Friday, March 14, 2008

Girlfriends Cyber Circuit Presents Carrie Jones

The book is finally done. Well, this draft of it. I now need to go over the last section again, and then do one more pass on the whole thing. I rewarded myself by going to see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which was wonderful and may stand a chance of becoming my favorite movie ever without magic, spaceships or sword fights in it, but I will talk about that more on Monday after I've sent the book off to my agent.

In the meantime, I have a Girlfriends Cyber Circuit post to do. This week's book is Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape) by Carrie Jones, a young adult novel that tackles the topic of teen sex in terms of relationships, going beyond the Hollywood view that seems to be all about virginity (and who can lose it the fastest).

This is the story of 18-year-old Belle Philbrick, who watches love blossom in the lives of all around her while she and her boyfriend seem to be treading water. As she barrels toward the end of her senior year, Belle watches as everything around her changes…and not all for the best. And in the midst of dealing with the changes comes the revelation that her best friend might be pregnant. Through Belle, Jones examines issues of labeling, making choices, and the anxiety of “what next?” as Belle looks ahead to life beyond high school.



Some fun factoids:

Belle has an arch-nemesis named Mimi (like someone else we know around here).

This book was inspired, in part, by a country music video -- that Carrie didn't realize was a country music video (until she noticed the men wearing cowboy boots standing in the middle of a field, playing instruments, who appeared at various points) because she was flipping through channels with the sound off.

Carrie's previous book (of which this one is a sequel), Tips on Having a Gay (ex)Boyfriend, has been nominated for all kinds of awards.

They now make clear duct tape. You lose that all-important redneck aesthetic for your makeshift household repairs, and it isn't good for making SCA swords, but if you want to fix something without looking like you live in a trailer with an old washing machine on the tacked-on front porch, now you can.

For more info (on the book, not on duct tape), visit Carrie's web site. Or you can buy the book from Amazon.

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