Melissa Senate

My six-year-old took this picture of me a couple of months ago and it's my new favorite. I think I look very happy. A budding photographer, Max is!

I haven't blogged in a loooong time. Mostly because I've been waiting, and when I'm waiting, I can't do anything else but wait. What I was waiting for was feedback from BOTH editors on BOTH manuscripts that I delivered. My teen novel and my women's fiction (a new editor and new house, at that!). My teen editor emailed me her editorial/revision letter last week, and she is a brilliant goddess. I can't tell you how good it feels to know that the stuff that comes pouring out of my brain and fingertips onto the computer screen/paper, over 300 pages of it, will be lovingly and carefully and brilliantly read by someone who will guide me in writing a better, stronger book. So, lots of work ahead, but good work. Now of course, I'm waiting to hear on my women's fiction novel, but luckily am too busy revising my teen novel to fret about the wait. All good. Did any of this make sense?

I've been reading like crazy. The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch; Shelter Me (God, I LOVED this book); All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, How To Talk So Kids Will Learn (this is the only parenting book anyone with a kid needs–pure brilliance). I just ordered a memoir about a woman who moves to tiny New England cottage with her teen daughter to raise some baby chickens. 

Anyway, now that I'm incredibly busy revising and have no extra time between 8:20 and 3:10 (mom hours = my work time), I will be doing plenty of blogging. That's just the way life is. 

Melissa

Welcome to my new website, which I'm in the process of updating! Check back very soon for info about my new books and this and that….

I am fascinated by lawyers turned authors, especially lawyers turned authors of fun women's fiction. Like the lovely and talented Brenda Janowitz, author of JACK WITH A TWIST, I can think of several attorneys turned writers, like Laura Caldwell and Whitney Gaskell and Emily Giffin. There's a real following your bliss/heart there. 

And in Jack WITH A TWIST, Brenda Janowitz has her lawyer protagonist and her lawyer fiance walk down the aisle of a courtroom in this wonderful and fun story. Here's the scoop:

Planning a wedding can be a trying experience…

A little pre-wedding anxiety is normal for every bride, and Manhattan attorney Brooke Miller isn’t worried. She’s got the loving support of the world’s greatest guy, so planning her nuptials should be a piece of cake.

But that was yesterday.

Today, Brooke’s landed her first big case and has just discovered that the opposing attorney is none other than her fiancé, Jack. But that’s okay. These two professionals aren’t going to let a little courtroom sparring get their legal briefs in a bunch.… Right? Wrong! Now Jack’s pulling every dirty trick in the law books, and Brooke’s starting to suspect that maybe he isn’t the man she thought he was. Warring with her fiancé at work and at home, Brooke realizes that she’ll have to choose between the case of her life, or actually having a life.

About Brenda Janowitz: Brenda is the author of the novels JACK WITH A TWIST (Engaging your adversary and other things they don’t teach you in law school) and SCOT ON THE ROCKS (How I survived my ex-boyfriend's wedding with my dignity ever so slightly intact), as well as the short story BASED ON A TRUE STORY. For more info on Brenda and her novels, check out her website by clinking on her name above.

Enjoy!

It could happen to you…

When I first heard about this novel, which is next on my TO BE READ list, I immediately Googled to find out if this really COULD happen. Could you imagine? Hilarious debut author Melissa Clark can….

 SWIMMING UPSTREAM SLOWLY by Melissa Clark

After too many vodka tonics at her best friend's baby shower, twenty-seven-year-old Sasha finds herself having a ladies' room epiphany. How quickly life can change, she thinks to herself: one minute she's writing a master's thesis about a TV comedy show for kids–and the next, the program actually gets optioned with her as the star. But Sasha’s awe at the twists of fate proves to be premature. The real shock comes the next day, when her routine visit to the ob-gyn reveals that she’s pregnant—even though she hasn't slept with anyone in more than two years.

To her unbelieving ears comes the doctor’s diagnosis: Sasha’s body has unwittingly hosted a cellular hitchhiker, a medical anomaly known as “lazy sperm.” And now that this plodding genetic contribution has finally fulfilled its destiny, it will be up to Sasha to summon the courage to revisit her past loves even as her future slowly takes shape inside her. Which of her exes will be the father and how will he take the astounding news? And what will the end of the mystery mean to Sasha? The answers are revealed in this wonderfully inventive debut about the bonds that linger between people even after they part ways, and how the future can change in the twitch of a tail.

Melissa Clark says: "Swimming Upstream, Slowly" is a novel about Sasha Salter, who wakes up one day to find she is pregnant. Only problem is she hasn't had sex in over 2 years. The doctor's diagnosis is that Sasha's body has been harboring a 'lazy sperm'. Sasha must now open up the Pandora's box of her past loves to figure out which of her exes is the father - and what the future holds in store.

The idea was born because I was having lunch with a friend and overate. I lifted my shirt to expose my bloated belly and the friend said, half joking, "Are you sure you're not pregnant?" and I said, "Yeah, right, from a lazy sperm." I went home that night and started outlining the idea for a movie. I decided, eventually, to write it as a novel instead."

BIO: Melissa Clark is the creator and executive producer of the award-winning television series, 'Braceface', and has written for shows on the Disney Channel, Cartoon Network and Fox. She received a master's degree from the writing program at U.C. Davis, and currently lives in Los Angeles. This is her first novel.

Happy reading!