Cabrini graduates continue to do great things, live exciting lives and make their Cabrini community proud every day even years after graduation.
Charles Bush, Cabrini class of ’09, majored in communication and English and is coming out with his first Young Adult Contemporary book called “Every Variable of Us.”
While on Cabrini’s campus in his college years, Bush was a part of The Loquitur and said how much he enjoyed writing for the college paper and how it gave him great practice in telling stories “through a journalistic lens as opposed to the fiction one I usually see story and character through.”
Bush said writing for Loquitur definitely impacted his decision in becoming a novelist in the way that it “solidified my passion for fictional storytelling.”
Bush went on to explain an experience he had while being assigned to cover the Cabrini men’s soccer game versus Eastern, which Cabrini won, Bush added, back in 2009.
He said how reporting on the outcome of a game was kind of dull, so instead imagined “If during the match a down-on-his-luck senior was forced to join The Loquitur in a last-ditch effort of improving his grades so he can graduate. While at the game on assignment, the ball is blasted out of bounds and into the bleachers where it nails our protagonist in the face, knocking him unconscious. When he wakes, the Cabrini forward who had kicked the ball is standing over him with heavy remorse. And as our protagonist looks up into the player’s dreamy blue eyes, high chiseled cheekbones and dirty blonde hair—the guy’s basically a lost Hemsworth brother—he says, ‘I’m a reporter for The Loquitur. Can you please spell your name so that I can get a quote for my story on how dangerous and freakin’ insane it is to attend a soccer game? Also, will you marry me?’”
Bush said that he knew at this moment he wanted to stick to fictional stories, to say the least.
After doing just that, Bush has his first book coming out and says his inspiration for it stems from a lot of his own personal
experiences.
Bush said that like his character Alexis in his book, he too grew up in a “poverty-stricken environment” and with the mindset that he could only do and be so many things in life, including straight and a basketball player.
Bush said that as he went through life he learned that wasn’t true and found it important to make other teens that look and feel like he once used to, know they could be anything they want in this world.
“We are not just a product of our environment,” Bush said. “The book at its very core is about discovering that a mind is our most powerful weapon in the face of adversity. We are scientists, doctors, athletes, writers, ballet dancers, presidents; strong, beautiful, brave, loving, and queer. We shouldn’t have to hide any of that or be just one thing. For we are amalgamations of infinite variables that make us who we are.”
“’Every Variable of Us’ is a timely story about race, love, and being true to yourself,” Bush said.
It is about Alexis Duncan, a Philly teenager who after she is injured in a gang shooting, can’t continue on with her basketball career. This leads to Duncan finding a friend, and possibly crush, in new student Aamani, and the love of her school’s STEM team with hopes of receiving a college scholarship.
Bush said that both Alexis and Aamani are “pretty much an amalgamation of myself. There’s so much of me in both of them.”
He said that the rest of the characters came organically and at “a point they started dictating their personalities and interactions
with Alexis for me.”
Bush said, “It wasn’t so much that I created them, as much as it was these very real characters were giving me the ‘okay’ to tell their story.”
“There’s a piece of me in every scene,” he said.
Bush said that the concept of this book came to him one night in 2018 when he jumped out of bed and began writing from that moment on. “Fast forward a year later to 2019, the book was finished, and I had signed with my agent,” Bush said.
Although this isn’t Bush’s first book that he has written, he said that when his editor sent him the press release, he felt “the overwhelming sensation of having accomplished my lifelong dream.”
Bush said that without giving too much away, he doesn’t believe there will be a series to this particular book. He said, “Alexis and Aamani’s stories are finished” but that he has written two other stories since the finish of “Every Variable of Us” and is currently working on another that he is really excited about.
Flux Books will release”Every Variable of Us” in spring 2022, and you can find Charles Bush on his social media, listed below, for any updates on this book and any of his future works.
Instagram: Charles_A_Bush
Twitter: Charlesbush10
