Hunger Games . . . Katness or Bella

Being a writer, I can't help but ask people I see reading about the book they've chosen and why they were drawn to it. Hunger Games, the most recent teen-reading phenomenon seems to have attracted a completely different audience than Twilight. I didn't have to ask too many questions to find out the Hunger Games fans much preferred Katniss Everdeen's strong, self-reliant character to the more passive, submissive Bella Swan from Twilight. 




Besides writing, I'm also a computer science teacher. I showed the trailer to Hunger Games to my students to segway into the lesson by telling them that the actual Hunger Games competition to the death was a metaphor for needing to be prepared to face the much more serious version of life as an adult as opposed to a relatively sheltered teen. It worked!

When building my Fallon Ford character in Maitreya I was initially inspired by the Twilight characters, Bella and Edward. My Holden Harwell followed Edward to the down side of becoming immortal while Fallon, early on, began to think for herself and ultimately resisted and turned away from the path Holden was on.

As readers of Maitreya I hope, like Hunger Games, you find my Katniss, Fallon Ford, to be a strong character you can relate to and use as a role model.