My friend Kathy and I have known each other since junior high. At one time we waged a cartoon war that involved adventures of our awkward superhero alter egos. I was dubbed Super Frizz because my grandmother had attempted to perm my hair in the seventh grade and severely damaged it. It took years to grow out.
Circa 2009-2010, Kathy and I had a series of meetings at our local Wendy’s to catch up and discuss creative adventures. Just thinking about it makes me want a bacon and cheese baked potato – my go-to at Wendy’s at the time. We called the meetings “The Wendy’s Experiment” and dreamed up lots of possibilities.
(Kathy, if you’re reading this, please correct me if I’m wrong about anything – this seems like a whole life ago to me).
The Birth of Hope & Josie Go to the Prom
I have had several friends over the years that I tried to create with, but it is no simple thing for more than one person to have the time or energy or resources to bring ideas into form.
However, on this particular occasion, all the things aligned to create something really fun.
Hope & Josie Go to the Prom was written in a back and forth manner between Kathy and me as the characters Hope and Josie. We treated the creation almost as if we were uncovering the story ourselves as we wrote our notes to each other and the exchanges grew in complexity and silliness.
At the time we wrote it (again, 2009-10), we felt like we made use of the communication options that teens had available. While most of those don’t really translate to what a 2025 teen would use, the story still holds up. It is super zany and wild, and if you read it with the knowledge of when it was written, it hits some nostalgia buttons.
Then and Now
I decided to bring it back into the world earlier this year. When we first published it on Lulu.com in 2010, we had it printed as a spiralized book because we thought that would be a cute feature. It actually made the printing cost a little ridiculous. Later, we didn’t publish it as an ebook because we didn’t want to lose the handwritten fonts that we felt made the book seem like you were truly reading someone’s notes.
I finally decided to tackle that issue. I knew I could publish Hope & Josie as an illustrated ebook, but I needed to do it in a way that people wouldn’t have to enlarge each page to read it (because that would be super annoying).
I tested several different sizes and I think I found a sweet spot where the reader has a decent amount of text per page without having to zoom in.
Is There a Sequel?
When we first created Hope & Josie Go to the Prom, Kathy and I thought we would be making a series of books with these two characters. That hasn’t quite panned out over the last fifteen years.
But, you never know… 🙂