If you are a female helicopter pilot, or specifically a female Navy helicopter pilot, you surely will have a nickname.

Those nicknames seem to go with the territory. Anne “Snow White” Wilson should know. She is one, and she had one.

Wilson, a Fountain Hills resident and former Navy helicopter pilot, is good at giving nicknames to people, too. It’s part of what she does for a living now.

Author of Hover, Wilson tells the story of Sara Denning, a Navy helicopter pilot who must learn to navigate – literally and figuratively – in a male-dominated world. Motivated by her late brother’s dream of becoming a Navy flier, Sara goes to college at Annapolis, enlists in the Navy and becomes a helicopter pilot.

The characters in Wilson’s fifth novel not only have great nicknames, but they drive the story of a young woman learning to make her way as a pilot.

Characters such as Petty Officers Lego (Kyle Legossi), Messy (Joe Messina and T-Bear (“Known to all as T-Bear. His given name is Torbjorn, which means ‘thunder bear’ in Danish…”) make the story. Sara’s nickname “Lace” is the brainchild of her roommate Emily, “derived from her staunch and continuing belief that I need to lighten up.”

The characters are strong and relatable. Wilson has drawn a solid picture of the people in her book. It is apparent she is an observer of human nature and how they behave in their specific environments.

Wilson has only been writing for about six years. Her first four books remain unpublished. Hover is a departure from the first four. Two are sci-fi. A bit more autobiographical, Hover is at once a thriller, a romance and an intrigue.

Wilson’s nickname only sort of describes her. She said her squadron mates “thought I was quiet and just sort of nice, I guess, so they teased me about having birds flying around me, talking to the squirrels – that Disney princess sort of thing.”

Wilson is anything but a princess, but she is quiet and nice. She was born and reared in Phoenix, attended Arcadia High School and has lived in Fountain Hills since 2006.

She and her husband, Bill, have twin sons who turn 13 in March.

She is from a family of four children – one younger brother, and two younger sisters. Her parents still live in the same house Wilson grew up in.

When she attended Arcadia, she came across some information about the Naval Academy and decided to apply.

“I don’t come from a military background,” she said. “I just decided to try something different.”

She served for nine years in the Navy. Based in San Diego, she spent time in the Western Pacific and in the Persian Gulf.

She has a degree in ocean engineering, is a triathlete and with her husband runs a company to train others for triathlons. She has flown fixed wing jets as well as prop planes and helicopters.

And she did all those things before she ever wrote a book.

“I was coming home from a run one day and had been thinking about what I would like to read next,” Wilson said. “I started thinking about what the perfect escape story would be. And then I decided to write it.”

That was her first book. Her other stories have gone unpublished, but number five has already led to number six, which is in production now.

“I love to write,” Wilson said. “I am so glad I found this passion. I had never written anything before. I don’t know really why I started to write, but I love doing it.”

She doesn’t have a set time to write. She may go days without writing. She makes notes and writes passages when she has some spare time, like sitting in the car waiting for her boys to get out of school.

“I literally have learned this from the ground up,” she said. “I didn’t know the first thing about writing a book, about publishing, about any part of it. I think about how much I have learned, and I’m amazed. It has really been fun.”

And her fun continues with another book, Clear to Lift, due out next summer. She just finished a book tour to the East Coast, including a stop at Annapolis. She will appear at the Fountain Hills Branch Library in October and will be making appearances elsewhere.