Ugenia Lavender and the Geri hype machine
A year ago, as I was finishing the first draft of Drive to Nowhere, I heard about Spice Girl Geri Haliwell's plans to launch a new children's book series based on a girl called Ugenia Lavender.
Ugenia would be sassy, incredible, energetic and ingenious. "She's flawed and yet she's inspirational, and she challenges the world she lives in," Geri proclaims on the official Ugenia Lavender website. Her dad, Professor Lavender, works in the dinosaur museum and "Ugenia goes to him when she's got a problem, as she does in The Lovely Illness", Geri says.
I groaned. What about sassy and smart Eeare Kindred, daughter of single dad Captain Epic Kindred? Similar 'bizarre' names... bags of attitude... Eeare, a heroine for the Facebook generation with her own imperfections? The one I'd thought up in 1992 and had begun writing faithfully about in November 2006?
Was Eeare (and Drive to Nowhere) going to be sidelined by Ugenia's adventures and the Geri hype machine before her own story had even begun?
Thankfully, I soon realised, these feisty and 'flawed' girls can live side-by-side. For Ugenia is only nine years old; a completely different role model for a completely different 'girl power' market. Eeare is fifteen; an adolescent, who is more like the eccentric outcasts in the movie The Breakfast Club than the small troupe of misfits in the Ugenia adventures (although I've only heard what the video says on the Ugenia website).
Even so, I'm still jealous of the publicity Ugenia has received solely on the back of the Geri/Spice Girls music 'brand'. Already I've seen articles pushing Ugenia in women's magazines, gossip websites and blogs (here's a leak of one of her books). No doubt closer to the release date, around May 2008, we'll see posters, interviews on TV and so on. Oh well. We self-publishers can only dream of that kind of hype!
Ugenia would be sassy, incredible, energetic and ingenious. "She's flawed and yet she's inspirational, and she challenges the world she lives in," Geri proclaims on the official Ugenia Lavender website. Her dad, Professor Lavender, works in the dinosaur museum and "Ugenia goes to him when she's got a problem, as she does in The Lovely Illness", Geri says.
I groaned. What about sassy and smart Eeare Kindred, daughter of single dad Captain Epic Kindred? Similar 'bizarre' names... bags of attitude... Eeare, a heroine for the Facebook generation with her own imperfections? The one I'd thought up in 1992 and had begun writing faithfully about in November 2006?
Was Eeare (and Drive to Nowhere) going to be sidelined by Ugenia's adventures and the Geri hype machine before her own story had even begun?
Thankfully, I soon realised, these feisty and 'flawed' girls can live side-by-side. For Ugenia is only nine years old; a completely different role model for a completely different 'girl power' market. Eeare is fifteen; an adolescent, who is more like the eccentric outcasts in the movie The Breakfast Club than the small troupe of misfits in the Ugenia adventures (although I've only heard what the video says on the Ugenia website).
Even so, I'm still jealous of the publicity Ugenia has received solely on the back of the Geri/Spice Girls music 'brand'. Already I've seen articles pushing Ugenia in women's magazines, gossip websites and blogs (here's a leak of one of her books). No doubt closer to the release date, around May 2008, we'll see posters, interviews on TV and so on. Oh well. We self-publishers can only dream of that kind of hype!
Labels: captain epic kindred, eeare kindred, marketing, ugenia lavender
posted by kim | 3:16 AM
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