GCC Presents: Laurie Faria Stolarz

Laurie Faria Stolarz latest book in the "Touch" series, DEADLY LITTLE LESSONS is out now! Here are the details on the novel and a contest that Laurie is running!

DEADLY LITTLE LESSONS



Camelia Hammond's trying junior year of high school is finally over...but her troubles aren't. After she discovers a painful truth about her family, she escapes to a summer arts program in Rhode Island. Determined to put family - and boyfriend - drama behind her, she throws herself into her artwork.

At the arts school, she gets caught up in the case of Sasha Beckerman, a local girl who is missing. Even though all signs suggest that the teen ran away, Camelia senses otherwise. Eager to help the girl, she launches her own investigation. Meanwhile, Camelia realizes how much she misses Ben, despite being committed to Adam.

But time is running out for Sasha, and Camelia will have to trust her powers if she's to save her. Will the lessons Camelia has learned in the past give her the strength to do so?


Author Bio:

Laurie Faria Stolarz is the author of Deadly Little Secret, Deadly Little Lies, Deadly Little Games, Deadly Little Voices, Project 17, and Bleed, as well as the bestselling Blue is for Nightmares
series. Born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts, Stolarz attended Merrimack College and received an

MFA in creative writing from Emerson College in Boston. For more information, please visit her Web site at www.lauriestolarz.com.




Karma Chameleon Contest

In celebration of the release of DEADLY LITTLE LESSONS, I'm so excited to announce the launch of a brand new contest. I'm calling it Karma Chameleon - yes, after the Boy George song from the '80's (in case any of you have heard of it; if not, you can YouTube it for fun). I'm naming it that, not because of Boy George or his song, but because the contest is all about karma - good karma that is, and the spreading of it, and because, five books later, I thought it'd be the perfect time to celebrate Camelia from the Touch series (recall that Camelia's real name is Chameleon).

The contest is all about giving and getting - hence the karma part. As many of you know, the law
of karma, in its simplest definition, is that whatever you put out to the world - energy or otherwise,
good or bad - comes back to you. And so, in the spirit of good karma, let's spread some goodness. I
want to encourage readers to do a good deed, i.e. organize a fundraiser or food drive, volunteer to
tutor or teach something, visit the elderly or a children's hospital. All good-karma submissions will be
entered into a drawing to win autographed copies of some of my Touch series books. I'll be sharing
the most inspiring stories on my website and Facebook, and I'll Tweet about them as well (with your
permission, of course). For more information, see the official guidelines and rules on my web site: http://www.lauriestolarz.com/news.html

GCC Presents: Eileen Cook!

I love everything I've read by Eileen Cook thus far, so I'm excited to feature her new book, THE ALMOST TRUTH, as a part of here Girlfriends Cyber Circuit blog tour!


About THE ALMOST TRUTH:

From the author of Unraveling Isobel and The Education of Hailey Kendrick, a smart, romantic novel about a teenage con artist who might be in over her head.

Sadie can’t wait to get away from her backwards small town, her delusional mom, her jailbird dad, and the tiny trailer where she was raised…even though leaving those things behind also means leaving Brendan. Sadie wants a better life, and she has been working steadily toward it, one con at a time.

But when Sadie’s mother wipes out Sadie’s savings, her escape plan is suddenly gone. She needs to come up with a lot of cash—and fast—or she’ll be stuck in this town forever.

With Brendan’s help, she devises a plan—the ultimate con—to get the money. But the more lies Sadie spins, the more she starts falling for her own hoax…and perhaps for the wrong boy. Sadie wanted to change her life, but she wasn't prepared to have it flipped upside down by her own deception. With her future at stake and her heart on the line, suddenly it seems like she has a lot more than just money to lose....

About Eileen Cook:

Eileen Cook is a multi-published author with her novels appearing in eight different languages. She spent most of her teen years wishing she were someone else or somewhere else, which is great training for a writer. Her latest release, Unraveling Isobel came out in Jan 2012.

