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The Girl Who Would Be King – Chapters 9 & 10

July 3, 2012 in blogging, bonnie braverman, books, lola lefever, The Girl Who Would Be King, the novel, writing | 2 comments

It’s Tuesday…you know what that means…NEW chapters for THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING.

You can download the new Chapters here: TGWWBK Chapters 9 & 10

Or just read below.

If you want the entire story thus far, head over to THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING page and download or read directly from the site.

Sharon is becoming a legitimate problem for me.

Until recently she’s been a thorn in just about everyone’s side, but she’s provided an interesting opportunity for me to do good.  Returning thrown necklaces and other bits of stolen property, stopping fights before they begin, stupid little stuff.  Little stuff that makes people happy and lets me see my mother in my dreams.  The dreams, even if they are filled with confusion and violence and strange warnings that I don’t understand, are still time with my mother.  Until Sharon I’ve been used to people somehow intrinsically understanding to leave me alone, like animals in the wild that know to only hunt the weak or injured.  I think I give off something that keeps most people away from me.  Like potential adoptive parents.  It never mattered much to me because I was always waiting for Jasper to come and get me.  Of course when I was twelve, he was eighteen and he didn’t come for me, so I gave up quickly on the fantasy.  I really had tricked myself at first into believing he would come, but when he didn’t, I unpacked my bag again and went back to my regular life.  It was foolish to think he would come, considering I blamed myself for the car accident; it was likely he blamed me for it too.  But I guess I had hoped that he would come anyway.

When Rachael shows up at dinner with a broken wrist I know that Sharon has drawn an invisible line in the sand, and it’s up to me to step up to it.  I begin tailing Rachael everywhere she goes, becoming her self-appointed guardian.  I see her injury and chide myself for sitting idly by for too long; it’s time to stand up, if not for myself, then for someone else.

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30 Days Of Superheroines – Day 01!

June 25, 2012 in bonnie vs lola, meredith mcclaren, ross campbell, stephanie hans, The Girl Who Would Be King, the novel, writing | 28 comments

So in honor of THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING and the two kickass superpowered teenage protagonists I’m going to do a superheroine a day for the entire run of my Kickstarter.

I’m not going to write a big thing for each post, but I’m going to post tons of gorgeous art – both professional and fan art – to celebrate these great characters. I’m going to do my damndest to link back and credit, but if I miss something, please forgive and correct if you’ve got the right information in the comments.

Today we’re naturally starting with BONNIE & LOLA and I hope you’ll all enjoy them mightily.

There’s of course not a lot of fan art out yet for Bonnie & Lola since everyone is just meeting them, but a couple really wonderful people have already given me some art for them to get the ball rolling.

We obviously have the gorgeous cover work and illustration by Stephanie Hans which you’ve all seen – and if you go here you can see a dialogue between she and I about the cover process as well as her early sketches:

And then Ross Campbell contributed these absolutely gorgeous Lola and Bonnie heads:

And Meredith McClaren did these brilliant Bonnie and Lola “itties”:

And THIS one by Stephanie Hans – an original painting of Bonnie – from a scene in the book – and available for purchase on Kickstarter!

This has been so much fun already that I could just die.

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The Girl Who Would Be King Kickstarter is LIVE…!

June 25, 2012 in 1979 semi-finalist, books, The Girl Who Would Be King, the novel, writing | 4 comments

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!

The Girl Who Would Be King – Chapters 3 & 4

June 21, 2012 in bonnie braverman, books, lola lefever, superheroes, The Girl Who Would Be King, the novel, writing | 8 comments

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.

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The Girl Who Would Be King – Chapters 1 & 2

June 19, 2012 in kickstarter, superheroes, The Girl Who Would Be King, the novel, writing | 22 comments

Bonnie & Lola.  Illustration by Stephanie Hans

Here we go!

Next Monday, June 25th I will be launching a Kickstarter for my book THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING (which I talk about a little bit more here). Part of the Kickstarter will be giving away “Part I: break away” in full online by releasing pages here on 1979 Semi-Finalist every Tuesday and Thursday for the duration of the Kickstarter.

As today is Tuesday, we’re starting with the first two chapters of the book. Come back every Tuesday and Thursday for a new piece, and click on the THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING tab above to go to a dedicated page with the all the updates compiled in one location. The text is both below in blog format for easy reading, or available in a downloadable PDF at the link so you can take it with you on your devices.

Of course if you like what you read, please feel free to sound off in the comments. If you don’t…um…go away? Just kidding, you can let me know if you don’t like it either, but productive comments are preferred and the “comments policy” will be in full effect as usual.

Download the PDF here:  The Girl Who Would Be King – Chapters 1 & 2

Berks County, Pennsylvania

The car hits the tree going at least forty miles an hour and I go through the windshield like I’ve been tossed gently by a hurricane.  I land thirty yards away from the car on some bright green grass, barely missing the tree directly in my path.

Everything is black for a while.

When I open my eyes again all I see are these vivid green leaves floating casually above me, and I wonder for just a moment about their casual ways, trying to understand why certain parts of life just don’t care about the other parts.

And then the smell hits me.

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The Long & Winding Road Part IV: Editing With Agents

June 19, 2012 in The Girl Who Would Be King, the novel, writing | Permalink

Part 4 of my series about my experiences with my novel is up on Lit Reactor. Check it out!

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Don’t Write Comics: How To Write Comics Part I

June 11, 2012 in comics, lit reactor, writing | Permalink

I’m writing a little series for Lit Reactor about how to write comics. It’s kind of fun, check it out!

Don’t Write Comics: How To Write Comics Part I

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Unbelievably Cool – The Girl Who Would Be King

May 29, 2012 in art, artists, books, comics, my book, stephanie hans, superheroes, The Girl Who Would Be King, writing | 23 comments

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

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Long & Winding Road: Part III – Talking to Agents

May 22, 2012 in lit reactor, long and winding road, my book, writing | Permalink

Part III of my Lit Reactor piece about trying to get an agent, and sell my first novel. Check it out!

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What Does Your Workspace Look Like?

May 14, 2012 in lit reactor, writing | 3 comments

Lit Reactor has a very cool post up about writing environments/work space. Since I find this a rather fascinating subject, I thought I’d share mine.

Keep in mind I live in NYC, so space is highly limited. That said, Adam and I have both tried to carve out serious (and organized) space for ourselves as we spend a lot of time working at home…me especially.

So here’s a peek (or two) at mine and yes, Adam’s and my workspaces face each other. It’s not to be cute, but for space saving. Fortunately our monitors are so big we can’t really see each other unless we try…it makes everything much less precious. Post links to your workspace on Lit Reactor!

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