I Am Eve

I don't know how many of you read the blog-book "Garbage" that I wrote last summer with my brother, but at the outset I admitted to being scared of writing the character of Eve. This is why: she is far too much like me for comfort. She is bossy. She is comfortable when she probably shouldn't be. She is careful. She is not the hero of dystopia novel, and yet there she is.

This week while reading MATCHED by Ally Condie, I rediscovered my likeness. As I cringed and begged in my mind for the main character, Cassia, to make the safe choices, I knew that's what I'd do. In HUNGER GAMES I might have volunteered for my sister, but I would have died first, or close to it. I'm pretty fast, so maybe I could have run far enough to die of starvation. In VARIANT, I probably would have joined the Society and sat in the back, doing my homework. In GARBAGE I am so every bit Eve, who craves safety and only joins the rebels kicking and screaming, right up until her one heroic moment of the book. I would SO not make a good hero for a dystopian--or probably any book for that matter, except maybe regency romance, and that's questionable. I play it safe. I could be in the middle of a controlled society right now and I'd probably never second guess it.
 But that is why I write. There's usually a piece of me in most books I write. Bek, of KISSING A SUPERHERO, is as flirty and still self-doubting as I was. And in those adventures, I finally am the one who challenges, who questions, who does what they're not supposed to in order to follow the path they are supposed to.
Writing is awesome.