Michael Parker's Ramblings

December 16, 2013 I’ve just finished reading a thriller by a top author and found myself disappointed with the way in which he elevated his two main characters to an almost Superman and Wonder-woman level. Why so? As a writer myself, I do try (hopefully) to give my characters a vulnerability that is natural in a human being, which I believe is only fair to the readers. If I fail to do that I can then make them do anything without any apparent difficulty. How often have you read of a character who manages to slip through a locked door because locked doors were no problem for a man with his skills? I have lost count of the number of cheap, $0.99 thrillers I have downloaded from Amazon on to my Kindle only to be thoroughly disappointed by the cheap tricks the writers use to get their heroes out of scrapes that would prove impossible in normal circumstances. I think all of us know that when we watch Bruce Willis’s character, John Maclean, we are watching pure escapism. The same for Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo, and Arnie Schwarzenegger’s host of tough guys. I have failed to complete the majority of cheap Kindles downloaded on to my PC. One writer who stands out for me as a real trier when it comes to building that normal vulnerability into her main character is Carmen Amato. She writes of a female detective working in a strong, macho environment in a Mexican police station. She is good at her job but suffers all kinds of insults and indignities from her male colleagues. She rises above it to compete successfully, but she doesn’t slip through locked doors or beat macho men senseless because she is the main character. This is a tribute to Carmen Amato’s strength in her writing. I wish other so-called thriller writers would use their imagination and not invent heroes and heroines possessed of magic qualities that leave me shaking my head with disappointment. On a personal level, for those of you who follow my blog; I have had my second session of chemo and managing to keep upright. I am also toying with the research I used for a thriller I had planned to write last year but binned it for a Romance which will be published next year. I hadn’t planned to do any more writing for a while because of my treatment and because we are preparing to move out of our house into rented accommodation prior to handing over to the new buyers. But the old habit has kicked in and I am digging into my research and thinking of new ways in which to change my plot. No real hurry but I know that I can’t sit around doing nothing about my writing. Wish me luck!