Lone Wyr

Devanye Hansen was born on the 21st of June, 1992, the summer solstice and her father's first Father's Day. She had a normal Southern Baptist childhood, joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 2010 and graduated from the University of North Georgia in 2015. In 2016, she became an online French tutor with Chegg.com and published her first book, Abednego. She lives with her family in Douglasville, Ga, about twenty minutes from Atlanta.

"I've always loved reading and story-telling, I'm well-known for living a little too much in my own head. In fact, I don't see myself as an author so much as a pen. The characters live and interact on a subconscious level, and I just try to record it in a way that makes sense and accurately portrays their stories. It worries my parents a little because I'll talk about the characters as though they're real, as though they're my friends at school or colleagues at work, flesh and blood people with lives, families, relational dynamics and emotions, which they aren't. Yet. They need a pen and a copyright, ISBN numbers, etc., and most importantly someone besides me to believe in them and they can be real, though. Even if it is only metaphorically.

"I began writing out of fanaticism. I had just read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and wanted to make more like it. I haven't managed it, but Tolkien is a worthy idol and a girl can try. I was Frodo Baggins for all of sixth grade, cut my hair, bought the One Ring (and lost it), wore a shiny "mithril" shirt at least once a week, trained myself to walk around barefoot, and read the whole trilogy sixteen times in two years (until I turned thirteen and was allowed to watch the movies). And despite the inevitable backlash from my peers at the time, I'd do it again. It shaped me, drove me to write, to add more authors and styles to my obsession, culminating in a story, a world with a whole cast of characters who are, finally, all mine.

"I try to express my characters as they present themselves; that is, as lifelike and authentic and quirky as flesh-and-blood people. As though they actually were classmates and colleagues rolling their eyes in exasperation as I try to keep up with their shenanigans. As though their dramas, and occasional melodramas, are legitimate and important and need to be shared. They open themselves up for misconceptions, they have cliches and stereotypes and prejudices, hopes, dreams, master plans, pet peeves, moral quandaries, painfully awkward misunderstandings, and I sincerely hope it's as fun to read as it was to write. Because that's why I do it."