Introduction
The idea for this book, as one may soon infer, came to me when I was very young. Like most, if not all schools we had boy-girl playground rivalries, which in this book I jokingly dubbed the “Cootie Wars.” Well, they were all good and fun until one day the girls started throwing rocks at us. Nothing lethal, of course, just the size to give one a nasty sting or get lodged up one’s nose (I should know). But if we threw a single one back –
“Teacher! Teacher! The boys are throwing rocks at us!”
It may have been that point when I started fantasizing about my best friends and I valiantly crusading against the female forces of evil. It was great, and it went through several incarnations before lapsing into my subconscious.
Three years later or so I thought of it again, mostly because I was extremely bored. “Gee,” I thought, “that could make an awesome movie,” but then decided to settle for a book. Obviously there were limitations though. Oh sure, it’s a great story if you’re seven or eight. But no one older than that will stand for adults starting a full-scale war between the genders with guns and planes and things. So I tried to get logical explanations for most of it.
First was Kayynar Laverĝe, who incidentally didn’t get a name until the story’s written form (and probably should have gotten a different one). The way she always looked in my fantasies was inspired by Emma Watson as Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter movies, but Emma or Hermione she was not. She was evil. In most of the original versions she just kind of appeared in a restaurant where Christopher and Beth were having a date and drafted all the girls into her army. Right. Okay.
She and the girls were, understandably, the “bad guys.” But I realized later that that wasn’t fair to them. In real life they are much more kind and sympathetic in general. So I decided that they had gotten into it before anyone knew what was going on. It was never meant to be an army but it evolved that way.
So now Kayynar was painted as the only evil one. But as I thought about it I decided she had been driven to it by some jerk breaking up with her. At first I made it a point that she was not insane, but I quickly realized that wouldn’t work so I added the train thing. You’ll have to wait until the third book to find out what exactly is wrong with her, so if (when) this one bombs and I never write the next two, tough tomato sauce (not really).
Next: Prologue
“Teacher! Teacher! The boys are throwing rocks at us!”
It may have been that point when I started fantasizing about my best friends and I valiantly crusading against the female forces of evil. It was great, and it went through several incarnations before lapsing into my subconscious.
Three years later or so I thought of it again, mostly because I was extremely bored. “Gee,” I thought, “that could make an awesome movie,” but then decided to settle for a book. Obviously there were limitations though. Oh sure, it’s a great story if you’re seven or eight. But no one older than that will stand for adults starting a full-scale war between the genders with guns and planes and things. So I tried to get logical explanations for most of it.
First was Kayynar Laverĝe, who incidentally didn’t get a name until the story’s written form (and probably should have gotten a different one). The way she always looked in my fantasies was inspired by Emma Watson as Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter movies, but Emma or Hermione she was not. She was evil. In most of the original versions she just kind of appeared in a restaurant where Christopher and Beth were having a date and drafted all the girls into her army. Right. Okay.
She and the girls were, understandably, the “bad guys.” But I realized later that that wasn’t fair to them. In real life they are much more kind and sympathetic in general. So I decided that they had gotten into it before anyone knew what was going on. It was never meant to be an army but it evolved that way.
So now Kayynar was painted as the only evil one. But as I thought about it I decided she had been driven to it by some jerk breaking up with her. At first I made it a point that she was not insane, but I quickly realized that wouldn’t work so I added the train thing. You’ll have to wait until the third book to find out what exactly is wrong with her, so if (when) this one bombs and I never write the next two, tough tomato sauce (not really).
Next: Prologue
