Jo commented: “Is it an issue novel? I’m assuming because the MC is anorexic; it may or may not play a big part, I don’t know.”

Thanks for the comment, Jo! Yep, HUNGER is an issue novel, one that has the added bonus of including the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. (And their Steeds, of course. Can’t have Horsemen without their horses.)

HUNGER is about how the protagonist, Lisabeth Lewis, battles her internal demons as she learns how to be Famine. It’s impossible to have this story without anorexia playing a major part; she’s seventeen and anorexic. It’s who she is (along with, now, being the new incarnation of Famine). If anorexia weren’t an important part of the story…well, there would be no story.

I’ve been trying to write this blog post for two days now, and I’ve deleted and wrote and deleted and wrote and deleted more times than I can count. I think part of the reason why I’m having so much trouble with it is because HUNGER is such a personal story to me. There were parts of it that were literally painful for me to write. Some of that pain was because I remember all too clearly what it’s like to be in a battle with food, to look in the mirror and hate what I see, to feel like a failure based on how I think I look. I used to be bulimic. Even though I’m not anymore, some of those feelings, those inadequacies, linger. The trick is pushing aside those inadequacies and feeling good about, even proud of, myself for who I am, not feeling bad about myself for who, or what, I’m not. Some days, well, that’s hard. And when I was writing HUNGER, there were times when it was like I was ripping off a bandage and letting myself bleed. It was raw. And, like I said, painful.

“Write from what you know,” people like to say. In many ways, I did just that when I wrote HUNGER. (I made a lot of stuff up, too. For example, I’ve never been a Horseman of the Apocalypse.) We all have been touched by pain, and that pain is always personal. But we don’t have to let that pain define us. That doesn’t have to be the sum of our existence.

And that’s something that Lisabeth Lewis, the protagonist of HUNGER, has to discover for herself.

Thanks again for your question, Jo.

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