I remember telling myself it was just one bigot. I would have asked him if he thought my biological differences rendered my ability to write somehow lesser than that of a man. Surely he’s read books he hasn’t liked, written by men? It certainly hasn’t put him off reading more. I would have asked if he’s ever tried reading a book written by a woman and if he did, why he thinks that experience should dictate his opinion of all female writers. I would have asked if he believed that I was incapable of writing a good plot, or realistic male characters. I didn’t want to cause a scene, not when I was there in a professional capacity, signing stock. I didn’t want to embarrass the shop assistant. I’m ashamed to say that I pretended I didn’t hear.

“But I never read books written by a woman.” The assistant puts the book down, rings the transaction for his chosen book through and nothing more is said. I suppose I sound like a bit of a bigot, don’t I?” he replies. “It’s in the same genre as that one you have there. “But it’s really good,” says the assistant. “Oh, no,” he says, refusing to even touch it. It’s not an author event-I am literally there in the middle of a normal day, quietly signing books in a little nook.Ī man goes to the till, book in hand to pay for it, when the (female) shop assistant shows him a copy of one of my books and suggests he takes a look at it, based on what he is buying. The books have been published and I’m in a bookshop in Bath, where Between Two Thorns is set, signing a second batch of stock.

It was just writ large in my novels, I thought having men with 18th century attitudes towards women helped to show how far we’ve come and how hard it is for the heroine to handle after a taste of modern life. All the time I wrote those novels, there was a part of me that really believed that the awful things a small number of the characters say were so much less likely to be said in 21st century England. Sorcerers, kidnapping, feuding dynastic families-it’s not just the feminism-but it was an important theme to explore for me as I’ve been increasingly angry with the world and the way it treats women. There’s a lot of other stuff that happens in those books. Another character, a man, enabled me to explore the pressures and toxicity of the patriarchy for men, and between the two of them, I was merrily exploring feminism and toxic masculinity. She chafes against that life, and over the first three novels she tries to find a way to survive, having had a taste of the modern world and the freedom women can enjoy. It features a young woman who has managed to escape a secret mirror world where life for women is closer to that of Georgian England, but she is dragged back into it. Back in 2011, I started writing Between Two Thorns (Book 1 of the Split Worlds series).

Planetfall series by emma newman