STUCK IN THE 70s by Debra Garfinkle

Marlene P.: Do you remember writing the first words? Are they still the same?

Debra G.: I actually do remember writing the first words for this book. The first line was really the genesis of the book, and I think it’s a catchy one: “There’s a beautiful naked girl sitting in my bathtub.”

With my first novel, STORKY, I wrote many drafts of the first few pages. With this one, the first few pages hardly changed from the first draft to the final book. Soon after I wrote the first page, it was read aloud at a writing conference and got a lot of laughs. That really encouraged me to keep going with the manuscript.

Marlene P.: What are you working on now?

Debra G.: I’m writing the third book in a series of humorous children’s books called THE SUPERNATURAL RUBBER CHICKEN. I’m having a wonderful time writing about wacky situations involving a cranky rubber chicken, bickering twins, their smelly teacher Mrs. Crabpit, and the twins’ neglectful mother, a children’s book author obsessed with winning a Newbery Award. The first RUBBER CHICKEN book will be out in June 2008.

Marlene P.: What kind of research did you have to do for this story?

Debra G.: I did a lot of research on news events, movies, music, fashion, etc. from the fall of 1978, when STUCK IN THE 70s is set. That was fun. I also researched Albert Einstein, since one of my main characters loves him. That was fascinating. And to get the time travel theories down right, I researched physics. That was excruciating.

Marlene P.: Tell us something about you that no one knows.

Debra G.: For many years, my best friend and I collected empty toilet paper rolls from around the world. We wanted to be in The Guinness Book of World Records. When our friends and family went on vacation, they knew to bring us back a roll. We would write down the date and place on the roll. We never did write to the Guinness people. At my friend’s wedding shower years later, her parents presented her with the many, many bags of toilet paper rolls they had stored in their garage.

Marlene P.: How did you become a writer?

Debra G.: I loved to write as a child and teenager, but took the practical route and majored in economics and became a lawyer.

After practicing law for nine years (part-time for the last four years) and having two children, I was falsely diagnosed with cancer. I reevaluated my life. I quit my job, decided to have a third child, and started writing a novel (STORKY). I began it the day after I left my job, and wrote most of it while I was pregnant. Under the “write what you know” principle, there’s a pregnancy in STORKY, as well as a heroic retired lawyer.

I liked practicing law, but I LOVE being a writer.

Marlene P.: What is your favorite line, passage, or chapter from this book?

Debra G.: There’s a funny scene when Tyler goes to the movie theater with Shay and two other girls. He really wants to hold Shay’s hand. A preview for Rocky II comes on, and he predicts it will bomb, that no one will want to see another Rocky movie. The girls go to the bathroom. When they come back, Tyler finally gets up his nerve and holds Shay’s hand. She squeezes it back. He’s thrilled! Then he realizes the girls switched seats and he’s not holding her hand after all. Well, I think it’s funnier when you read the whole scene than when I try to summarize it.

Marlene P.: Was there any part that you struggled with or avoided writing?

My editor at Putnam didn’t like the ending. I had to throw away the last fifty pages. He sort of liked the next ending I wrote, but had me do a ton of revisions to it. Even though the ending gave me a lot of trouble, I think it came out good “in the end.”


Marlene P.: What are your hobbies?

Debra G.: I have three children, a puppy, and a husband who travels a lot. I’ve spent the last year simultaneously writing a trilogy for teens and a chapter book series for children. And I’m supposed to have hobbies? Are you nuts?

Well, when I have spare time, I do like to take walks, watch reality TV, play Hearts on the computer, and watch movies. And I always make time for reading.

Marlene P.: Have you ever wanted to quit writing? Why?

Debra G.: Never! Okay, about every other day. It’s a wonderful way to make money, but it’s also a difficult way to make money. I’d be happy just to draft and revise my manuscripts. The stuff that drives me crazy is having to promote my books as a midlist author, the long waits for responses from editors, the laborious contract negotiations (thank Gawd for my agent, but I still bite my nails until I have both the check and the book in my hands) … I could whine for hours.

I doubt I’d ever really quit writing. I love creating a scene I’m proud of, a character I care about, a joke that makes me laugh, etc.

And just when I’m feeling really low, I always seem to get a wonderful email from a teen reader that makes everything worthwhile.

Beauty Shop For Rent by Laura Bowers

Abbey Garner has it all planned out. Become a millionaire by the time she's thirty-five and avoid making the same mistakes the other women in her family made. School Library Journal says of debut author Laura Bowers' warm and funny novel "This deceptively simple book reveals Abbey as a wonderful character who will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. Her quiet, almost folksy lifestyle demonstrates the powerful impact of a loving family and good mentors."

