Samantha Ellis wrote an excellent book called How to Be a Heroine: Or, What I’ve Learned from Reading Too Much, and in it she talks about how her experience growing up reading books with female lead characters shaped, and reshaped her idea of self, and the ideal of femininity that she aspired to as a child. I picked up Ellis’ book from the library, drawn in by the title. I grew up reading the same books as she, such as Charlottes Web, and Anne of Green Gables. I have spent the last week really considering all the female characters I am seeing on television shows, and in comics I am reading, now and how they would have inspired, or failed to inspire me as a young person. I have concluded that it is more likely the latter in most circumstances.

The one thing that has been at the forefront of my mind when developing the characters in Heart of Millyera, was that I wanted my heroines to inspire, to be complex, and to be multifaceted. This weeks page introduces Celeste, a sweet, and sensitive botanist. Celeste is a very different personality to Ida, who is more driven, ambitious, and adventurous than her friend. I hope that, as the story of Millyera unfolds, that both these women will stand out as inspiring heroines in their own ways.