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Final Cover Design for The Girl Who Would Be King. Illustration by Stephanie Hans
Here’s a link to the Kickstarter – enjoy!
Also, please check out the website for the book as it has tons of information and cool extras – including hidden pages (hint – look for them on the Bonnie vs Lola illustration page)!
Oh, and the wonderful Michael May over at Robot 6 wrote a piece on the Kickstarter – thanks Michael!
Welcome back to THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING!
If it’s your first time here – the short of is that I’m giving away “Part 1” of my novel THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING for free on my blog for the duration of my Kickstarter (which begins on Monday June 25th). New chapters go up every Tuesday and Thursday for the next five weeks. You can read a bit more about the project here and here if you’re so inclined.
For those of you returning – thanks for all the support – you’ve been wonderful and I’m so glad that so many of you are enjoying the book so far. Today you’re getting Chapters 3 & 4.
You can download TGWWBK Chapters 3 & 4.
And if you’d like to download the entire story thus far – TGWWBK Chapters 1-4
You can also read below.
Enjoy!
I run.
I run anytime the world will let me. If I had my choice I’d just run through everything I suppose.
I run as close to the fence at the home as I can. Over the years I’ve worn a pretty impressive path into the yard. Until two months ago I’d actually taken pride in it, my running path. I never realized there was anything weird about running by a fence, the same path, the same way, day in and day out.
But then we took a trip to the zoo.
The tigers had this beautiful enclosure, there was even a little lake, and I was thinking it looked pretty nice, considering, until I noticed one tiger in the enclosure, just walking very fast back and forth through the space. After watching him for a minute I realized he wasn’t just walking, but pacing the exact same route over and over again.
He’d worn a similar path into his cage that I’ve worn into mine, and suddenly I was a bit sad for both of us, but I also knew I wasn’t going to do anything about it. There’s something about following rules that’s very important to me. I can’t really understand it yet, but I hope I will someday.
Even though I know in some way my running is like that tiger and his pacing, it’s still good. It makes me feel calm. And it keeps the loneliness away. Maybe it’s the same for that tiger. I mean, it’s lonely to run. It’s a singular activity, but it’s supposed to be that way I think. And I don’t know, the way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with feeling lonely when you’re supposed to be alone. It’s when you’re standing in a crowded room and feel lonely that it’s really sad I think. Sometimes feeling like that makes me want to tear off all my skin.
So yeah. I run as much as I can. And running neurotically by a fence all the time hasn’t made me so popular with the other girls, but it was kind of a lost cause with them anyway. They’re never mean to me, rather they just don’t seem to understand me, and they just seem to kind of wish I’d stay away from them, so I do. It doesn’t help that I don’t speak. The not speaking thing really seems to bother them. I can’t blame them. It would probably bother me too. I’ve tried to find things to say sometimes, but nothing comes. It’s just empty inside. Hollow where the words should be. It’s felt like that every day since the accident.
That’s really how it all started. I just didn’t want to say anything for a while after the crash, and then I couldn’t think of anything to say, and then I just forgot that I was supposed to be thinking of something to say. And so I was quiet all the time. But that’s yet another reason for running I guess. Nobody ever expects you to speak when you’re running.
A big splashy drop of rain hits me on my wrist and I look up at the sky. It’s crazy cloudy out of nowhere. The sky looks ready to let loose on me. More cold drops hit my skull and seep into my hair. Running in the rain is even better than regular running, but I know I’ll be called in immediately. Sure enough, before I can even finish the thought I look up and see Alice motioning me in from the front door. It’s good that it’s Alice though, because she likes me more than most, and she almost always lets me get another lap in. I hold up my pointer finger as if to indicate ‘just one more lap’. Even from this distance I can see her roll her eyes, but she smiles too. She yells out across the quad. “Okay, but hurry up!” before going back inside. I smile up at the sky and stretch out my legs, really laying into my long strides. I go faster, but never too fast. Never faster than I’ve ever seen anybody else run. Some of those runners in the Olympics I’ve seen on TV run really fast.
I can run much faster than any of them.
Tags: Bonnie Braverman, Lola LeFever, The Girl Who Would Be King
Some of you may know that I have this book called THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING that I almost sold to a major publishing house in the summer of 2010.
Since then it has gone on a shelf while I wrote another book, hoping the new book would be “less violent” and “more YA” (which were the ultimate reasons given that THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING didn’t sell). I hoped to sell it later…perhaps.