We're delighted to welcome Laura to the Cafe to talk about Abbey, writing and why you should never give her nice jewelry.

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Melissa W.: What is your favorite line, passage, chapter from this book?

Laura B.: My favorite chapter from BEAUTY SHOP FOR RENT has always been the final one, because the setting was inspired by my county's annual 4-H & FFA fair. A close second would be the first chapter that was set in the beauty shop. I love the sassy, fun, "let your hair down" conversations that happen when it's just the ladies around and how this chapter shows the close, unique relationship between fifteen-year-old Abbey, Granny Po and the other Gray Widows. But my favorite lines are from chapter twenty-four, when my characters are driving into Ocean City: "But now the town didn't cast the same spell. Instead of enchanting, it seemed noisy and cheap, almost tacky, like I was no longer childlike enough to see its beauty."

Melissa W.: Do you remember writing the first words? Are they still the same?

Laura B.: I do remember writing the first words. It was for the opening scene in chapter one, where Abbey is stuck in the middle of another one of the Gray Widows' many tiffs. Writing that scene was one of those rare, wonderful moments when the words tumble out so fast your fingers can't keep up. The main points and concept of this chapter have always remained the same, despite the many rewrites, but my original opening line was, "I'll be dead. Dead and done buried by the time this shop is ever rented." I've since changed it to the first of many "hypothetical questions of the week."

Melissa W.: Tell us something about you that no one knows.

Laura B.: Well, my husband is perfectly aware of this, but not too many people know that I cannot be trusted with fine jewelry. Seriously. We've been married for fourteen years and in that time I've already lost my diamond engagement ring, my original wedding band, my replacement wedding band, and a diamond tennis bracelet. But, my husband is a lovely man who doesn't get upset over material things, (my character Gena is based on him,) and I'm happy to report that it's been a while since I lost something. Why? Because I hardly wear jewelry now out of fear of losing it! ;)

Melissa W.: If you could be anything else besides a writer, what would it be?

Laura B.: I would be a photographer. And, after the kids go to college, my dream assignment would be to travel the country with Bob taking beautiful pictures of historic main streets, town festivals and county fairs that could be used for a super-thick coffee table book. Talk about a cool job! That or someone who's sent to different hotels and resorts to rate them. Being paid to travel? I'm in.

Melissa W.: That does sound ideal! Can I come along? What is the hardest part of writing for you?

Laura B.: At the beginning, I think the hardest part of writing for me was viewing it as a job rather than a hobby. Before, I would only allow myself time to write after the laundry was done, my to-do list was finished, the house picked up, etc. While I still have the occasional lapse, I view my writing as a full-time job now and I no longer feel guilty about editing during my boys' baseball practice if I have a tough deadline! ;)

Melissa W.: Good for you! Thanks so much for stopping by the Cafe. We wish you the best of luck with your wonderful new book and many more to come!

~~Cafe Note~~ As a regular part of our interviews, featured authors will pop back in for one week after their interview is posted to answer any other questions blog readers may leave for them. So if you have any questions or comments for Laura, send them now! She'd love to hear from you!

BAD TICKETS by Kathleen O'Dell

Join us this week as we welcome Kathleen O'Dell to the Cafe. Well-known for her warm and funny mid-grade novels, including Agnes Parker, Girl in Progress, for which she was named a Publisher's Weekly Flying Start, Kathleen enters the wild world of YA fiction with her newest novel, Bad Tickets, which has already garnered a starred review from Booklist and which School Library Journal calls a "humorous and engaging story with just a bit of spirituality."

The Cafe is delighted to host Kathleen this week and be a part of celebrating her wonderful new novel.

Melissa W.: Tell us about your new book.

Kathleen O.: BAD TICKETS features Mary Margaret Hallinan, a Catholic high school sophomore in Portland, Oregon during the summer of love. Rumblings of what’s going on in San Francisco are being felt all over the world, but she’s still living in a place where most girls believe that their entire destinies are tied to the men they marry. When Mary Margaret meets Jane Stephens, she loves her new friend’s rebel spirit, but upon closer examination finds that for all her so-called adventurousness, Jane is actually following a pretty old-fashioned script.

This is my first young adult book. As I was writing it, I kept on thinking about how many adult struggles are just modified adolescent struggles. One of life’s central conundrums concerns figuring out when being good is actually bad for you and being bad is good for you and being good is good for you and being bad is bad for you (and bad for everyone else). Before you hit your teens, the answer is: be good. Growing up requires examining received wisdom. Even if you conclude that ninety-nine percent of everything your parents taught you was good and true, at least you’ve made it your truth.

Melissa W.: What was your inspiration for this story?

