I wanted the healers of Mika’s world to be intelligent, forward-thinking people, so it made sense to name the local clinic after two trailblazers in American history.

From Magic of the Gargoyles:

“Stupid bigoted guards.” I stomped up the porch stairs. I was no closer to finding the kidnapped hatchlings and I’d lost precious work hours. I opened the front door to Ms. Zuberrie’s and came face-to-face with my deadline in the form of a stout dark-haired woman with an upturned nose and sour expression: Althea Stoneward, healer apprentice for the prestigious Blackwell-Zakrzewska Clinic and my contact for the unfinished project upstairs. My stomach sank even as I plastered on a smile.

The clinic is a mouthful, but doctors tend to like to stamp their names on things, and I didn’t think Emily Blackwell and Marie Elisabeth Zakrzewska would be any different if society had made it acceptable.

In the real world, Emily Blackwell was the third woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, and Marie Elisabeth Zakrzewska wasn’t far behind her. 

Together (along with Blackwell’s sister), they founded an infirmary for women and children in New York, Zakrzewska founded the New England Hospital in Boston, Blackwell became dean of the London School of Medicine for Women, and both were responsible for convincing Johns Hopkins University* to open its doors to women.

*Ahem. See what I mean about naming conventions in a patriarchal society?

Magic is a great equalizer, and gender roles are wildly more advanced in my novels than they were in the real 1800s. 

Which is why I love including real-world women who were anomalies in their time and treating them like the norm. 

Mary Lowman is just that type of woman.

From Leads & Lynxes:

Grant seized a massive amount of air and dropped a thick, soundproof ward around himself and the message, his barrier falling so close it skimmed against my face. I jerked back and surreptitiously rubbed my nose. When he activated the message, a larger-than-life image of a woman with long gray hair expanded in front of him. Wrinkles etched her sun-darkened cheeks, and worry laced her dark eyes. I recognized her instantly, as would anyone from Terra Haven: Mayor Mary Lowman. I edged closer again. I might not be able to hear what the mayor said, but I might be able to read her lips.

In real life, Lowman was the first female mayor of Okaloosa, Kansas in 1888. After working for the city (and being unimpressed with how it was run), she decided to do something about it.

Although white women didn’t achieve the right to vote in national elections for another 30 years, they could vote in the municipal elections in Kansas—and did! 

What I love most about this story: her entire city council was made up of women. How incredible, right?

This is the type of woman I want running Terra Haven!

There is a lot more to the world Mika and Kylie inhabit than their home city of Terra Haven, as an encounter with a more worldly traveler shows.

From Headlines & Hydras:

As if we had been conducting interviews together for years, Quinn and I drew all the key information about tomorrow’s event out of Adelaide as well as several anecdotal stories and personal facts to flesh out the article. The more I learned about the woman, the more I liked her. She taught history at the prestigious Peale and Callister University up north, had once apprenticed in the FPD’s records office, and now raised shangyang rain birds after learning they had been instrumental to the survival of a foreign city several centuries earlier.

I loved everything about Adelaide. She is a more grown-up version of Kylie: curious and forthright, dedicated to educating herself and others, and far less impressed by high society than she is by their libraries.

I wanted her to teach at a top university, and of course, that university needed to be founded by women.

For this, I choose Elizabeth Callister Peale and Sarah Callister, who were the first real-life women to be appointed as instructors at a college in the United States. They lived a generation or two before the setting of Headlines & Hydras, and I like to think that in a more equal society, they would have done far more than just teach: They would have founded a lasting university!