On July 1st, freelance writer Sophia Christele started a Kickstarter in the hopes to get her very first book published. The book will be a retro-futurist detective story set in space in the 1950’s that Christele has been describing as “Mad Men in space” Christele gives a description as such:
Cosmic Callisto Caprica or Cosmo for short, is having the night of her life. On the same evening that she receives her junior detectives license, Cosmo is assigned to her first case. For her first case Cosmo will travel to the luxury space station the Titian to investigate a robbery. The luxurious rings of Saturn have been stolen! The owner of the rings,Princess Rhea, a martian of royal decent, desperately needs her rings back. Cosmo will have to follow all of the clues in order to solve her first case.
I got the chance to ask her a few questions regarding the project, her hopes, and why she’s hoping that her novella will bring some much needed diversity to YA literature!
We the Nerdy: How did you come up with the idea for Cosmic Callisto Caprica?
Sophia Christele: Honestly I was just siting in my room brainstorming and thinking about all of the different things that I liked recently. I had just finished binge watching season 6 of Mad Men and I had also, through the magic of tumblr, discovered retro-futurism. I feel in love with these images of people wearing 1950’s style clothing and operating flying saucers. I was just so inspired by both that I started to make my own stories and characters. At first I was going to make Cosmo a space explorer. But I thought, “That’s such a tired idea.” After playing around with this one concept and trying to think of something different I thought, what if the main hero for my story was a detective. The hardest part was coming up with my characters name. For the longest time I was calling her “space girl”. I needed something that would stand out and make her unique. So I was scrolling though this glossary of space terms and I had hit the terms that started with the letter C. I fell in love with the terms Cosmic, Callisto, and Caprica. I couldn’t pick just one term to use as her name so I grouped all three words together!
WtN: Why retro-futurism?
SC: I picked retro-futurisum because I liked the mixture of both the past with a little bit of the present. People flying around in jetpacks and everything being available with the push of a button.
WtN: How long have you been planning/writing this novella?
SC: I’ve been working on my novella since December. I did NaNoWriMo for the first time this past november and that helped to give my creativity a jump start. I wasn’t madly in love with the story that I wrote but I was pleased that I saw it through. I remember telling myself, “You just wrote a novella in one month. It’s messy but you do it. Think of what you could make if you took your time.” I was unemployed at the time so I decided to write my novella in between filling out job applications.
WtN: Why did you choose Kickstarter?
SC: Well I picked Kickstarter because I couldn’t afford to publish my book on my own. Sadly, I’ve been unemployed for quite some time. Then an opportunity came my way to have a part time contractual job. I was going to work from March to June. So I decided to dedicate my funds towards purchasing gifts and paying to advertise my upcoming kickstarter. I really made just enough to do that and nothing else. Self publishing costs thousands of dollars and I knew there was no way between March and June that I could save up enough to get my book out. I also picked Kickstarter because it’s just a great platform for getting the word out about your project.
WtN: In the video on your Kickstarter, you describe how you’re bothered by the lack of diversity in the YA genre, can you expand upon that?
SC: Every time I prance into a bookstore the shelves are covered with dark, romantic,vampire, demon, zombie, post apocalyptic stories that are all starting to look the same to me. Each and everyone of these stories usually have a heroic male lead. If you’re lucky, maybe a girl will be the lead character, but a triangle romance subplot will be shoehorned in there somewhere. But worst of all, none of the stars of these novels have a person of color as their lead. I mean sure, you might find a minority character somewhere deep in the background, but that’s really about it. In the past several years with the YA novel boom, can you even name a mainstream novel with a person of color as the main character? No. Which is even more sad because it’s 2014 and this should’t be an issue
WtN: You have quite a few artists helping out with gifts. Can you talk about their support some?
SC: I wanted my gifts to look as diverse as possible so I searched far and wide across tumblr for the artist that I needed. Each artist has a different assignment. I have some who are designing the bookmarks and postcard. I have some who are designing my mystery gifts. I ‘m really excited about the mystery gifts that I have to offer and I hope that people will like them a lot. I put a lot of thought into making sure these gifts were original and not like anything else I was offering.
I haven’t started it yet but I also commissioned a few artist to draw images of Cosmo that I’m going to present once a week on my social media websites. Then there are two side projects associated with this Kickstarter. I haven’t announced them yet. But I have an artist working on the art for me and I can’t wait to tell everyone about it.
WtN: What would it mean to you if this reached goal?
SC: It would mean the world to me. I’m sure I’ll probably cry…… a lot……. for a long time. I’m my own worst enemy. I don’t know how many times I have talked myself out of doing something because of fear and not believing in myself. It kills me that I have more confidence in myself to fail then to actually achieve. So by seeing this through and to actually achieve this goal that I set out to do, it would be everything for me.
Writing is something that I have always loved to do. It comes natural to me. Ever since self publishing became available it’s always been in the back of my mind that, “I should write that book I’ve always wanted to write.” But I just ignored it. I never felt like I was good enough or that anyone would care. But when I wrote about Cosmo I truly felt like what I had was special and I wanted to share it with everyone.
WtN: Do you have any other plans for Cosmo? Any other novellas planned?
SC: Oh I have written down at least several different adventures I would like Cosmo to go on. If I could earn enough to publish her first book and the second one that would be wonderful. Her second adventure is going to hit a little close to home. Thats really all I want to say about it.
Cosmo is going to do a lot of traveling and exploring. There are other galaxies I would like for her to visit and I can’t wait for her and everyone to see them. Cosmo also has three other friends who I haven’t introduced yet. These friends of hers have unique personalities and adventures that I would like for them to go on as well.
The Kickstarter for Cosmic Callisto Caprica ends on July 31st. And with the recent push of gritty YA novels about kids killing kids and/or dying in horrible ways, Cosmo may be the fresh young hero we need to bring a little sci-fi back into the mix.
If self publishing costs you thousands of dollars, then you’re doing it wrong.