Teenage Heroine: Brave, Confident, & Intelligent to Boot

[Quoleena]

I'm looking for help on something. I wrote a book starring a 17-year-old young woman named, Rayne. She's daring, intelligent, and not afraid to speak her mind. The issue she has is most people in her small "town" regard her with disdain and ridicule because she is different than everyone else. She lives in a place where no one is judged based on gender, or anything really, except the thing which sets her apart from them. I suppose I should mention Rayne exists centuries into the future. In fact, she's not even Homo sapiens. She - and everyone else in her community - are an evolved species of humans.

Through this book, I express my stance on climate change and our affect on this planet, and what I think it will take for there ever to be "world peace." I should mention I present these as underlying concepts, something which one might realize during a book club discussion.

After centuries of war, the Earth is left an atomic wasteland, with the largest mammals of land and sea extinct. Yet, there is still hope, because of the new species of humans, who have existed since the time of Aristotle (in fact, I list Aristotle as one of the evolved humans). Along with the natural course of things (eg Mother Nature), this new species was able to restore the Earth to its most flourishing days. The time period of my book is during what I call The Rebirth Period, after this arduous period of planetary healing.

The new humans share the values of their predecessors: Gandhi, Socrates, Mandela, Nightingale, Teresa, Confucius, etc (all of whom the book names as the early evolved humans).

There's one innate difference between them and us: they each possess a mystical ability, all related to the preservation of life on Earth. There are ten abilities, such as communicating with animals, healer, and flourisher of botanic life.

Now, back to our heroine. Why does her community ridicule her? She possesses no higher ability. Therefore, they consider her more like Homo sapiens (with all the negative connotations which an evolved species might think of US). As it happens, she's actually just - as one reviewer put it - "a late bloomer."

So, what's my point? I've started a Thunderclap campaign to spread news about my YA futuristic, coming of age novel. It released on Leap Day. I've never tried Thunderclap before, but I feel my book has a necessary message about the state of our planet and a reflection on how we relate to each other. Plus, it features a confident, intelligent young woman to boot. I should also say I think my book passes the Bechdel test.

I'm hoping to find supporters for my campaign. It's all a matter of clicking a button to share the campaign via social network on either Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. When you do, it’ll post a message stating something like, “I supported this campaign.” If successful, my campaign will post on April 30th to all followers of those who supported it before the deadline. I started it a couple days ago, and there are 57 days remaining to reach 100 supporters. I hope it's a success, and I appreciate anyone willing to follow the link and click to show your support!
http://thndr.me/fWaxMw

Thanks to everyone who reads even one sentence of this ridiculously long post!

Quoleena

[Aglaea]

Good luck with your campaign and kudos for passing the Bechdel test :) I just learned its meaning and will start a new thread to discuss it. Have a nice weekend!

[Kathleen]

It's very very interesting! Good luck with your campaign, I support you.

[Quoleena]

Thank you both! I'm 10% of the way there, so fingers crossed.

As for the Bechdel test, I learned about it recently too. As I understand it, I think is it's about whether two females can have a meaningful conversation in which a man is not the topic. In considering this, I wonder if mentioning a male character disqualifies it, even though a long conversation is still about other things. At least one conversation in my book completely passes it. Since I believe the test means to focus on whether the two females have an in-depth conversation that doesn't have to do with romance/dating/being in love, I wonder about it - after-the-fact, since I didn't know about it until recently. I'll be interested to comment in your thread once you start it.

[Katelyn, Our Shared Shelf Moderator]

Unfortunately, we have to close topics along these lines as they fall under the category of self-promotion. There is a Goodreads Author Feedback group that you can join that is more suited to these kinds of discussions.

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