Melissa Senate

A must-read young adult novel!: 

A BAD BOY CAN BE GOOD FOR A GIRL by Tanya Lee Stone

Don't let the title scare you.

A BAD BOY CAN BE GOOD FOR A GIRL is a cautionary tale. Teens are dealing with sex, whether we’re ready or not. This novel is about three very different girls who date the same player guy. About how the choices they make shape who they want to be. About empowerment.

 Meet Josie, Nicolette, and Aviva. Three very different girls who all meet the same bad boy with an irresistible knack for getting into their blood and under their skin.

 Three girls. One guy. Who will come out on top?

 In A BAD BOY CAN BE GOOD FOR A GIRL, Tanya Lee Stone takes a hard look at love and sex and asks the questions: “When can a bad boy be good for a girl?”

 Tanya says, “I get lots of email from teens thanking me for ‘being honest,’ saying my book helped them, or they ‘gave it to a friend who needs it.’  What’s better than that?”

 Since the book came out, Tanya has been outspoken about censorship and the need for tackling tough topics in teen books. Check out her VOYA article: “From Forever to Today: The Importance of Sex in Young Adult Literature” and a recent interview with AS IF! (Authors Support Intellectual Freedom) in which she discusses sex, censorship, and Judy Blume.

The new paperback includes a bonus Reading Guide. Book Club Folks: If you have chat software and want Tanya to do a virtual book club visit, let her know.

For a free bookmark and signed bookplate, email her at tanyastone@tanyastone.com

Read an excerpt: http://www.tanyastone.com/badboy.pdf

Download the Bad Boy Reading Guide: http://www.tanyastone.com/badboy_guide.pdf

In addition to her website (www.tanyastone.com) Tanya’s online blogging at Live Journal (http://tanyaleestone.livejournal.com/ ) and MySpace (www.myspace.com/tanyaleestoneauthor)  

Buy the Book:

Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Boy-Can-Good-Girl/dp/0553495097/ref=ed_oe_p/102-5027495-2096129

Barnes & Noble:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780553495096&itm=2

Industry Accolades:

Starred Reviews from School Library Journal and Kliatt

ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers

School Library Journal Book of the Month

New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

Texas Tayshas State Reading List

Maryland Great Books for Teens 2006

Kentucky Bluegrass Award Master List

Nominated for ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults and ALA’s Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults

Review quotes:

"brave and beautiful…honest and nonjudgmental"  - Megan McCafferty, New York Times best-selling author

"Sure to be the new Forever."  - Award-Winning Author Cynthia Leitich Smith

"…the kind of tell-it-like-it-is wisdom that comes from your best girlfriends."
- Libba Bray, New York Times best-selling author

"every high-school age girl in the world needs to read this book…a story of self-discovery, broken hearts, and renewed spirits…a wake-up call."  - Teens Read Too!

About the Author:

Tanya Lee Stone is the author of more than 80 books for young readers. A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl is her first Young Adult novel. She has a degree in English from Oberlin College and a Master in Education degree from Southern CT State University. In addition to her books, publication credits include VOYA and the New York Times.

She loves chocolate-covered pretzels and Wild Berry Skittles. She hates the word tasty.

When See Jane Date (the TV movie) first aired back in 2003, ABC Family had a message board for the movie, and hundreds of people wrote in asking if anyone knew the names of the songs at the end–for the couples dance and the "old school punk" song. Now and then someone actually answered, but I never took note. Now, someone is asking me (and the message board was taken down), so I turn the question to you! If you know the names/artists of the songs, will you email me? You'll make someone out there very happy!

Melissa@MelissaSenate.com

I've gotten many emails from readers wanting to know when the next Abby Foote mystery will be published, so here is the scoop: I'm actually not writing another Abby Foote book right now (despite the little blurb at the end of LOVE YOU TO DEATH, which says I am)! Turns out that when I started coming up with story ideas for the next book, I realized I wasn't ready to continue on with her. She'd just saved her own neck, got her hot detective . . . I think Abby needs to just relax for a while. This same thing happened to me right after I wrote SEE JANE DATE. My editor wanted me to do Eloise's story next, but I wasn't ready to probe into her life so soon after she got up the courage to break up with Serge. There were three years between SEE JANE DATE and WHOSE WEDDING IS IT ANYWAY?

