I don’t think I can narrow it down to just a few reasons of why I wrote this book series, but I can try to highlight some of the more important reasons: I know that women are capable of far greater things both physically and mentally than we understand about ourselves. I wanted to demonstrate through the character of Jane, how a woman transforms and adapts according to her situation in a realistic way. She can at one moment be fierce and violent when she feels threatened. Lashing out at everything as if she were on fire, coping with basic survival as her only means of protection. While swinging to the other end of the spectrum, she can be highly intelligent, calculating and a highly regarded leader. She will Carefully plan and seek out the exact right course of action to take for welfare of all those she cares for. In the middle she can balance her innate need and desire to nurture relationships, and her community. She is both vain, and egoless, drawing on whatever is appropriate at the time. She can endure great trauma and has a cash of trauma that she is dealing with at any given time. The character of Jane demonstrates on one side what happens when you attempt to handle years of trauma without seeking help from “your team” and a network of community and family. Then I illustrate how reaching out, maturing, and eventually reconnecting not only with yourself, but with society, the process of healing can begin; and then the woman finds that she can become an even greater more unstoppable force. She is now whole, healed, and connected, and with more tools in her tool belt. Jane survives and through many surprise twists and turns, she gives all women a voice of hope and strength.  Secondly, and no less important, I wrote these books in the hope that I could find a platform to raise awareness for PTSD, or PTSI (Post Traumatic Stress Injury). More soldiers are killing themselves at home than are dying in battle. I need to get to the bottom of this, and start saving some lives. I need us to start talking about this and begin reaching out to every single returning soldier and Marine. This is unacceptable to me, and incredibly heart wrenching. I want to help, and this is the only way I know how to do it right now. I need to spread the word, hear your stories, and together we can save lives.

The third reason I wrote this book, is that I am entirely fed up with what I am seeing in the mainstream media and social media regarding women. The images of what women should look like and act like is stomach turning and incredibly damaging to young girls. The suicide rate for young women is increasing, eating disorders, and other trauma is effecting our girls. I am a mother, and a grandmother to girls, and a woman myself. The women I see on television, magazines, and movies, are not a fair representation for any women. It is time that young women, old women, all women recognize that we can all be amazing just as we are. We don’t need to turn ourselves into men to do it. I see in movies all the time, that either the female character has to adopt the “worst qualities” of a man in order to be taken seriously…(Shave her head and yell “suck my dick”), drink whisky straight up and fuck everything in sight including half her platoon. Or she is tough, but eventually needs to be rescued and then screwed by some hunky man. (Laura Croft, you really let me down.) If you ask any of the Special Forces women that I have been around, none of them are screwing the platoon sergeants, each other, or wearing cat-suits with their boobs pushed out the top.  Let’s get this right for once.