Lisa Roberts

I’ve never been much of a John Wayne guy. I also never condoned the idea of cowboys shooting at Indians for no particular reason other than to be dicks. So why then would the western genre interest me enough to almost write a story about called Tombstone Technique? Because everything, and I do mean everything, can be made better…with magic! Cowboys shooting magic bullets at each other and Indians firing lightning arrows at their attackers. Bank robberies being done with shadowy skull staves and ten-pace shootouts being done with bone wands. My idea of a western story would be a sick hybrid of A Million Ways to Die in the West, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, and Harry Potter.

That’s where Deputy Lisa Roberts comes in. You want to know where I got the name Lisa Roberts from? I stole it from NCIS: Los Angeles. It was a cover name used by Kensi Blye when she was going undercover as a warehouse thief. Actually, that’s an episode I’d rather forget, because it ends with Kensi getting punched in the jaw to the point where she can’t chew her food.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time or patience to expand Tombstone Technique beyond a genre hodgepodge and a roster of names. That means of course we have a lot of work to do when it comes to developing Lisa Roberts. And no, the word “development” has nothing to do with her breasts, you sick freak. It simply means we know nothing about her. She’s a clean slate and we need a piece of chalk to create art.

First and foremost, I want Lisa Roberts to be tough and sexy at the same time. I want her to rock a pair of jean shorts and to kick the balls of any man perverted enough to stare at her legs. I want her to have a revolver in one hand and a skull wand in the other. Whenever she has assholes on both sides of her, she can pump some lead into one side and shoot lightning bolts, bone spears, poison daggers, and fireballs on the other. But what if she got the crazy idea of imbuing her bullets with magical powers? Fireball bullets. Lightning bullets. Ice bullets. How about bullets that contain all three of those mystic elements? I have to fan myself off for a minute and it has nothing to do with the summer weather.

But of course, if I made Lisa Roberts into a male fantasy sex machine, she wouldn’t do well with the female members of my audience (unless they were lesbians, but chances are, they’re not). What kind of likeable qualities could we give this woman to make her stand out as a super heroine of the wild west? Toughness, as I’ve said earlier, will go a long way in giving her popularity. A silver tongue might also do wonders for her. A take-no-shit attitude will sure as hell give her some staying power. I’m liking Lisa already! She reminds me of Wonder Woman!

It’s funny, because just a few weeks ago at the WSS Contest and Company group on Good Reads, I confessed to everybody that I didn’t know how to make likeable characters, that I just threw everything together willy-nilly. I’m still doing that with Lisa Roberts. The difference is, if I want Lisa to become the fully-developed badass she’s destined to be, I can’t put her in a short story contest entry. She has to go through a whole journey that can only be told within a full-length novel. And unlike most characters in my novels, Lisa Roberts will live to see the next novel, should she be a popular hit with my audience. She’s a survivor, damn it! Put her in the move “The Purge” and she’ll still come out smelling like roses and gunpowder!

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“My wife Stacy is good at getting heel heat with the crowd at wrestling shows. Hell, she gets heat with me around the house.”

-Jim Cornette-