You can read more about Eileen, her books, and the things that strike her as funny at www.eileencook.com. Eileen lives in Vancouver with her husband and two dogs and no longer wishes to be anyone or anywhere else.

The Interview

Q: What inspired you to write this book?

EILEEN: Most often book ideas come to me as a collection of unrelated things. A bit of an idea here, another piece there, until it sticks together as one idea. This process can take months or years. This is one of the few books where I can remember the exact second I had the idea. I was on the ferry and saw a missing child poster. At the bottom there was an age-enhanced photo so you could see what the person might look like now. I had the thought "How weird would it be if I looked like the age enhanced photo?" In that instant the idea of the book dropped into my head. I ran back to my seat and wrote it down as fast as I could. I spent another week thinking over some different details, but I started writing almost right away.

Q: The main character of my first book, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, is the kind of girl I wanted to be (a rock star!), the MC of my second book has a lot more in common with teenage me. Is your main character someone you wish you could be, someone a lot like you, or your total opposite? How so?

EILEEN: With the exception of pulling a few pranks, I was pretty much a “good girl” in high school. My main character, Sadie, is a teenage con-artist. Her dad has been in and out of jail her whole life and she’s learned that if she wants her life to be different, she’s going to have to be the one to make it happen. She and I don’t have a lot in common, but I really admire her guts.

Q: If there was a soundtrack for your book what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate the story?

EILEEN: First off we need a few songs that deal with the idea of missing someone. Partly because there’s a missing child in the book, but more importantly Sadie is trying to figure out who she is and what’s missing in her life.
Missing You by Black-Eyed Peas
I Miss You by Incubus
Sadie’s a con artist- so we need at least one good lie song.
Miserable Lie by The Smiths
The book also has some romance so we need a few love ballads to round things out.
The Way You Look Tonight- by Tony Bennet
Someone Like You by Adele

Q: In addition to writing books, I also write for a website for teens called Rookie, which has a regular feature called "Literally The Best Thing Ever," wherein we write about a thing that we think is super mega awesome (even if it is the type of thing that others might call a guilty pleasure, we believe there is nothing guilty about pleasure!) and explain why we think it is literally the best thing ever. It's generally a kind of unexpected thing, for example I wrote one about the soap opera, One Life To Live. I don't expect you to write a whole essay obviously, but can you briefly tell us what either you or your character (or both!) would say is "Literally The Best Thing Ever" and why?

EILEEN: I am addicted to David’s Teas. I’m not a coffee drinker (which is practically a crime in the Pacific Northwest), but I love tea. http://www.davidstea.com They have all sorts of amazing flavors, but a couple favorites are: Coco Chai Rooibos (coconut, ginger, cardamom and peppercorns) and Creamy Earl Grey.

Q: What are you working on for us next?

EILEEN: I am working on a new YA which is currently being called LOST TO BE FOUND, but stay tuned the title may change. It’s about a girl named Avery who decides to search for her birth mom as part of her senior project, but ends up finding out more about herself than she expected.

A new project I'm excited about: Ms.Fit Magazine!

I love writing about the things that matter most to me, whether that be writing fiction about female musicians or teenagers struggling with depression, self-injury and addiction, or writing nonfiction about my own experiences with self-injury, grief, addiction, abuse and bullying. Over the past year, writing for Rookie has literally changed my life and my perspective on writing. I've struggled with the ups and downs (okay, mainly the downs) of my fiction career, but my regular contributions of personal essays and goofy things like my glowing review of my DVR have kept me balanced and happy as a writer.

Now I have the opportunity to write for another online publication that deals with something else I think about a lot--health. This may not be a side of me that you know a ton about, but as the daughter of two nurses, a teenager who like many other teenagers struggled with body image, and vegetarian of almost twenty years and vegan of almost fifteen, being active, making healthy choices, feeling good about myself, and cooking delicious food are all extremely important parts of my life. I've had a hard time finding publications that I enjoy reading about these things (aside from Veg News on the vegan side and my friend Rea's blog) because most of the health magazines (like way too many women's mags in general) raise my feminist hackles. Fortunately, Kathie Bergquist, a brilliant writer I know from going to grad school at Columbia College Chicago, aims to change that with her new mag, Ms.Fit. She's invited me to write for it and I am slotted to do a piece on overcoming my struggles with insomnia in her first issue in January. (The theme is Re: and my piece will be Re-learning how to sleep.)