However after seeing Hunger Games in theaters this spring, I realized that THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING, awesome as it was, was maybe never going to be “YA enough” or “Un-violent enough” (not a word!) to suit the larger publishing market. So I decided to do a Kickstarter for it and self publish. That got put on hold as well (for a reason I hope to share with you all soon) but in the meantime I had already commissioned the absolutely fantastic Stephanie Hans to do my cover illustration for the book.
If all goes well, you all will be seeing the final cover illustration (and hearing more about the Kickstarter) sometime in June.
Stephanie, in addition to being a brilliant illustrator, actually read the entire book (it’s big) in order to do the cover work, which is above and beyond everything I could have hoped for. Perhaps even more amazing, she loved the book, and I think you can see how much in the quality of her illustrations. Below is a sketch that (though it’s perhaps my favorite of all the sketches she did) was more appropriate for a comic book than a novel and so we didn’t move forward with it. But Stephanie liked it so much that she kept on going…and the results are unbelievably cool.
So world…please welcome Bonnie and Lola into the world…two wonderful badasses that I love – and hope you’ll all get to read more about soon!
This is Stephanie’s first sketch – which blew my mind – from a scene mid-way through the book:
Bonnie & Lola Sketch (Bonnie in the water, Lola above)
This is the work in progress sketch:
Bonnie and Lola, wip
And the final version, which makes me want to do an illustrated edition, or a graphic novel adaptation SO MUCH:
Bonnie & Lola, final
A huge thanks to Stephanie, who went above and beyond, and is generally the best person ever. Buy her work here!
And you can of course see Stephanie and I collaborating on a comic together for Womanthology with “SuperLess Hero”
Follow me on twitter here: @79SemiFinalist
& Stephanie on twitter here: @HansStephanie
Tags: comics!, cute superheroes
Big news this week, as the book Chicks Dig Comics, which I was lucky enough to be a part of, released this week.
You can buy it online at Amazon & B&N and it should be available in some comic book stores as well.
My piece called “I am Sisyphus and I am Happy” is about how I came to comics, how I came to writing about comics, and specifically how She Has No Head! came to be. It’s a deeply personal piece, and I hope you all enjoy it. I am sandwiched in there with SO MANY amazing ladies including Gail Simone, Marjorie Liu, Amanda Conner, Carla Speed McNeil, Jen Van Meter, Colleen Doran, Jill Thompson, Jill Pantozzi, and of course, my partner in crime, SUE. And that’s just the beginning…there are plenty of other great female contributors as well as a few fantastic gents like Greg Rucka, Terry Moore, and Mark Waid.
Huge thanks to Sigrid Ellis and Lynn M. Thomas for letting me part of such a great book
I also have a new piece up at Lit Reactor that is the continued story of my path toward publication. Retweets, likes, and comments are (as always) much appreciated!
Thanks everyone for all the support!
Woo. Been very busy. Here’s some stuff I’ve been up to, please check out anything that appeals to you! 
I wrote about The Hunger Games for Lit Reactor. It went up yesterday and it’s a “Book vs. Film” piece…so you just know that’s going to be fun!
Oh yeah, I reviewed some book you guys might have heard about – Avengers vs. X-Men #1 — for CBR, it’s up now.
I wrote a review last week for CBR for The New Deadwardians #1, which was excellent, and I urge you to check out the book.
I also wrote a review for Daredevil #10, which if you’re not on board with already, you should get on now! Very good stuff.
I was a guest on the excellent Hideous Energy podcast last week to talk more about Wonder Woman #7 and a bunch of other awesome (and not awesome) things – it’s one of my favorite podcasts yet – so please give a listen!
All of you know how I love (and hate) comic book covers, so if you haven’t already, make sure to check out this week’s She Has No Head! which features 25 of the best superheroine comic covers of the past year.
OH! And I got this 100 kinds of awesome nomination from Hooded Utilitarian for “Best Online Comics Criticism for 2012”…I’m pretty much in there among giants, so it’s just an honor to be mentioned in the same post with them.
I’ve mentioned before that I have an essay called “I am Sisyphus, and I am Happy” in the new book Chicks Dig Comics from Mad Norwegian Press, a certain 3 Chicks Review Comics co-host also has a piece in the book and we are sandwiched in there with some truly epic people including Gail Simone, Jill Thompson, Colleen Doran, Marjorie Liu, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, Jen Van Meter, Carla Speed McNeil, Terry Moore, Jill Pantozzi, and so many more! So check that out if you haven’t already – it releases on April 10th.
