Introducing Eva

After months of PDF proof’s and double checking all the things, worrying over languages and trims and printing quality (most of which I have zero control over…) I’m pleased to announce that Eva The Adventurer is now available. And she’s beautiful.

When publishing a book, there were a few things that were important to us. The first was that any royalties support #teamMikaere, Joseph’s Goal and NKH Research. We’re all aligned with what we want – a cure for NKH Research. Specifically, a successful clinical trial for gene therapy in the GLDC gene (and, eventually the AMT gene) currently in progress by Prof. Nick Greene of UCL. We’re so so close, and we know with certainty that the more funds we can send his way the faster the progression. So being as transparent as possible, we get a royalty of around £1 a book. We’re sending that £1 to Joseph’s Goal, who will send it on to the team at UCL. Every book sold is literally helping us fund a cure for NKH. We’re determined.

The second was that our books support diversity. That includes ignoring a few standard gender stereotypes. Our princess is more likely to save herself than wait for her prince. She’s into doing all the things, not just the ones typically reserved for boys.

We’ve also tried to include more diversity within the representations of our characters. So yes, there are some blue-eyed blonde lovelies. And some Asian, redhead, black, coffee coloured beauties too. In our next book, we’re going to try to include those of different religions, too. It’s important that our little ones can see themselves in the literature around them.

The third was that Eva is (at this point) available in a whopping FIVE languages: English, Dutch, French, German and Spanish.  We have Swedish and Serbian in progress and a bucketload of others in the works. It was really important to me that the books were bilingual. We’ve tried to find so many books in English *and* Te Reo, but I think I’ve found a total of one. Womp. Sharing the love of languages and learning is absolutely a priority – so Eva the Adventurer is bilingual. And any future books will also, fingers crossed, be bilingual.

We’ve been really really lucky that so many people have given their time and energy to help us translate. All the translations (and translation checks!) were done by volunteers. So thank you – everyone, genuinely. If you left your name on the translation, you’ll get credit. Your name will be all fancy on the cover along with mine, and you’ll be credited on the amazon listing (which means you’ll be able to search your name on Amazon… it was still novel the first twenty times I searched my name).

So, if you’d like to support NKH please buy a book (they’re all less than £5, unless you’re in the states. In which case Amazon makes you charge stupid amounts for it, I got it as low as I could at $9.95!)