Guest Post and Giveaway with Isabel Cooper, author of No Proper Lady

Urban Girl Reader welcome’s author Isabel Cooper to the site.  She is is guest blogging here today at UGR, about her main character Joan who is an unlikely lady for the 1880’s.  See she is sent back in time to assassinate a man set on a path to destroy the world 200 years in the future. I asked her the fun question “Why do Women Make Better Assassins Than Men?”  Lastly, take a moment to enter the book giveaway sponsored by Sourcebooks Casablanca. You may be lucky enough to win one of the two copies UGR has up for grabs.  So without further ado ~ Welcome Isabel!

 

 

Why do Women Make Better Assassins Than Men?

First of all, I should note that I’m an English major with no military training. I’ve never killed anyone in real life. (I did offer to put a box of brown recluse spiders in the underwear drawer of a friend’s vile boss, but she didn’t take me up on it, and in retrospect, no spider deserves to be put in proximity to that guy’s underwear.) So take my opinion with a fair-sized grain of salt.

 

That said, I think women make better assassins than men primarily because they’ve got the element of surprise, and that strikes me as the most important factor involved.

 

Most people who have someone professionally trying to kill them are pretty dangerous types themselves, or have surrounded themselves with dangerous people. If you’re in charge of an important organization, you’ve probably got some security. If you’re a crazed paranoid guy in charge of an organization that wants to take over the world, you’ve probably got a lot of security, and maybe some mutant supersoldiers. If you’re an evil magician, odds are you’ve got a room full of hellhounds and can call lightning out of the sky.

 

If you’re going up against those guys on your own, you probably aren’t going for a head-on assault. Even James Bond doesn’t do that, and James Bond can dodge bullets while simultaneously waterskiing and having sex with a hot Russian chick. (Maybe less so for the grittier Daniel Craig style Bond.) No, you’re going to want to get as close to your target as possible. Ideally, he’s not even going to suspect that you’re dangerous before you kill him: he’s going to be standing in the afterlife going “Wait...what?” and looking like a doofus.

 

Getting to that point is probably a lot easier for women.

Society has a lot of attitudes about what women should be. We’re supposed to be small and delicate. We’re supposed to be the peaceful, nonviolent sex, the sex that doesn’t grow up hitting each other with toy trucks, the sex that’s all about getting along and nurturing and being friends. Many of us aren’t, of course—speaking personally, I’m surprised I don’t still have my sister’s toothmarks in my arm twenty-three years down the road—but most people look at women and don’t see danger.

 

I’m talking about modern society here—society after Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley, and Buffy Summers. Go back fifty years and the expectations are way lower; another fifty or a hundred years ago and they’re lower still. Kipling might have written about the female of the species being deadlier than the male, but most of his contemporaries thought otherwise. Women in the Victorian era were supposed to be pure, delicate, and fragile. (At least if you were upper-class: as any societal standard does, this one overlooked a lot.) Even the capable heroines in the literature of the period, like Mina Harker (from Bram Stoker’s Dracula), didn’t mix things up physically.

 

Expectations like that can be really tiresome, of course. It’s annoying to have guys patronize me now because they think I can’t take care of myself; it must have been infuriating to be a woman back when society thought you were too fragile to have a career or play sports. As a feminist, I would love to see people have equal expectations of women and men, in all categories. On the other hand, if you’re trying to kill someone, you use what comes to hand--and sexist attitudes are pretty useful.

 

There are other advantages to being female, of course, even where assassination’s concerned. We’ve got lower centers of gravity, we’re generally more flexible and have higher pain tolerance, and traditionally female clothes, hairstyles, and accessories provide far more hiding places for weapons and poison. (Go back to the 1700s, though, and we’ll have some serious competition from the guys.) In the end, though, the main advantage women have in this area is that men still tend to discount us as threats--and when you overlook someone…well, sometimes they can get away with murder.

 

Joan, the heroine of my novel No Proper Lady, doesn’t really get any of this at first. One of the few good things about her future is that men and women are pretty much equal. She knows that’s not the case in Victorian England, but she’s not really sure how to use the difference. It’s Simon, the hero, who sees the contrast between the tough assassin Joan really is and the delicate flower society expects her to be, and teaches her how to exploit that. He doesn’t expect to fall in love with her in the process…

 

A Little Bit About Isabel….

Debut author Isabel Cooper lives in Boston and maintains her guise as a mild-mannered project manager working in legal publishing. She only travels through time the normal way and has never fought a demon, but she can waltz. Her next book, No Honest Woman, will be in stores in April 2011. For more information, please visit http://isabelcooper.wordpress.com

 

A Little Bit About the Book….

It’s Terminator meets My Fair Lady in this fascinating debut of black magic and brilliant ball gowns, martial arts, and mysticism.

England, 1888. The trees are green, the birds are singing, and in 200 years demons will destroy it all. Unless Joan, a rough-around-the-edges assassin from the future, can take out the dark magician responsible. But to get close to her target she’ll need help learning how to fit into polite Victorian society to get close to her target.

 

Simon Grenville has his own reasons for wanting to destroy Alex Reynell. The man used to be his best friend—until his practice of the dark arts almost killed Simon’s sister. The beautiful half-naked stranger Simon meets in the woods may be the perfect instrument for his revenge. It will just take a little time to teach her the necessary etiquette and assemble a proper wardrobe. But as each day passes, Simon is less sure he wants Joan anywhere near Reynell. Because no spell in the world will save his future if she isn’t in it.

 

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The Giveaway