Oh, and a new Audioshocker “Podcast with Ross & Nick” is up – I chat with Nick and Ross about “continuous on-tap properties” and fans reactions to them.
And of COURSE you all have your copies of Womanthology, right?!
Tags: 3 Chicks Cast, comic covers, comics!, podcasting, she has no head!, things made of awesome
So now that I’ve finally gotten The Girl Who Would Be King back out to my agent and have settled in for the inevitable “long wait” that is a natural but sometimes frustrating part of the process, I can finally get back to work on NEW work…which is always really fun.
This is my favorite part of the process, when everything is shiny and new. I suspect that’s true for most creators – whether building houses, or writing novels.
On deck right now are two YA novels I’m very excited about. They’re both very different and I’m having trouble deciding which one to push forward…but that my friends, is a great problem to have.
Anyway, I just wanted to let all of you know that one of the projects I’m deciding between is this one, which some of you so kindly offered encouraging feedback on a few months ago. I did in fact decide to push forward with it as a novel, and thus, below, meet Tessa and ‘The Black Dove’ (that’s the name of her axe).
Tessa and "The Black Dove"
The other YA novel it’s up against has been in my head for more than 12 years, though it originally was going to be a comic book in my mind, it has since turned into a great concept for a novel series. I love the characters and the concept, but I confess that the world building (which is major) frightens me a bit. Still, here’s a peek at an old sketch of the main character Berkeley:
Berkeley 'Berks' Grey
Also in the pipeline, though always more complicated since I’m not enough of an artist (these days especially) to draw my own comics, is a comics mini-series/OGN I’m prepping to pitch. And here’s an old sketch of that character. Her name is Emma Elliot and she doesn’t have a badass weapon, but she DOES have a very disturbing magic box. Which is…not a euphemism. Oh god…stop thinking bad things! You’re all bad and you need a time out. Go to your corners!
You're going to have to trust me that there's a very good reason that Emma is in her bra...I promise you it all comes around!
But still…EXCITING SHINY NEW PROJECTS!!!! WHEE!!!!
My good friend Tim Cummings has a book now available – Orphan Stories.
“Set in 1940s Florida, Middle America, Hollywood in the 70s, curious netherspheres between life and death, and deep inside the imaginations of characters whose greatest abundances are their emotions, the ten stories (and smattering of poems) in Cummings’s eclectic collection ‘Orphans’ evoke familiar and strange scenarios of love, loss, heartbreak, humor, spirituality, sexuality, and the quelling of violence. An unhappy housewife mired by the ravages of war fantasizes about killing her own daughter. An unlikely couple in the heart of Americana is brought together by strange sparks of magic trapped in a horoscopes column. The dark but achingly honest confessions of a Hollywood icon’s emotionally deranged son cause him to band together with like-minded misfits. A play about a sweet, sickly little boy illuminates a weird world of living, corporeal dolls that gently dance him to his imminent death. And there is more. In this refreshingly unpredictable assortment of short stories, poems, plays, and screenplays, a strong and imaginative new voice in American literature spins a majestic web of people, places, relationships, and situations.”
You can buy it in either print or digital editions, now.
If you like creative short fiction and want to support artists that are paving their own way, rather than wading through the (I can assure you exhausting) traditional publishing machine, I urge you to get your copy now. Mine’s in the mail. Congratulations Tim!
So a few pieces of news relating to Womanthology (and yours truly).
First of all, Womanthology is at over $62,000, with 18+ days still to go. If you haven’t donated yet, get on over there!
Secondly, I will have a four page story in volume one, with art by the absolutely sublimely talented Stephanie Hans, so if you weren’t already interested, aren’t you NOW?
Lastly, I was interviewed, along with mastermind Renae De Liz and editor/artist Jessica Hickman for a Publishers Weekly article about Womanthology for an article that came out on Monday, so check that out too.
Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive through all of this, it’s pretty damn exciting.
My review of Paying For It is up on CBR.
Also, the review made the CBR front page today…so you know that means it’s good! 😉
As always, likes and tweets are much appreciated!
And you can check out all my CBR Reviews thus far, here.
Tags: comics!
Hey everyone…it’s week two of my temporary gig at CBR writing comic reviews…head on over to check out reviews of:
And go here to see all my CBR reviews thus far. Thanks everyone!
Magus #3, X-Men Legacy #246, Zatanna #10, and iZombie #11
Tags: comics!
