Nellie and the Nautilus Pitch Trailer and the inspirational history of Nellie Bly
Making pictures move
The first twenty pages of my graphic novel, Nellie and the Nautilus, is out and on submission to editors. I made this short preview of the story.
It’s a “what if” story bringing together real-life New York World reporter Nellie Bly and the mysterious ocean sinkings described by Jules Verne in one of his classic novels.
Nellie Bly was the pen name of Elizabeth Cochran, who was a pioneering investigative reporter (before there was such a thing) who shook up the world with her exposés of corruption. She lived in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and crossed paths with Jules Verne when she tried to travel around the world in 80 days (she made it in 72).
Nellie was first hired as a reporter after she wrote an angry response to an article entitled “What Girls Are Good For”, which bemoaned those “without talent, without beauty, without money. “
Nellie / Elizabeth responded: “How many wealthy and great men could be pointed out who started in the depths but where are the many women? Let a youth start as errand boy and he will work his way up until he is one of the firm. Girls are just as smart, a great deal quicker to learn; why, then, can they not do the same?
Here would be a good field for believers in women’s rights. Let them forego their lecturing and writing and go to work; more work and less talk. Take some girls that have the ability, procure for them situations, start them on their way, and by so doing accomplish more than by years of talking.”
After Nellie became a reporter, she rooted out corruption and squalid conditions in a New York City mental hospital, and exposed corruption in her discoveries as a foreign correspondent in Mexico when she was just 21.
With her keen intellect, powers of observation, and strong moral instincts, Nellie seemed like the perfect addition to the involuntary passengers aboard Captain Nemo’s Nautilus.
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Fantastic trailer, Krister! Can't wait to hear which lucky publisher will snap up your book!