This is how Kathie describes Ms.Fit:

Ms.Fit mag will be an unapologetically feminist, queer-friendly, body-positive web 'zine about health, fitness, and wellness, existing in a world where real women (a.k.a less than perfect) and LGBTQ folks often feel erased by mainstream health and fitness culture. We want all women and their queer allies to feel healthy, strong, and good about themselves and to live long lives of action and empowerment. And we want to have a blast doing it. Because Ms.Fit thinks that one of the most important political statement we can make is to be strong, healthy, and happy in all of our fierce, beautiful manifestations. 

 Ms. Fit is being put together by a team of women from various backgrounds and life and fitness experiences. In addition to their shared commitment to health, fitness, and wellness through a real-life lens, Ms.Fits editorial team and contributors are comprised of professional writers and editors, fitness trainers, parents, experts, amateurs, who are all committed to empowering women and community building around wellness, health, and social responsibility.

In other words, this is the perfect health, body and fitness mag for women like me and I want more than anything to see it succeed.

You can stay up to date on Ms.Fit's development on their provisional blog, http://msfitmag.com/ (the finished mag will be fuller and prettier) and following them on Twitter.

To get the magazine launched in January, Ms.Fit has an Indie-a-Go-Go campaign running. I've already contributed and I hope that if a feminist, queer-friendly pub like this interests you (and you want to read my reflections on health, food, and fitness!), you will contribute as well!

A Vlog! An Excerpt! A Contest!--Celebrating the Release of DEAR TEEN ME!

This Tuesday marked the release of DEAR TEEN ME: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves, an anthology edited by E. Kristin Anderson and Miranda Kenneally.

It was born from this website, which I wrote a letter for back in 2011. I was honored when I was asked to write a new letter for the anthology, which includes a bunch of extremely cool, interesting, and talented YA authors, who have had a variety of teenage experiences.

Here's the official description of the book:

Dear Teen Me includes advice from over 70 YA authors (including Lauren Oliver, Ellen Hopkins, and Nancy Holder, to name a few) to their teenage selves. The letters cover a wide range of topics, including physical abuse, body issues, bullying, friendship, love, and enough insecurities to fill an auditorium. So pick a page, and find out which of your favorite authors had a really bad first kiss? Who found true love at 18? Who wishes he’d had more fun in high school instead of studying so hard? Some authors write diary entries, some write letters, and a few graphic novelists turn their stories into visual art. And whether you hang out with the theater kids, the band geeks, the bad boys, the loners, the class presidents, the delinquents, the jocks, or the nerds, you’ll find friends--and a lot of familiar faces--in the course of Dear Teen Me.

The Vlog: 

To celebrating the release, I put together a vlog--now, mind you, "put together" is a very loose term. Basically I used to crappy webcam and the Windows Movie Maker software on my computer, so please don't judge me too harshly. In it I talk briefly about why I participated in this project/why I write for teens in general and I share a short excerpt from my letter.



The Contest: 
It's not a party without presents!!! So I'm going to giveaway a copy of DEAR TEEN ME to one lucky winner. It will be signed by 4 to 5 Dear Teen Me contributors and come with bookmarks and postcards!

To enter all you have to do is leave a comment with your email address (so I can contact you if you win).

Want extra entries?
+1 for every time you tweet or share something on facebook about Dear Teen Me, could be my video, a link to this blog entry, a link to one of the other blogs on the Dear Teen Me blog tour, could just be your own thoughts on how awesome Dear Teen Me is.

Note your extra entries in your comment and enter as many times as you want before Friday, November 9th when I will be drawing my winner. This contest IS open internationally!

GCC Presents: Kelly Parra!

My GCC buddy and fellow MTV Books author Kelly Parra has a new short story in an anthology, SOMETHING WICKED, that sounds just perfect for Halloween. Check it out! (Especially that gorgeous cover!)

