Prom Dates to Die For

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Grab your date, spike the punch, head out on the dance floor and beware the un-dead, it’s paranormal Prom time.

Prom Dates to Die For: Paranormal Prom Stories is the latest anthology from Buzz Books, USA. The compilation features 5 young adult authors who deliver more than just the typical dance drama. They’ve created other worldly mayhem!

From Amazon: In Kelly Parra‘s “Darkness Becomes Him,” teen supernatural hunters are hired to save a prom date hungry for souls. -

Heather Dearly introduces us to a young reaper haunted by a past she doesn’t remember in “The Bone Flower.”

A prom queen seeks justice and revenge in Lena Brown’s, “Every Breath You Take.”

Aaron Smith gives us a loner musician called to save his classmates from an enemy only he can see in “A Kiss at the Threshold.”

Jenny Peterson‘s heroine gets much more than she wished for on her prom night and 18th birthday in “Tonight, You’re Mine.” Frightful, fun and unforgettable.

Get ready to slice the congratulatory cake. It’s release day. Now available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble!

Go Out And Play!

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Sitting around with my family, we were reminiscing about family gatherings past.

Remember that year we had the bad ice storm on Easter Sunday?

… or the time when Zipper (the dog) ate that plate of baked beans that Randy spilled?

… when we all went to the school yard and played softball?

…  that time when we played ‘Red Rover’ and Kailey got clotheslined?

My kids interrupted: “What’s ‘Red Rover’?”

Made me think about all the games that we loved to play when I was a kid, in addition to Red Rover–freeze tag, marbles, leap frog, four square, hot potato–games that my kids don’t really know anything about. And they should!

Go Out and Play! by KaBoom! (an organization that helps to create kid-designed outdoor playspaces, including the one at the Oklahoma River front, near the Devon boathouse) lists games new and old in sections (tag games, hide-and-seek games, ball games, etc). Some games require supplies but most don’t; age ranges on each activity tell you what ages might enjoy each game the most.

This is a great book for any of us who may have forgotten how to make the most of a sunny summer afternoon–by playing. This book is a great way to reconnect with the simple, low-tech games of our childhoods. And the KaBoom! project is an awesome project to learn more about as well–since 1996, they have built over 2,000 playgrounds across the country. Find the book at your favorite bookseller and learn more about the organization at kaboom.org.

Five in the Hive with Sarah Pekkanen

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by Malena Lott

We’re excited to share a new feature on books we’re buzzing about…Five in the Hive, and our first author is Sarah Pekkanen as we celebrate the release of her third novel, THESE GIRLS. Now, let’s put some honey in our tea and get busy…

Sarah…

1) In all seriousness, lipstick or lip gloss? Favorite brand?
Lip Gloss! I absolutely adore lip gloss and have tubes everywhere – in my car, my purse, my pockets (which is a problem when I do laundry and forget to check my jeans for any stray tubes!) My favorite is Lorac. They make this lip-plumping gloss that I’m mad for.

2) First book you fell in love with?
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. It didn’t feel like a book; reading it wasn’t work. It felt as if a good friend was telling me a wonderful story that I didn’t want to end.

3) Favorite “nearly peed in my pants from laughing” book?
Bridget Jones’s Diary. It was v.v. good.

4) Most unusual place you’ve ever written?
It’s probably a toss-up between a moving car – I was in the passenger’s seat – and at Chuck E. Cheese’s. I’m a former journalist, so the screams of glassy-eyed children at Chuck E. Cheese’s were oddly comforting to me – it sounded a lot like my former editors around deadline time! I can actually write anywhere and everywhere, and it’s easier for me to crack open my laptop in a strange place. If I went to a writer’s colony, and sat in a silent room working on my craft, I’d probably feel such pressure that I wouldn’t be able to write a single word! For me, writing comes the most easily when I don’t make it too precious or important.

5) Favorite, “forget the diet” dessert?
Anything involving chocolate. Maybe a bittersweet chocolate mousse, surrounded by chocolate-dipped strawberries. Mmm… (sounds of Sarah scrambling for car keys and peeling rubber as she heads to the nearest sweet shop).

About the book (from the publisher):
THESE GIRLS
Family secrets may shape us all, but it’s the rich, complicated layers of friendship that can save us.
Cate, Renee, and Abby have come to New York for very different reasons, and in a bustling city of millions, they are linked together through circumstance and chance.

Cate has just been named the features editor of Gloss, a high-end lifestyle magazine. It’s a professional coup, but her new job comes with more complications than Cate ever anticipated.