So, there might be an Abby Foote #2, just not for 2008. What I am writing for 2008 is: QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE MARRYING, a novel about twenty-nine year-old twin sisters, Ruby and Stella, on a long and bumpy road trip from Maine to Las Vegas.  One is newly engaged to a guy the other thinks is all wrong for her. And the other is newly pregnant by a guy whose name she thinks is Dylan or maybe Darren. David? (Is anyone named David anymore?) Twin sisters with way too much to talk about, argue about, reminisce about, in a tiny red convertible for 2800 miles? They do get a bit of a break from each other along the way. A brief stowaway cousin. Eighteen year-old hitchhiking lovebirds who want a ride to the tackiest wedding chapel in Vegas.  One of the twins is keeping a very big secret from the other, though . . . .

In other news, at which I am still marveling: my son, the charming and adorable Max (there he is in his Halloween costume from last year), is starting kindergarten this fall, and today I received his class list in the mail. There are only 8 kids in his class! 5 girls and 3 boys. I have a feeling the boys will band together.  

I love this title! And I adore Megan Crane (she's a very nice person in addition to being a terrific writer).

"FRENEMIES is a hugely enjoyable novel with brilliant, convincing characters and dialogue. It's romantic, funny, intelligent, believable, and gripping. I couldn't put it down and am now very sorry it's finished!"

— Marian Keyes, international bestselling author of Angels and Last Chance Saloon

 FREN-E-MY\noun: The friend who gives you the sweetest smile to your face, while holding the sharpest knife to your back.

 We’ve all heard the saying, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” but what if they’re one and the same? It’s the cardinal, number-one girlfriend rule: don’t date your friend’s ex.  In FRENEMIES by Megan Crane (5 Spot; June 20, 2007; Paperback Original; $13.99), it is Gus Curtis’ supposed friend and old college roommate Helen who breaks that rule and goes one step further: she doesn’t just date an ex-boyfriend; she steals him from right under Gus’s nose!

Megan Crane, the successful author of Everyone Else’s Girl and English as a Second Language brings us a hilarious novel about growing up and realizing that your worst enemy – and best bud – just might be yourself

Check out Megan's website (click on her name above) for an excerpt! 

If you've read Joshilyn Jackson's debut novel, GODS IN ALABAMA, then you already know how amazingly talented a writer she is. If you'd like an introduction to the powerhouse that is Joshilyn, just head over to her blog, which is an event in itself! 

BETWEEN, GEORGIA by Joshilyn Jackson (received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus)! 

"One of this decade's most commendable novels. Every now and then a remarkable writer, following in the footsteps of great authors, comes along to reenergize American fiction. So it is with Joshilyn Jackson. …overflows with gut-wrenching sadness and laugh-out-loud humor. Jackson's novel brilliantly explores abstractions - redemption, love and grace - through the most compelling characterizations to be found in contemporary fiction. Between, Georgia is an exemplary novel by a singular writer who is in full command of the art of story telling. Don't miss it!"
          - Bookpage

"Between, Georgia is a small miracle, and Nonny Frett is the most engaging woman who ever lived in the pages of a book. Joshilyn Jackson is an enormously talented writer."
     - Anne Rivers Siddons, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetwater Creek

BETWEEN, GEORGIA: There's always been bad blood between the Fretts and the Crabtrees. After all, the Fretts practically own the tiny town of Between, Georgia, while the Crabtrees only rent space in its jail cells. Stacia Frett is a deaf artist with a genetic condition that is causing her to slowly go blind. She's lost the love of her life, and when her vision goes, she'll lose her career as well. She's asking God why He keeps her breathing in and out, until the night fifteen year old Hazel Crabtree shows up on her doorstep brandishing a stomach swollen with a pregnancy she'd hidden for nine months. Stacia thinks Hazel's unwanted baby might be God's answer, and so the Fretts decide to steal it…

Thirty years later, Nonny Frett is a successful interpreter living in Athens, Georgia. She understands the meanings of "rock" and "hard place" better than any woman ever born. She's got two mothers, "one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy." She's got two men; Her husband is easing out the back door and her best friend is laying siege to her heart in her front yard. She has a job that holds her in the city, and she's addicted to a little girl who's stuck deep in the country. And she has two families; The Fretts, who stole her and raised her right, and the Crabtrees, who lost her and can't forget that they've been done wrong.

In Between, Georgia, population 90, the feud that began before Nonny was born is escalating, and a random act of violence will set the torch to a thirty-year old stash of highly flammable secrets. This might be just what the town needs, if only Nonny wasn't sitting in the middle of it…

Enjoy!

