Melissa Senate

I read and adored I WAS A TEENAGED POPSICLE (who could resist such a title?) by Bev Katz Rosenbaum, who is a sweetheart of a person, and now I can't wait to read the follow-up:  

BEYOND COOL by Bev Katz Rosenbaum

Woohoo–Beyond Cool, the sequel (which can also be read as a stand-alone) to Bev Katz Rosenbaum’s phenomenally successful young adult novel, I Was a Teenage Popsicle, is finally here!  (Sarah Mlynowski, author of Bras & Broomsticks, said Popsicle was, “Fresh and fun—an absolute blast!”  Melissa Senate, author of Theodora Twist, described Popsicle as, “Cool, clever, and full of charm!”  Girlslife.com called it “super cool”.   Popsicle was also recommended on Meg Cabot’s blog and included in a book quiz on seventeen.com!)

So, the story…

 Floe Ryan was frozen for ten years.  Crazy, but true.  She was vitrified at sixteen because of a rare disease.  Now she’s been thawed back to her normal self, but absolutely everything else has changed.  Her little sister’s older than her, her teachers are now holograms (but still annoying), and instead of learning to drive a car, she’s trying to master a hovercar.  And just when she starts warming up to this new scene, everything falls apart…

Her boyfriend is giving her the, er, cold shoulder, and worse, Dr. Dixon at the Cryonics Center tells her that people who were frozen are more susceptible to illnesses.  The one doctor who can cure this immune system weakness has gone AWOL.  Now it’s up to Floe and her brainy friend Sophie to find him.  But they’re not the only ones looking for him–and this time, Floe could be iced for good…

 Bev Katz Rosenbaum is a former fiction and magazine editor who found her calling when she fell in love with the books her kids were reading and the TV shows they were watching.   She lives in Toronto with her family.   Be sure to check out her awesome website at www.bevkatzrosenbaum.com and her myspace page at www.myspace.com/bevkatzrosenbaum, where she also blogs weekly.  (You can also catch her occasional blog posts at www.teenfictioncafe.blogspot.com.)

Of my zillions of photos of my son, this is one of my very favorites, taken on his 2nd birthday three years ago.  Today, Max got on a real school bus for the first time and went off to kindergarten. This time, Mommy was not a passenger. 

Speaking of motherhood, one of my favorite anthologies about the subject is Child of Mine (not to be confused with the book about feeding your child), edited by Christina Baker Kline. I must have read the wonderful essays in this collection five or six times each. (My other favorite anthology is Mothers Who Think.) Anyway, Christina Baker Kline has a new novel out, THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE, about a New Yorker who moves to Maine and adjusts to the very different way of life (I know ALL about that!). I've just started it and am loving it.  

 I've gotten lots of emails asking about my next book, so here's the scoop: My next novel is called Questions To Ask Before Marrying and will be published next June. It's about twin sisters on a long and bumpy road trip from Maine to Las Vegas (one twin is essentially staging an intervention to stop the other from marrying her blah fiance.) This November, the trade paperback edition of my first young adult book, Theodora Twist, will be published. And speaking of YA, I am working on my second right now. It's due in mere weeks, so back to it I go. 

Hope you had a great Labor Day weekend!

Melissa