[Toronto, Canada}
Graphic Novel, Literary and Interactive publisher Titan1Studios is pleased to announce the publication of The Twin Stars, a debut novel by California-based playwright Bridgette Dutta Portman, available now on Amazon.
The Twin Stars tells the story of Olive Joshi, a 16-year-old girl with obsessive-compulsive disorder and self-doubt. Olive once found solace in writing in her journal, where she crafted a fantasy story about Coseema, the princess of a distant planet under conjoined suns. Coseema resembled Olive physically, but was bold, self-confident, powerful, and flawless—everything Olive was not. When Olive’s OCD and perfectionism began to interfere with her ability to write, she abandoned her story, leaving Coseema and her world in stasis. One day, while en route to India to attend her beloved grandmother’s funeral, Olive falls through a portal into her journal and into the fantasy world that she created.
The Twin Stars is aimed at young adult readers between 13 and 18 years old, particularly those with an interest in the sci-fi/fantasy genre and those who struggle with mental health challenges. While Olive navigates through fantastical adventures on a planet born from her own imagination, her experiences mirror those that all teenagers face: the development of self-confidence and self-expression, the pursuit of friendships and romantic relationships, conflicts with siblings and parents, and the need to manage grief, change, and uncertainty.
Olive suffers from a mental illness, OCD, which manifests itself in the antagonistic forces in her fictional world. This anxiety disorder can be particularly debilitating for teenagers, who often lack insight into the condition and feel resistant to sharing their worries and compulsions with parents or teachers. The Twin Stars fuses sci-fi-fantasy adventure with a story about a teen’s struggle with her own mind. The aim is both to normalize and bring visibility to characters with mental health issues and to broaden the novel’s appeal to teens outside the sci-fi/fantasy genre who may struggle with mental and emotional disorders.
The Twin Stars is the first in a series of novels that will form the Coseema Saga and extend an ecosystem across literary and graphic novels, animation, mobile experiences, and immersive interactive content, with the continued mission of raising mental health awareness in teens.
Early praise for The Twin Stars:
“The Lucasfilm-esque milieu, blending magic with exobiology, astrophysics, and a painless layering of multiculturalism, is a tantalizing one. Portman adds a layer of emotion via Olive’s struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety, which impinges on the storyline in a more meaningful way than just checking a box in the character mental health problems column. YA readers raised on various permutations of the superhero mythos should be enthralled by the Coseema/Olive dichotomy in this metafictional series opener.”
– Kirkus Reviews
Read more reviews on Good Reads:
About the Author:
Bridgette Dutta Portman is a playwright, teacher, and novelist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. More than two dozen of her plays have been produced locally, nationally, and internationally. She is past president of the Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco, was a 2018 resident playwright at Custom Made Theatre Co., and is currently a member of Same Boat Theater Collective, the Pear Writers' Guild and the Dramatists' Guild. She has been a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights' Festival, the Theatre Bay Area TITAN award, the PlayPenn Conference, the Kentucky Women’s Theatre Conference Prize for Women Writers, the New Dramatists playwrights' residency, and more.
Bridgette holds a PhD in political science (UC Irvine, 2011) and an MFA in creative writing (Spalding University, 2018). She lives in Fremont, CA with her husband Deepanshu and their two children. Learn more about Bridgette and her work at www.bridgetteduttaportman.com.
About Titan1Studios:
Founded in 2016, TITAN1STUDIOS is an award-winning Canadian Publishing, Interactive and Immersive Studio focused on the creation and promotion of uniquely representative and inclusive original content IP. TITAN1 embraces diversity and representation across creative, management, and production teams, while striving to explore universal and timeless themes that are relevant to all audiences.
As an incubator for original content, the studio has developed multiple acclaimed properties including Knight Guardians of Relativity, New Humanz, Unity Farm, Wild Frontier, and the all-ages hit zombie adventure ZOMBEN for Publishing, Interactive, Digital Platforms, TV & Film.
For more information about Titan1Studios, please visit: www.titan1studios.com