Dear Mr. Price,
Thanks for the support and also for taking the time to write. You bring up an interesting point. As it turns out, my first three books had male leads, and it wasn't until my fourth book (EXPOSURE) that I gave the lead to a heroine (at the recommendation of my editor, who wanted to increase my female readership). In BREAKTHROUGH I switched back to a male lead, but on 01-01-00, Y2K, and SHUTDOWN, I did three in a row with female leads. Also, my recent novella in Stephen Coonts' military fiction anthology COMBAT, there was, again, a female lead, making four stories in a row without a male lead. Why? Good question, but not a easy answer. When going through the planning stage of a book I typically go with who I feel would provide the best point of view for the story without any bias regarding the genre that I write in, especially in this day and age, when more and more females are joining the law-enforcement and intelligence ranks. There is no formula I follow to decide who gets the lead role. It just comes to me (call it divine inspiration, since I'm very religious) and I just go with it. I do feel, though, that mixing it up a bit does provide some freshness to a historically, male-dominated action-adventure genre, and some of my most positive reviews have come the female-led stories. Perhaps four in a row was a bit over the top, which is why I switched back to a male lead in Conspiracy.com, my new book.
Again, thanks for writing and for your support.
God bless.
--R.J. Pineiro
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