A summer baby born in a Catskills bungalow colony, I lived in New York City as a kid, New Jersey as a teenager, Connecticut for college, Brooklyn for those first few post-college years (I somehow had a $450 a month studio in primo Park Slope), then the Upper East Side of Manhattan for 14 very interesting years until just four years ago, when I moved to a small coastal town in Maine for a quality of life experiment (for my young son, not for me). I have to admit that the quality of life in Maine is pretty great.

What was I doing in NYC all those years? I worked for Harlequin Books (starting as an editorial assistant and leaving as a senior editor) for ten years, then moved to two young adult book packagers, working on everything from the New Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley ("We'll solve any crime by dinner time!") to Sweet Valley University (Elizabeth and Jessica were in junior high, high school and college simultaneously!). 

When I sold my first novel, SEE JANE DATE, in 2001, I took a huge leap of faith to write full time. SEE JANE DATE was made into an adorable TV movie (starring Charisma Carpenter and Holly Marie Combs) for ABC Family and is now on DVD, and it's also the subject of and answer to a question in the 20th Anniversary Edition of Trivial Pursuit. Next came: THE SOLOMON SISTERS WISE UP (about three sisters under one roof);  WHOSE WEDDING IS IT ANYWAY?, which reunited me with the characters from SEE JANE DATE (it's Eloise's story); THE BREAKUP CLUB, my first novel to include a male main character (there are 4 main characters), and THEODORA TWIST, my debut novel for teens, which Teen magazine hailed "a hot (and fun) summer read. My sixth novel, LOVE YOU TO DEATH, is my first whodunnit.  Set in Maine, LOVE YOU TO DEATH is a fun mystery about a young woman whose worst ex-boyfriends are on someone's hit list. The hot Portland police detective investigating is a little suspicious.

You can also read essays I've written in the anthologies IT'S A WONDERFUL LIE: 26 TRUTHS ABOUT LIFE IN YOUR TWENTIES and EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING A GIRL I LEARNED FROM JUDY BLUME, a tribute anthology to one of my favorite authors. I also contributed a short story to the anthology American Girls About Town. 

My latest novel, QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE MARRYING, about twin sisters on a long and bumpy road trip to Las Vegas, was just published in June, and was the Daily Buzz's Lit Chick's hot pick for the month (thank you to Kristin Harmel!)

And coming next, from my new publisher, Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books, is THE LOVE BUS (tentative title) about a New Yorker who discovers she has a half-sister she never knew existed, somewhere in Maine . . . I'm hard at work on that and looking forward to my mini-vacation at the end of July in Wiscasset (hailed as Maine's prettiest village), where the new book is set. Feel free to email me with questions or comments or just to say hello: melissasenate at yahoo.com (use the little @ symbol).