By Charles Moffat
My new YA pulp fiction novel "The Girl in the Red Hoodie" came out yesterday and it is already #64 on Amazon.ca's Superhero Bestsellers List... It isn't in the top 10, but I'll take it. It is my first superhero novel and my first Young Adult novel, so I wasn't expecting to be in the top 10 by day two anyway.
WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT?
The book description:
Yasmeena is an immigrant who works at her father's boxing gym. When the city of Toronto is targeted by a group of white nationalists who take hostages inside the CN Tower and conduct terrorist attacks across the city she ends up being at the right place at the right time. Becoming a vigilante was never her plan, but as the terrorists continue to conduct attacks and assassinations she ends up in a fight for survival and has only her boxing skills to help her and her family survive.
A coming of age story of a would-be superhero.
Yasmeena is somewhat shy and studious, and she keeps her boxing skills a secret from her friends. Her parents are from Saudi Arabia, but they came to Canada years earlier when her father decided he wanted to open a boxing gym - and in defiance of his father - chose to do that in Canada instead of in Saudi Arabia. Yasmeena is an only child, but she is very close to her parents and her best friend Ameera.
Does she have a love interest? Yes, she does... His name is Alesandro, but you will have to buy the book to learn more about him.
WHERE DOES THE BOOK TAKE PLACE?
The book takes place in Toronto, my home for the past 22 years, with many of the locations in the book being real places you can visit:
- The CN Tower, which judging by the cover, gets destroyed and lands in...
- Simcoe Park, which is next to the...
- The CBC building...
- Bloor/Danforth
- Pape
- The Eaton's Centre
- Toronto City Hall
- Old Toronto City Hall / Courthouses
- The Prince Edward Viaduct Bridge
- The Millwood Overpass Bridge
- Thorncliffe Park
- E. T. Seton Park / The Toronto Archery Range
- The railway lines north of Thorncliffe Park
- Kawartha Lakes
And many more locations.
WHEN DOES THE BOOK TAKE PLACE?
I wrote the book during 2019 and 2020, and the book starts in January 2020. What happens after that is basically an alternate version of the year 2020. So if you really didn't like what happened that year then you will be interested to read an alternative version of the events of 2020 that doesn't involve a global pandemic and has very different results.
When I was finishing writing the book in 2020 it didn't really make sense for me to include the pandemic as part of the events happening in the world, so I ended up making the book part of my "Alt-Earth" series of books which features an alternative history version of Earth - an alternative history that includes weird events, magic and other things based on real world events.
You can learn more about the Alt-Earth setting and timeline of books by visiting either:
WHY DID I WRITE THIS BOOK?
Honestly, I came up with the idea for the book back in 2012/2013 roughly, when the first Hunger Games films started coming out. I felt there was a market for a book series about a young woman who does boxing, and that I could portray her as a superhero in a realistic way similar to the film 'Unbreakable'. At the time I wrote down a basic premise of a young female boxer who ends up fighting the mafia using her boxing skills, but I later changed it to her fighting white supremacist terrorists.
I felt that having the young Muslim immigrant character as the hero, and the evil white supremacists as the villains, that I would be more accurately portraying the changing political climate in North America, and making a much more profound statement about race relations.
WHAT MOVIES WOULD I COMPARE THIS BOOK TO?
- Rocky, obviously. But also specifically Rocky IV.
- Unbreakable
- Red Dawn (both the original and the remake)
- The Hunger Games
- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
WAIT, IS THERE ARCHERY IN THIS BOOK?
Yes, towards the end of the book Yasmeena starts to learn archery.
Her father is also depicted as wearing a green hoodie in the first book, so my plan for book two is that she will end up wearing her father's green hoodie and thus book two will be "The Girl in the Green Hoodie".
You can expect more archery in the second book as she starts to get better at it, but still lots of boxing too. She needs time to get better at archery, as it is a skill that takes years to develop and learn properly.
WHERE CAN WE BUY THE BOOK?
You can order it from your local bookstore using the ISBN number: 979-8456052865
Or you can order it via:
In Canada: Amazon.ca via amazon.ca/gp/product/B09F1CV814/
In the USA: Amazon.com via amazon.com/gp/product/B09F1CV814/
Happy Reading!
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