A novel available in its entirety online: visit the official website.

Bobby Pins and Mary Janes is a workplace drama, but also a novel of identity, exploring one character’s crises of conscience during her mid-20s. Parker Reid is a college graduate who always dreamed of literary grandeur, but she’s found herself working in a creative field she never anticipated. “Parker’s work struggles reflect her personal struggles,” Rich explained. “She has been on her own for a couple of years, and she remains on her own. At the start of the book, she is having an affair with her employer’s top cartoonist, but by the end of it, she will have flirted with a married man, chased the safe option, and also had to contend with the unrequited love of her best friend from school. Is this the life she wants? Should she settle for a relationship the same way she settled on her job?”

The aforementioned fictional cartoonist is the creator of an original comics series called “Valerie Flames,” an ongoing series about a young girl whose adventures cross the mysteries of Nancy Drew with the escapades of Tintin. Character designs for Valerie Flames and her cohorts were drawn by Joëlle Jones, Rich’s frequent collaborator. Together they have produced the graphic novels 12 Reasons Why I Love Her and You Have Killed Me. Valerie’s adventures will be represented in the online version of the novel via sections of script. “The script interludes not only demonstrate what this invented comic book might be like,” Rich said, “but also establish a meaningful parallel with the main narrative. The technique is like Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin mashed-up with Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.”