Kathleen O.: I was a kid in 1967, but I remember that summer. On one of the first sunny Portland summer days, I put on my baggy, hand-me-down, red, one-piece bathing suit and went with some fourth grade friends to Blue Lake. The park was filled with glamorous baby-oiled girls in gold and silver bikinis and gorgeous, sulky boys with long bangs hung over their sunglasses. Every kid there had the radio tuned to KISN and Jim Morrison was daring everyone to “Light My Fire.” Sex hung heavy in the air. We picked our way through the crowd of these simmering, shimmering creatures, and when I finally got to the lake I plopped down and stared at my knobby knees in a state of shock. It hardly seemed like the place for a pigtailed girl in an inner tube anymore.

I wanted to capture the experience of these girls who came of age just before the first wave of modern feminism. Even though young people were breaking all kinds of taboos and experimenting with different ways of living in the 60’s, many men still wanted a cool “old lady”--someone nurturing and mellow who tended to her man and the organic baking.

Another source of inspiration is my memory of a recurring nightmare I had in my teens. I dreamed I was getting married in my high school gym, and that I was wearing a Jackie Kennedy suit and a leopard pill box hat--something that even someone my mom’s age was too hip to wear. The priest would be reading the vows as I kept on urging myself to run away! Now! Before it’s too late! I always woke up breathless and terrified before I realized that I was safe in my pink bedroom in my twin bed and perfectly single. The thought of lock stepping from the high school gym into a married life was scary to me in part because like Mary Margaret, I was the oldest in my family. I had already devoted a big chunk of my life to domestic stuff such as babysitting and dishwashing and cooking. The romance I was looking for involved the freedom to take care of only myself. Oh, and to have my own bedroom. That was a big thing to me.

Melissa W.: Was there any part that you struggled with or avoided writing?

Kathleen O.: Mary Margaret’s mother, with her omnipresent cigarette and laundry basket, really got to me. Every time I got into her head, I felt incredibly sad. I was a homemaker with little kids for years, and whenever I felt burnt to a crispy critter, I would set myself down and tell myself that staying home for now was my choice, that my two kids would eventually grow up, and that there was a different life waiting for me not too far down the road. That’s not true of Cynthia Hallinan. She feels she made a lifetime bargain when she married her high school sweetheart, and she’s determined to deal with pregnancy after pregnancy even though she’s depressed, unsupported and miserable.

Melissa W.: What's on your nightstand right now?

Kathleen O.: There are Starbucks receipts with scribbled revision notes all over them. At night, right before I fall asleep, I get these flashes on how to work out the kinks of my latest manuscript. I jump out of bed, dig blindly through my purse for scrap paper and start scrawling. You’d think I’d keep a notebook nearby, wouldn’t you, seeing that I’m a writer tending toward nightly inspiration? But no. I’m also superstitious and believe that if I’m too premeditated, the inspiration won’t show up. This morning’s note read: “Tessa-- SWITZRLND--Boarding school? Has to rtrn home @ the end ar havee aplace.” At least I think that’s what it said. I wrote it in the dark.

Melissa W.: Best of luck deciphering your notes! And thank you so much for stopping by the Cafe. We wish you much success with your new book! Congratulations!

~~Cafe Note~~ As a regular part of our interviews, featured authors will pop back in for one week after their interview is posted to answer any other questions blog readers may leave for them. So if you have any questions or comments for Kathleen, send them now! She'd love to hear from you!

OPEN DISCUSSION - Who is reading Young Adult books?

"Exactly 'who' are YA readers? Is the age range broadening? "

This was a question posted by one of our visitors and it is a question we all hear periodically.

And so many other questions are tied into it: Is the defintion of YA changing? What makes a YA book a YA book? Content? Publisher designation? Something else?

Tell us your thoughts!

Open Discussion: Let's Talk About Sex

As an ongoing feature of the Cafe, we occasionally open the floor to general discussion of topics related to YA literature.

This week, one of our readers poses the following always-fascinating and often controversial topic:

"I want to know what YA authors and other readers think about a lot of the sexual content in YA books. I know a lot of people are totally fine with it but I also know I can't be the ONLY girl who doesn't feel entirely comfortable reading some of it. And it's not about censorship; it's about me being selective about what I read - and NOT reading the stuff I don't feel comfortable reading."

So what do you think? Please feel free to express your honest opinions in the comments, but keep in mind the fact that we do have younger readers and moderate your language accordingly. Thanx!

SO NOT THE DRAMA by Paula Chase

Today, we welcome young adult author, Paula Chase, to the Cafe. Paula has written for Girls’ Life, Sweet 16, and Baltimore Magazine among others. Her Del Rio Bay Clique series helped launch Kensington Books YA line and joins the growing number of YA books targeted to multi-culti suburbanite teens. Chase calls her brand of teen literature, Hip Lit, a nod to the diversity spawned by the MTV-watching, 106th & Park-ing, pop culture hungry hip hop generation.

