A bit of false advertising, but I couldn’t resist.

This is not my foray into porn spamming, and I’m not writing rock-n-roll odes.

You might be asking yourself: what does a gay male writer know about girls?

Not much romantically, although there was that confused period in my adolescence. I’ve made my apologies to my former girlfriends, and I don’t think any lasting harm was done.

This was just my sneaky way to share an important project that brings much needed, strong female lead characters to young adult fantasy, in this case the superhero(ine) genre.

Cover art by Marvel comics cover artist Stephanie Hans

Author Kelly Thompson has launched a dynamic Kickstarter campaign to promote her self-pubbed novel THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING. There are amazing packages for donors at all levels, including: signed print copies of the book, cool artwork by Thompson (who is a kickass artist in addition to an author), and access to a fan forum for live chat that takes you behind the scenes of the story.

I made a pledge. You can too.

Beyond the excellent girl-empowering story she has to tell through TGWWBK, Thompson explains that her campaign is a way of bringing quality cross-genre literature to readers — a challenge within the traditional publishing model.

As an author who has run up against similar frustrations with a hard-to-categorize YA novel, I am exceedingly impressed by Thompson’s creativity and vision. She reached her original Kickstarter goal in like a day, and is well on her way to a stretch goal of $25K. The campaign ends July 25th.

Now for a musical interlude.

I love this song, and have been listening it to it a bit obsessively since I discovered it at the end of an episode of the HBO series “Girls.” Besides a really pleasing soundtrack (Bryan Ferry, Siouxie and the Banshees, Tom Tom Club – yeah, I’m showing my age), the writing and acting are hilarious, poignant and outrageous – keeping things so off-balance that you can’t stop watching. The series also resonates with me personally because my early twenties were a similar kind of horror show, with some great times thrown in.