About SOMETHING WICKED:

Sometimes, they aren't costumes.

 

They’re baaaack.

More nightmares brought to you by the authors of the young adult anthology Prom Dates to Die For...

Beware the Midnight Troll on your late-night stroll by Mari Hestekin. Swim at your own risk Under Loch and Cay by Jenny Peterson. A curse of spiders on campus means Arach War by Lena Brown. Through a Glass Darkly one could lose a soul by Heather Dearly. Supernatural Hunters turn to the sea in Mermania by Kelly Parra. Social media goes to the ghouls in Spectral Media by Aaron Smith.

Don’t miss this paranormal fun for tween, teens and adults!

Kelly Parra’s short story “Mermania” continues Teen Supernatural Hunters Jaz and Blake’s paranormal adventures. The duo debuted in “Darkness Becomes Him” in the young adult anthology PROM DATES TO DIE FOR as they battled a soul hungry dark angel. In SOMETHING WICKED a merman entrances Jaz and it’s up to her and Blake to rush against time before Jaz grows her own tail by the full moon!

About the Author:

Kelly Parra’s earliest stories were told with paintbrushes, but upon discovering the drama and forbidden love of romance and suspense novels, those paintbrushes were replaced with a keyboard. Now a multi-published author in young adult and romance fiction, she has created memorable characters such as a graffiti artist in Graffiti Girl, a psychic teen in Invisible Touch, and a tough undercover narc in her novel for adults, Criminal Instinct. A two-time RITA finalist, she divides her time between her novels, short fiction, and the adventures of motherhood, where she juggles her home life with two children, a tattooed husband, a sweet poodle, and a rowdy pit bull. Visit her website www.KellyParra.com.

The Interview:

Q: What inspired you to write this story?
Kelly: Hello Stephanie! Thanks for having me on your blog! Well, my story “Mermania” in the paranormal young adult anthology SOMETHING WICKED is actually the continuation of my other story “Darkness Becomes Him” in the PROM DATES TO DIE FOR anthology. I’m a fan of the show Supernatural so I thought it would be fun to write about teen supernatural hunters! And from there my characters Jaz and Blake were born.

Q: The main character of my first book, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, is the kind of girl I wanted to be (a rock star!), the MC of my second book has a lot more in common with teenage me. Is your main character someone you wish you could be, someone a lot like you, or your total opposite? How so?
Kelly: My main character’s name is Jax. She’s an orphan teen that is able to sense anything magical. So that’s not me! Haha. However, she may have some characteristics of when I was younger. I didn’t always fit in and was somewhat of a tomboy like Jax.

Q: In addition to writing books, I also write for a website for teens called Rookie, which has a regular feature called "Literally The Best Thing Ever," wherein we write about a thing that we think is super mega awesome (even if it is the type of thing that others might call a guilty pleasure, we believe there is nothing guilty about pleasure!) and explain why we think it is literally the best thing ever. It's generally a kind of unexpected thing, for example I wrote one about the soap opera, One Life To Live. I don't expect you to write a whole essay obviously, but can you briefly tell us what either you or your character (or both!) would say is "Literally The Best Thing Ever" and why?
Kelly: Well, if we talk TV, I would have plenty of  “Literally The Best Thing Evers”. So that would very tough! You know what I’ve always loved all my life? Creativity. Creativity is the best thing ever. I have always had to express myself in some way. It’s like a feeling that never goes away. In my youth it was through arts, drawing and painting, then it was poetry and photography, and then it was graphic design, and now its writing, digital design, and home and craft projects. Creativity makes me happy, whether I’m making something or enjoying someone else’s.

Q: What are you working on for us next?
Kelly: I’m the type of writer that always has a few projects in the works. At the moment I’m writing a young adult, a romance, and a short story collection.

GCC Presents: Mindi Scott

I am very excited to share this book with you, blog readers. My copy of it is set to arrive tomorrow and I can't wait to read it. LIVE THROUGH THIS by my Girlfriends Cyber Circuit sister Mindi Scott sounds like the kind of powerful, real read I like best. The following interview and look at the book will tell you why.