The Cafe is pleased to have her as our guest as she celebrates the debut of her first YA novel.

Mary P: Tell us about So Not the Drama! What was your inspiration for this story?

Paula: It's about a high school freshman's quest for popularity and how that quest is abruptly ended when a sociology project's assignment to eliminate prejudice backfires, causing a rift between she and her best friend.

At its core, So Not The Drama is a friendship story. But surrounding it is a light, fun look at the highs and lows that go along with making the transition from middle to high school and how that period can be such an awakening for some teens. The story’s very much in the vein of Two-A-Days and The Hills or any t(w)een show that proves, when you're under the age of 20 life is drama. The two are so interconnected, you can't tell the difference at that age. And I love it. Dramalicious!

Several things inspired this book:
1) my own experiences as a 'burb teen
2) knowing my daughter would likely go through a similar ‘black in the 'burbs’ experience
3) my absolute adoration for how simple and complex being a teenager can be


Mary P: Tell us about "the" call. How did you find out you sold a book and how did you react?

What sticks out most in my mind about the call was it was actually a series of calls. My agent and I were on the phone back and forth the entire day as she passed me key parts of the deal and kept me in the loop on the verbal negotiations.

It felt very much like wheeling and dealing should...even though I wasn't doing any of the wheeling. More like riding along while my agent did the work.

I'll confess that my reaction was boring. I didn't scream or cry or start shaking. I was incredibly happy and I kept filling my husband in on every detail each time the phone rang. But I guess I'm not excitable. And yet, I don’t have a poker face. Go figure.

My favorite part was when she called back with the final numbers. It was hilarious. If a camera had taped that moment it would have caught me looking pretty dumbfounded. It felt just like when you go into a fancy store where you know you can't afford anything. But just for kicks and giggles you ask, in this real serious tone "How much is this?" As if you could actually afford it. And they say, "Fourteen."

In that moment, you're attempting to keep your face stoic. But for one brief millisecond your real emotions seep out and the look says, "Thousand? Is this thing really fourteen thousand?!"

Of course, you don't say that out loud because obviously the person doesn't mean it's fourteen dollars since everything in the store costs more than what you pay for your mortgage.

So when my agent uttered the number that's how I felt because she didn't say the full out number. She said it like they do in fancy circles. That's why I love my agent. She's such a cool cucumber.

Mary P: How did you become a writer?

I've always been one. As a kid I made up stories all the time. I also read voraciously, which only fed my urge to write my own.

Then as a teen, me and my best friend Nicki would write stories and exchange them. Instead of paying attention in class I'd read the story she wrote and then I'd add on to it. She'd do the same and we'd just keep exchanging stories like that.

It was sort of like a write-your-own-adventure. It was fun because she might take the story a place I never intended. It was equally as exciting to read what she wrote as it was to add on.

As much as I love writing, I detoured to PR in college. So I ended up doing a lot of corporate writing for a long time. Fairly boring, but no matter what I wrote about I still felt there was some art to it. No doubt there are a few thousand purple (read: flowery) press releases walking the earth thanks to me.

In '01 I jumped back into writing by doing music reviews and eventually I began contributing to magazines. Once I started doing that I was hooked. It made me wonder why I never bothered to seriously pursue Journalism.

But my PR background isn't just a nice thing to have, now that I have books to promote, it's a Godsend. So that cliche, "everything happens for a reason," is true this time round.

Mary P: Besides writing, do you have any other passions?

Paula: Pop culture!!

I'm the queen of mindless (often useless) information. I was so geekily excited about the VH1 show, World Series of Pop Culture. It was cool seeing that there are others out there like me - hopelessly addicted to information as inane as the name of the housekeeper that took Alice the maid's place for a brief period on The Brady Bunch. I mean, seriously, who keeps this type of minutiae in their head?

Oh right, I do.

Music, TV, Film, whatever. I consume it all. And I consider a great deal of it research for my YA. Well, at least that's my story…and I'm sticking to it.

Mary P: Thank you so much for sharing with us, Paula. We wish you much success with your new book! Congratulations!

~~Cafe Note~~ As a regular part of our interviews, featured authors will pop back in for one week after their interview is posted to answer any other questions blog readers may leave for them. So if you have any questions or comments for Paula, send them now! She'd love to hear from you!

Open Discussion: What's Missing?

This week on the Cafe, we thought we'd try a change of pace and open the floor to a general discussion on YA lit. So here's your chance to weigh in and sound off. The topic, from one of our readers:

What genre or subject matter seems to be neglected in today's contemporary teen lit?

What do you think? Let us know in the comments!