Her roommate Renee will do anything to nab the plum job of beauty editor at Gloss. But snide comments about Renee’s weight send her into an emotional tailspin. Soon she is taking black market diet pills—despite the racing heartbeat and trembling hands that signal she’s heading for real danger.

Then there’s Abby, whom they take in as a third roommate. Once a joyful graduate student working as a nanny part time, she abruptly fled a seemingly happy life in the D.C. suburbs. No one knows what shattered Abby—or why she left everything she once loved behind.

Pekkanen’s most compelling, true-to-life novel yet tells the story of three very different women as they navigate the complications of careers and love—and find the lifeline they need in each other.

I had the opportunity to read an advance of the book and since I’ve read all of Sarah’s books, I can say her fans will be pleased she continues to give us characters we can feel deeply about – and probably know someone in real life very like them. I was so hooked on Abby’s story that I found myself wanting to skip pages to get back to her. For me, Abby’s story was the most compelling, complicated -and yet also sweet – so I would’ve loved to see a whole novel devoted just to her storyline. Looking forward to the next.

Find out more about Sarah and her books at www.sarahpekkenan.com.

Slipping through time

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Radiant Days by Elizabeth Hand is a uniquely compelling young adult novel. I read it as though I were living it – which wasn’t always the most comfortable sensation – and it continued to haunt me long after I turned the last page. Those looking for a tale that is both surreal and cerebral will find this quite a delicious read.

The novel features two protagonists – one fictional and one real – living in completely different timelines. Merle Tappitt is a young artist from a poor Appalachian town who studies at the Corcoran School of Art in late 1970s Washington, DC. If you can imagine Lisbeth Salander wielding a paintbrush and spray paint can, you may understand Merle’s inability to please her professors or to truly connect to the girlfriend who nudges her toward commercially viable artistic expression.

Merle’s first-person narrative alternates with a 3rd person account of 16-year-old Arthur Rimbaud and his quest to escape both a domineering mother and the ravages of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871-72. Writing and alcohol seem his only solace . . . at least until he magically transports to Merle’s timeline and finds a kindred spirit.

It’s bizarre, but it works.

Two things struck me as particularly memorable about this story: 1) the deeply intimate and transformative relationship between two characters — a bond that is refreshingly nonsexual, and 2) the lyrical writing, particularly during moments of agony and transcendence, such as in this passage:

A torrent of memory and words and desire surged through him, and his head pounded: a dike had been breached. The membrane that separated him from the written world dissolved, a white flame that burned away flesh and hair and bone so that only words remained and he was there and not there, sole creator of a world that contained only him and the wheeling stars: Alpha and Omega, I and somebody else.

His breath caught in his throat. It was not a revelation but a life sentence, not rapture but rupture. (191)

Radiant Days is not an easy book, but its strange beauty will captivate you.

Dude Reads Like a Lady

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Hello, my name is Mark and I like Chick Lit, though I don’t care for the term. While snappy, I think it’s silly and narrow. I think the only labels should be on bathroom doors (Ally McBeal offering an exception even there). I stand before you (sit actually) as a guy on a predominantly women’s book review site who likes women writers. I like guy writers too. Hemingway was a guy’s guy after all, but lets not mess with my meme.

I’m a normal guy, providing you use abnormal definitions, and grade on a curve. I am neither exceptionally macho, nor exceptionally not. I like purple more than most men who also prefer boobs. And like most men I am entertained at the sounds the human body can produce, and I can be sent into a positively juvenile giggle fit at their creation. But I also love romantic comedies and what is considered women’s fiction.

This was not by design, I just noticed a few of the books that over the last year or so I enjoyed the most were of this genre: Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman @wordrunner; Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt @leavittnovelist; and The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen @thebirdsisters. There are of course more, but those are among my favorites. All three are beautifully told stories with characters I laughed and ached with, and might have even cried with, were I not so damned manly.  All three of these were written by women. That’s just a fact. But why aren’t they read by more men? I looked up all three of these on Amazon and looked at the reviews. Overwhelmingly women. Why? In two of the three, the main characters were mostly women. Is that it?

Labels are great for boxes. They can help us know what’s in the box. But they can be equally limiting, and can lead to mislabeling. I once had my father’s things boxed up in storage for years. He had a wood carving kit that I looked through almost every box for. I looked in every box with a label that even remotely seemed that might contain it.  In the end, I found it in a box labeled “photo albums.”

I read fiction for the story. Do you write a good story? Do you create characters I care about? This is why I read. And of course hedging my bets. If (when) women take over the world I hope to be considered with favor. Treated kindly and given books often. And on my very good days, tacos.