About LIVE THROUGH THIS:


From the outside, Coley Sterling’s life seems pretty normal . . . whatever that means. It’s not perfect—her best friend is seriously mad at her and her dance team captains keep giving her a hard time—but Coley’s adorable, sweet crush Reece helps distract her. Plus, she has a great family to fall back on—with a mom and stepdad who would stop at nothing to keep her siblings and her happy.

But Coley has a lot of secrets. She won’t admit—not even to herself—that her almost-perfect life is her own carefully-crafted façade. That for years she’s been burying the shame and guilt over a relationship
that crossed the line. Now that Coley has the chance at her first real boyfriend, a decade’s worth of lies are on the verge of unraveling.

In this unforgettable powerhouse of a novel, Mindi Scott offers an absorbing, layered glimpse into the life of an everygirl living a nightmare that no one would suspect.




About the author:


Mindi Scott is the author of Live Through This and Freefall. She lives near Seattle, Washington, with her
drummer husband. Please visit her online at mindiscott.com.

The Interview:

Q: What inspired you to write this book?

Mindi: I’ve written a letter for readers and posted it on my website explaining this in detail. The basic gist, though, is that I put off writing this book for years because I thought someone with more distance from the subject could do it better. One day, I realized that that wasn’t the case and that I needed to write this book.

Q: The main character of my first book, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, is the kind of girl I wanted to be (a rock star!), the MC of my second book has a lot more in common with teenage me. Is your main character someone you wish you could be, someone a lot like you, or your total opposite? How so?

Mindi: Coley and I have things in common, for sure. She’s going through a situation that is very loosely inspired by something that happened to me, so it would have impossible for us to have nothing in common. But with this in mind, I deliberately made sure that she had traits and skills very different from mine. She has blond hair (mine is brown), she’s a talented dancer (I’m the worst dancer in the world), she snowboards (I ski), etc. Despite my efforts to keep us separate, I suspect that people who know me well (or who knew me when I was younger, at least) will see a lot of me in her.

Q: If there was a soundtrack for your book what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate the story?

Mindi: This is easy, actually, because there are a number of songs mentioned in this book! Here are five of them:
 “Asking for It” by Hole. This song has a line that includes the book’s title: “If you live through this with me, I swear that I will die for you.”

“Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Fergie. This is a breakup song, really, but the part that is significant in the book is the line about how she’s going to miss him.

 “Missing” by Everything but the Girl. This is another “miss you” reference.

“Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison. Coley has brown eyes and this song is mentioned in reference to that fact.

“Creep” by Radiohead. This has one of my favorite compliments of all time: “You’re just like an angel / Your skin makes me cry.”

 Q: In addition to writing books, I also write for a website for teens called Rookie, which has a regular feature called "Literally The Best Thing Ever," wherein we write about a thing that we think is super mega awesome (even if it is the type of thing that others might call a guilty pleasure, we believe there is nothing guilty about pleasure!) and explain why we think it is literally the best thing ever. It's generally a kind of unexpected thing, for example I wrote one about the soap opera, One Life To Live. I don't expect you to write a whole essay obviously, but can you briefly tell us what either you or your character (or both!) would say is "Literally The Best Thing Ever" and why?

Mindi: In the book, my character describes a day spent with a boy, a giraffe, and ice cream as the Best Day Ever. For me, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is Literally The Best Thing Ever because of Matt Lanter’s sexy, sexy Anakin Skywalker voice.

Q: What are you working on for us next?

Mindi: My critique partner, Michelle Andreani, and I are writing a novel together. We also have a blog that we (sometimes) update about our progress. http://we-have-words.com/

GCC Presents: Gretchen McNeil

My Girlfriends Cyber Circuit sister, Gretchen McNeil has a new book out called TEN, which I think any fans of YA horror or suspense will adore. Here are all the details!

About TEN:

And their doom comes swiftly.

