Fear, Courage, and Fictional Characters by C. C. Harrison

FEARLESS FRIDAY 

Please give a hearty welcome to C. C. Harrison as she regales us with a great Fearless Friday tale for Discover...

Have you ever been frozen in fear? So paralyzed by fright that you couldn't think clearly enough to take decisive action?

I've never considered myself a particularly courageous person. Actually, I'm extremely risk averse. But I've come to realize that everyone's level of fear is different. I say this because of the number of times I've done something in my life that others tell me they would be afraid to do.

In the early days of my marriage, my husband often traveled for business leaving me alone, and later on alone with a newborn. I was quite surprised at how many times I was asked by other wives if I was afraid while he was gone. No, I always replied. I kind of like it.

Later on when I bought my first Jeep I spent hours and days four-wheeling in the deserts and mountains of California and Colorado by myself. And again, I was taken aback at the number of times I was asked that same question. Wasn't I afraid? My answer was always the same – No. What is there to be afraid of? Most of those days in the backcountry I never saw another living creature the entire time.

I quickly realized that people were asking me that because they would be afraid to do those things even though there is nothing inherently dangerous about any of them.

When I took early retirement and left the corporate world (hooray, more time to write!) I put my household and all my belongings in storage and moved to a place where I didn't know anyone and no one knew me! 

First stop was the Navajo Indian Reservation where I was a VISTA Volunteer working on a school-to-work program at the high school there. I lived in a converted restaurant (the bell still rang over the door when I went in and out) and I had to drive 75 miles to a laundromat and supermarket.

When my assignment was over, I moved to a tiny town in Southwest Colorado. I didn't know anyone there, either, and that fear question came up again and again. No, I was NOT afraid. In fact, this is something every woman should do at least once in their life if they want to know what freedom really feels like. Just think! You can totally reinvent yourself!  I thoroughly enjoyed it. That's where I wrote my first two books.

I'm not saying it was always easy. Of course, there were problems and challenges along the way, but being alone I had to figure out how to make it work.

Which brings me to writing fictional female characters and courage.

I wrote my first book during a time when it was no longer popular for female characters to be portrayed as timid, helpless and fearful. (There's that word again – fear.) So I was determined to write fictional women who were courageous and could take care of themselves (like I had learned to do over the years.) They didn't scream and runaway when they heard creepy  noises in the basement or thumpy bumps in the attic. No! They went to check it out even if they were afraid!

And to me, that's the very definition of courage—being afraid but doing it anyway.

At the time, I and other authors were mildly scolded about this by some writers and readers who called those characters TSTL. Too Stupid To Live.

In my first book, THE CHARMSTONE, Amanda broke her engagement and left her comfortable family home to go to the Navajo Indian Reservation to catalogue a carload of Navajo artifacts, and to look into the circumstances of her father's death. When she arrived, she found that she had no place to live and no place to work, and someone didn't want her there.

In SAGE CANE'S HOUSE OF GRACE AND FAVOR, Sage Cane mistakenly ended up in a
fledgling rough and rumble Old West mining town. With no money to return home, she had to figure out a way to make a living and survive in an environment that had little respect for women.

In RUNNING FROM STRANGERS, child advocate Allie Hudson and a child in her care had to go on the run from both bad guys and the police.

In PICTURE OF LIES, my female character found herself threatened while searching for a long missing child as well as her own kidnapped daughter.

In my ukulele themed book DEATH BY G-STRING, Viva Winter was caught between the police who wanted to arrest her and a killer in her social circle who wanted to murder her.

None of my female characters are kickass super hero women like Lara Croft in TOMB RAIDERS or Sarah Conner in TERMINATOR 2 or Ellen Ripley in ALIENS. They are everyday women like you and me who find themselves in danger or in trouble because of someone else's mistake. Well, okay, sometimes it's because of their own dumb decision.

UPDATE: When COVID hit, I did it again. I left the city and moved to a small community of summer homes in the mountains. For much of my time there, I was the only one in the entire log cabin community. Was I afraid? No! I got a lot of writing done.

Don't let fear get in the way of your life, or your fictional characters' lives. Just remember. Whatever you want to do, you can totally do it. Once I learned that about myself, my life and experience expanded.

And the bonus of that is, I have lots of things to write about.

Thank you, Brenda, for having me in on this Fearless Friday.

Amazon Buy Link for Death by G-String

Mystery author C. C. Harrison says, "I like writing books set in small towns, the kind of small towns people run away to or hide out in. The secrets and misbehavior there are so much more interesting. I know. I've lived in them."

“Death by G-String" is a Colorado Humanities Book Award winner, an American Fiction Award finalist, and was short-listed for a Mystery and Mayhem Book Award.

Harrison, who had no previous musical training, came to the ukulele later in life and fell in love with it instantly. She plays at her book signings, so now she can honestly say she was BORN TO BE A ROCK STAR, BUT WRITES BOOKS INSTEAD.

She's currently at work on a new mystery, "Death of a Two-Timing Man," and her next ukulele themed book, "Don't Fret the Small Stuff." Harrison is also a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books. When she's not writing, Harrison can be found in the desert, the mountains or some far-flung corner of the Southwest.

Find out more about C. C. Harrison here:

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