Part 4 of my series about my experiences with my novel is up on Lit Reactor. Check it out!
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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
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!!!!
So after a very long year of revision to my novel, I can now say that I am officially agented by the truly excellent Steven Malk of Writer’s House. Additionally, my novel THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING is on submission to publishers right now. We’re aiming for the stars with some really HUGE publishers…so it will take some crazy luck and some people falling in love to get a sale, but I’m optimistic it can happen as I really love my book thanks to all the time and effort Steve and I put into it over the last year.
So yeah, I’ve been keeping things WAY under wraps on the book and here we are…now you know why…because the title is AWESOME. 
The Girl Who Would Be King is a YA (young adult) novel about two teenage girls with superpowers. They’re concerned with all the normal teen things like finding themselves and falling in love but they’re also busy learning about their superpowers, and you know…trying to kill each other.
Anyway, the process could be fast or slow at this point. Selling a book can take from a day to never. Let’s all hope it’s closer to the former than the latter.
Thanks everyone for your support and encouragement. Let’s become HUGE so you can be all “I was a fan of Kelly and 1979 Semi-Finalist when she was NOBODY…a broke ass nobody!”
So…that’s what’s been going on with me. You?