Meet Bailey Valentine!

Name: Bailey Valentine
Stature: Short
Ethnicity: You decide. I often see her as <INSERT ETHNICITY HERE!>, but sometimes that changes in my head. I  often purposely omit these details so that you can decide for yourself or see a character you relate with as yourself. I only mention race if it's important to the story somehow, or I have a very clear picture of the character already.
Eye color: Brown
Hair color: Brown (but she just got a hair cut and lightened it a little! It's still brown, but still...)
Known for: Her death glare of doom.
Role in the story: Ellie's older cousin and the hostess of a summer writer's house.

Bailey was one of my favorite characters to write for the webseries, so she's one of the characters I really want to get right in this new format. Right off the bat, you'll see that she and Ellie just DON'T get along, and throughout the story you'll get to see why that is and hopefully understand that Bailey is neither entitled to snub her cousin nor is she entirely wrong in giving Ellie a hard time. Ellie's a tough person to love (although, in my opinion, she's an easy character to love--- fingers crossed!) and Bailey is a tough person, period.

The reason I love Bailey's character so much is because she's not the main character of this story, but in so many ways, it's just as much hers as it is Ellie's. The story is told through Elena's limited, first person perspective, but I have a feeling that if you're anything like me and like trying to see a narrative from different angles and trying to understand the characters until you just can't squeeze meaning out of them anymore, you'll really like Bailey. She's Ellie's opposite in almost every sense of the word, and but one thing they have in common is their stubbornness. If it's a war Ellie wants, it's a war she'll get, in Bailey's mind.

Bailey is strong, quiet, and rational. She's not the kind of person who gets mad for no reason. She's caring and an almost maternal figure who probably thinks she can save the world. But it frustrates her when she can't and as you know, Ellie's kind of given up on herself by the time the story starts.

So that's Ms. Valentine. She's very into close-knit relationships and is lovely to the people she loves. But when she starts to give up on a person, she becomes a bit cold and hardened toward them. It's because of this that  Ellie wants to get as far away from her as possible, but what Ellie doesn't realize is that Bailey sees all of her cousins problems, heartache, and failures as her own. And Ms. I-got-into-Stanford-and-Yale can't really tolerate personal imperfection.

Hope you guys love her as much as I do!
Deserae

One Week and Counting...

Yay! Today is the reveal of The November Project's real title and STUFF. I know I promised a video but I just remembered you guys have already heard the theme song on Almost (not quite) There. So you don't need to put up with my terrible vocals again. YOU'RE WELCOME.

GOING SOMEWHERE
YA Contemporary Fiction
When seventeen year old Ellie Carter is forced to stay with her cousin, Bailey Valentine, for the summer, she believes that she's finally hit the bottom of the abyss. But when she finds out that Bailey and her team of rag-tag writer friends are trying to enter a script into a Starving Screenwriter contest to win $50,000, she realizes she has to get her act together if she wants to be part of theirs.

Interested in knowing more? Feel free to check out last week's post by clicking here!

Can't wait 'til November to hear more about GOING SOMEWHERE? Check back in tomorrow for Bailey's character profile!

Bugs and hugs,
Deserae

The November Project

This November, I'm going to turn the webseries I wanted to make for you guys last summer into an online series. Want to read along?

Seventeen year old Elena Carter has had a bad year. A bad mother. A bad life. At least, that's her opinion. And now she's about to have a bad summer just to top off the list.

Though she'll soon be a senior in high-school, being not-quite-eighteen means she still has to do as her mom says. Thanks to her mother's off-beat friends winning an all-expense paid vacation to God-knows-where, Ellie is sent to stay with her college-aged cousin, Bailey, while her mom's away. Not only does Ellie hate Bailey's guts, but she doesn't like the idea of spending most of her summer in a house full of teenage writers who are trying to write a script to enter into some Starving Artist contest. 

Ellie is done with trying to "change her ways." She's no good and she knows it. Bailey knows it, too. So why does Bailey keep trying to reach out to her? And why won't she give up already? Ellie has and she knows it's just a matter of time before she gets the boot. She wants to be left alone so she can get on with her life.... Right?

Tune in next week to see the title of the project and to see an exclusive video!

Lots of love,
Deserae