All I wanted for my twelfth birthday was Valerie Bertinelli's hair from One Day At A Time. Feathered wings. Impossible when you have thick, curly hair like mine. My mother tried to tell me this, refused to let me get my all-one-length hair cut. So I grabbed some scissors and decided to become my own personal stylist! You can imagine the hair cut I gave myself. The wings didn't work, so I decided to just cut them off. As in chopped them completely off. I was left with a stub where bangs might be. And to prevent them from growing out and making me look worse, I kept cutting them up to my hair line. (Note: that is not me, at 12, as the headline suggests! It's Valerie B!)

You might think this was the worst of my problems at twelve. It wasn't. So when Jennifer O'Connell asked me to contribute an essay to this anthology, EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING A GIRL, I LEARNED FROM JUDY BLUME, I jumped at the chance to revisit those crazy days. Judy Blume, who brought us Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret and It's Not The End Of The World and Forever and Deenie, just to name a few, had an enormous impact on me when I was an adolescent (and an extra confused one, at that!). I wrote my essay on how much Then Again, Maybe I Won't meant to me that insane summer when I turned twelve and  the Son of Sam was on his shooting rampage and my mother remarrried and moved us off to the burbs. The collection (which hits stores tomorrow) features twenty-four bestselling and amazing female writers (such as Meg Cabot and Megan McCafferty and Alison Pace and Lynda Curnyn and Kristin Harmel and, and, and!) and I can't wait to read all their essays! 

"This collection of 24 essays edited by O'Connell (Plan B) pays tribute to the influence of Judy Blume and her work about coming-of-age as a girl in America. In each piece, the writer reveals what O'Connell calls her "Judy Blume moment," telling a heartfelt and revealing story that reflects the same social awkwardness and true-to-life experiences Blume conveys in her novels, from menstruation to childhood bullying to masturbation. In "Cry, Linda, Cry," Meg Cabot recalls how Blume's book Blubbertaught her how to laugh at herself, while also giving her the courage to stand up to schoolgirl bullies. Likewise, Stephanie Lessing, in "The One That Got Away," reflects on Blume's It's Not the End of the World, explaining the solace she found in its understanding of what it's like when parents divorce. Readers who similarly found solace and support in Blume's work should relate easily to these writers through the Blumian characters and themes they evoke. Writing in the spirit of Blume, these women present their experiences as a series of personal truths: "girl moments. Woman moments, Human moments."  –Publishers Weekly

Check out more reviews in this week's People and Entertainment Weekly! 

Enjoy! 

Looking for a good book to curl up with this weekend? The Girlfriends Cyber Circuit has a recommendation for you: 

 The Secret Sisters by Joni Rodgers

Exploring the timeless themes of family, self, misfortune, and hope that have made the novels of Anna Quindlen and Sue Miller bestsellers, Joni Rodgers's moving and powerful tale tells the story of three women bound together by loss and set free by love.

Pia feels the walls of her life closing in around her, until she discovers a strangely sensual world that leads her to a new existence. Lily, Pia's brash, tough-talking sister, makes a tragic mistake that leaves her incarcerated, body and soul, but in the prison library discovers a key that will unlock her mind and open her heart. Beth, married to Pia and Lily's brother, has never been able to admit her own failure as a mother. Finally forced to confront a tragedy of her own making, she discovers that the truth can set her free.

Praise for The Secret Sisters

"Believable…brilliant…beautifully written…" Armchair Reviews

"Honesty, humor, and fearlessness…(Rodgers) illuminates the internal landscapes all women navigate." Houston Chronicle

"A page turner, full of surprises, insight, and spine-tingling erotica…" Helena Independent Record

"A rough gem of a narrative…Pia's tale has it all: death, danger, sexual discovery, and resurrection." Missoula Independent

"An emotional maelstrom worth getting wrapped up in." Easton Express-Times

"A modern tragedy…Rodgers wisely resists the temptation to whip up tidy endings, and her smart choices give The Secret Sisters the necessary measure of grit." Texas Monthly

About the Author

Joni Rodgers is a long-time wife, ridiculously proud mother, and doting dog owner. She divides her time between Houston and New York City, acting as a “memoir guru” to celebrities and other high end clients between novels.

Visit Joni Rodgers on the web at www.jonirodgers.com

Joni Rodgers blogs about the writing life on “Boxing the Octopus”: http://boxingoctopus.blogspot.com

Happy June, everyone!