It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives – three days on Henry Island at an exclusive house party. Best friends Meg and Minnie each have their own reasons for wanting to be there, both of which involve Kamiak High’s most eligible bachelor, T.J. Fletcher. But what starts out as a fun-filled weekend turns dark and twisted after the discovery of a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine.

Suddenly, people are dying and the teens are cut off from the outside world. No electricity, no phones, no internet, and a ferry that isn’t scheduled to return for two days. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on each other, can Meg find the killer before more people die? Or is the killer closer to her than she could ever imagine?

About the author:

Gretchen McNeil is an opera singer, writer and clown.  Her YA horror POSSESS debuted with Balzer + Bray for HarperCollins in 2011.  Her follow up TEN – YA horror/suspense about ten teens trapped on a remote island with a serial killer – will be released September 18, 2012, and her third novel 3:59, sci fi doppelganger horror is scheduled for Fall 2013.  Gretchen's new YA contemporary series Don't Get Mad (Revenge meets The Breakfast Club) begins Fall 2014 with GET EVEN, followed by the sequel GET DIRTY in 2015, also with Bazler + Bray.

Gretchen is a former coloratura soprano, the voice of Mary on G4's Code Monkeys and she sings with the LA-based circus troupe Cirque Berzerk.  Gretchen blogs with The Enchanted Inkpot and is a founding member of the vlog group the YARebels where she can be seen as "Monday."

The Interview:

Q: What inspired you to write this book? 

Gretchen: My publisher wanted another horror/suspense novel from me after POSSESS and I wanted to do a throwback to the old Christopher Pike and Agatha Christie novels I loved as a teen. Voila!

Q: The main character of my first book, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, is the kind of girl I wanted to be (a rock star!), the MC of my second book has a lot more in common with teenage me. Is your main character someone you wish you could be, someone a lot like you, or your total opposite? How so? 

Gretchen: I think Meg is a lot like me in the she's cerebral, and constantly saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Though that's where the similarities end. Meg's much more introverted than I ever was.

Q: If there was a soundtrack for your book what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate the story? 

Gretchen: I'm going to wuss out and pick only one, but it's a goodie, trust me. "Kiss Off" by the Violent Femmes! I think the reason is obvious:

"I take one one one cause you left me and
2 2 2 for my family and
3 3 3 for my heartache and
4 4 4 for my headaches and
5 5 5 for my lonely and
6 6 6 for my sorrow and
7 7 for no tomorrow and
8 8 I forget what 8 was for and
9 9 9 for a lost god and
10 10 10 10 for everything everything everything everything"

Q: In addition to writing books, I also write for a website for teens called Rookie, which has a regular feature called "Literally The Best Thing Ever," wherein we write about a thing that we think is super mega awesome (even if it is the type of thing that others might call a guilty pleasure, we believe there is nothing guilty about pleasure!) and explain why we think it is literally the best thing ever. It's generally a kind of unexpected thing, for example I wrote one about the soap opera, One Life To Live. I don't expect you to write a whole essay obviously, but can you briefly tell us what either you or your character (or both!) would say is "Literally The Best Thing Ever" and why?

Gretchen: Right now I am completely obsessed with a shopping website called Mod Cloth – fun, retro inspired clothes from a huge variety of designers. Plus shoes. Plus tchotchkes. Like half my wardrobe in heavy rotation right now is from Mod Cloth, including most of the fun dresses I wear to appearances. It's reaching epidemic levels…

Q: What are you working on for us next?
Gretchen: My next book is called 3:59 and comes out Fall 2013. It's sci-fi horror about two girls who are the same girl in different dimensions, who discover that their worlds connect every twelve hours – at 3:59 – for one minute. When they decide to switch places for a day, all hell breaks loose. Literally.

After that I just sold a two book series, also to Balzer + Bray, for 2014 and 2015. GET EVEN and GET DIRTY are books one and two in the Don't Get Mad series about four very different girls who have formed a secret revenge society, getting back at bullies and mean girls who have terrorized their classmates, which all goes well until one of their targets turns up dead and the society is implicated in the death.