci Code and can catch a reference to The Magic 8-Ball, but that’s about as far as she goes. (Ironically, I blame my affection for this gag on watching a lot of Farscape in the early 2000s. If I ever find myself lost in a distant part of the galaxy on a ship—a living ship!—I will be prepared.)
Asanti’s interests are…eclectic.
In almost every story, we discover another field of Asanti’s expertise: from sketches of the early Modernists to journals of 19th century West African travelers. So far, none of these have been particularly useful in fighting the magical threat of the week, but Asanti would no doubt argue that the pursuit of knowledge is its own reward.
Did I mention that Grace punches things? A lot?
The “strong female protagonist” has been getting a side-eye recently as readers rightly point out that there have got to be other ways for women to be heroes beyond kicking ass and taking names, but when you have three female characters to play with, it’s fun to have one whose default approach to problem solving is: “run at the monster and see if that bit is sensitive.” Because in the monster-hunting business, sometimes you just need a little honest violence.
They can still surprise me.
Because I only write one-quarter of the stories, I always get insights into the characters by how the other writers interpret them, but sometimes we all get caught flat-footed. For example, originally we thought that Grace would be the team’s hacker while Liam, a burly Irishman, was the muscle of the bunch. And then someone suggested we swap their skill sets. With that simple switch, both characters came to life in a way they hadn’t before.
Sal, Grace, and Asanti are very different…
It’s so frustrating to watch or read a story about a group of hyper-competent individuals who each have their own specific niche, except for the one whose special skill is: “being the girl.” All three of our female characters bring their own expertise and outlooks to their jobs, which means that none of them (or either of the guys) have to be all things to all people.
But that doesn’t mean they’re rivals.
Sure, our three have their disagreements over tactics or operational philosophy, but they also respect each other’s skills. (Most of the time. Asanti did once aim a magical flamethrower at Sal’s head. Sal’s pretty sure that wasn’t personal.) My professional relationships with other women are an important part of my life and my career, and I love getting to show that in fiction.
