Brave New Girls cover reveal!

For those of you who might not know, I'm embarking on a mission with fellow sci-fi author and nerdy girl Paige Daniels, author of the fantastic Non-Compliance series of dystopian cyberpunk novels. That mission is to encourage girls to go into STEM professions - that's Science, Technology, Engineering, Math. The numbers right now are just sad... only 26% of STEM professionals are women, and if you look at specific fields, like programming, the numbers are get sadder (just 17% of Google's tech workforce are women).

So we're out to change that, one little bit at a time! We're publishing an anthology of young adult sci-fi tales featuring girls in STEM fields - as programmers, starship mechanics, robot engineers... the possibilities are endless. The title? Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls and Gadgets. Here's the website: http://bravenewgirls.weebly.com/. We're running a crowdfunding campaign starting Monday, 6/30 to help cover the publishing costs, and we wanted the cover done in time for that (since it's going to grace many of our donor rewards). All revenues from sales of the anthology will be donated to a scholarship program through the Society of Women Engineers. So our goal is twofold: give girls fictional role models to encourage them to become STEM professionals and help raise money for their education.

Okay, okay, now for the part you really came for: the cover, which was designed by the amazing artists at Streetlight Graphics. Drumroll please...

And let the fanfare ring out!

It was very important to both Paige and I that our cover girl not only depict a young lady who's into techy things, but also that she be real. No more bizarre slashed catsuits with protruding curves and impossibly perfect hair. We wanted a girl with a normal body who's comfortable in her own skin. She's smart, confident, fearless, and too busy fixing robots to give a damn about what her hair's doing.

Want in on this? We're open for submissions! And as I mentioned above, our crowdfunding campaign is set to go live in less than a week. Any and all support is appreciated. So please, give us a share, will ya? It's for the children... I mean it!