Hannah's Hero - Ruby Dixon Page 0,107

herself in.

Which brings us to Hannah.

Hannah’s at a low place and she’s feeling bad about herself, so she calls herself fat. Plus, she just spent the last few days trying to keep up with people that hadn’t been sitting around camp for the last two months, so she feels self-conscious about that as well. The more fragile you feel about yourself and your place, the more you pick on yourself, and I wanted to show that Hannah’s struggling. No one else cares that Hannah’s fat. Brooke doesn’t care. Taushen doesn’t care. J’shel certainly doesn’t care. But Hannah cares.

I know I’m going to get people angry at me for writing a character who calls herself fat because it isn’t fat positive. As a plus-size person who continues to struggle with her weight on an endless basis, it’s not always about the fat. Sometimes it’s just insecurity in general. Both Penny and Steph are larger heroines, but they’re not stressing over it. Penny goes out and hunts constantly. Steph contributes around the camp and has a ton of friends. Hannah feels alone and lonely and incapable of doing anything other than inventory, so in her mind her flaws are magnified.

And that’s okay, too. I’m all about all kinds of heroines. We don’t all have to be badasses. It’s about figuring out who you are and loving yourself despite your flaws. You know the saying “it takes a village”? It takes all kinds to populate that village. Not everyone’s going to be an awesome hunter or a badass with leathers or fishing or whatever else is needed. Not everyone’s going to have a “special” khui like Veronica. Brooke knows this and sticks to what she’s good at. She helps out around camp, but her primary goal is to bring cheer and joy, and she does that with hair braiding and grooming…which might not seem important in the big scheme of things, but it really is. We all can’t be Tiffany and be amazing at everything. There’s room in every tribe for that annoying person that isn’t good at making friends.

For me, a lot of this book was Hannah figuring out what she wants. She wants to go home and have the amazing life she always dreamed of with her soon-to-be-massive book career, and she feels it was robbed from her. Of course she’s upset. She has a hard time accepting that this is now her life (hey, just like N’dek!). Hannah figures out who she is and what she wants through the course of the book, and once she stops stressing about her spot in the tribe, no one cares if she’s chunky or annoying. She’s just part of the team. The right spot for her in the tribe shows up eventually, and just like in real life, good things come to those who wait. Hannah and her need to be in charge will be perfect helping out Veronica run her mini-clinic on the beach.

As for J’shel, he has a different road. He’s always seemed like the happy guy in the tribe, and so devoted to N’dek, but he’s carrying secret baggage of his own. I always like to give characters issues to see how they deal with them and I knew once J’shel set himself up as N’dek’s support system that he had issues about his friend’s injury. It’s hard for him to let go and accept that he can’t make N’dek happy no matter how hard he tries to be the best friend a guy could want, and like Hannah, he has to move forward in his own way.

Every book is a hodgepodge of ideas that come together, and this one is no different. Another thing that fascinated me while writing this particular book—phyology and the relation of species and how they “line up” with descendent species. Devi’s starting to shine in her own way, and I’m absolutely in love with her character. To her, this planet is a dream come true because she’s living in a science experiment. Sure, no one gave her the project notes, but she doesn’t care! I tend to have pet obsessions as I write (in Marlene’s book you’ll notice I mentioned plague in the notes). The island ecosystem and the volcanic activity of the ice planet have always made me think of prehistoric planets and all those ages past when life thrived, got wiped out, thrived again, and got wiped out again. There’s a great nonfiction book called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: