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Monday, June 20, 2011

GCC Tours Jessica Brody and MY LIFE UNDECIDED

As I mentioned last week, I'm about two authors behind on my blog tour schedule, so I just may have to double up on author in order to catch up -- especially since it's about one week until my daughter is out of school for summer vacation. There goes the rest of the little time I have! Argh!

Anyway, I'm so super excited to tour Jessica Brody this week. She is one of the contributors to DEAR BULLY and so I'm also going to post her bully story over on the DEAR BULLY website. Take a visit over there if you can (www.dearbully.com).

Before I get to her book, Jessica is going to tell a little about her experience with bullying:


I’m so thrilled to be one of the authors contributing to the forthcoming anthology: Dear Bully. I wrote a song for the book that talks about how I was bullied in middle school. I was constantly teased, harassed, pranked, you name it. And I spent the entire time on the outside, looking in, wishing I could be part of the “popular crowd.” But now, looking back on it, I’m glad I wasn’t. I talk about this a lot now when I do school visits. My experience in middle school shaped who I am today. I honestly don’t think I would be writing young adult novels had I not had these experiences. They stayed with me. Long enough that I’m able to use them in my writing. I think (hope!) these real life experiences I have to pull from make my characters more real and believable.

Jessica has an amazing book out (it came out on June 7th) and here's a little bit about MY LIFE UNDECIDED:


PLEASE READ THIS! MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!

Okay, maybe that was a bit melodramatic, but I’m sorry, I’m feeling a bit melodramatic at the moment.

Here’s the deal. My name is Brooklyn Pierce, I’m fifteen years old, and I am decisionally challenged. Seriously, I can’t remember the last good decision I made. I can remember plenty of crappy ones though. Including that party I threw when my parents were out of town that accidentally burned down a model home. Yeah, not my finest moment, for sure.

But see, that’s why I started a blog. To enlist readers to make my decisions for me. That’s right. I’m gave up. Threw in the towel. I let someone else be the one to decide which book I read for English. Or whether or not I accepted an invitation to join the debate team from that cute-in-a-dorky-sort-of-way guy who gave me the Heimlich Maneuver in the cafeteria. (Note to self: Chew the melon before swallowing it.) I even let them decide who I dated!

Well, it turns out there are some things in life you simply can’t choose or have chosen for you—like who you fall in love with. And now everything’s more screwed up than ever.

But don’t take my word for it, read the book and decide for yourself. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll scream in frustration. Or maybe that’s just me. After all, it’s my life.

Reviews:

"Brooklyn is a sympathetic protagonist with whom teens will identify. Her journey is fun to read, and decision-challenged readers will learn an important lesson about self-acceptance along the way."
--School Library Journal

"Brody taps into a universal human desire...An amusing coming-of-age story with many funny moments...[Brooklyn's] flustered, off-the-cuff narration should keep readers as invested in her actions as her blog followers are."
--Publisher's Weekly

About the Author:

A few fun facts about Jessica Brody’s own life undecided:

  • Jessica was born in Los Angeles, moved to Colorado when she was twelve, moved back to California after college and now indecisively splits her time between both states.
  • Jessica graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts with majors in Economics and French because she was convinced she wanted to be an “important business woman.” After a brief stint as a strategic analyst for MGM Studios, she abandoned her business background to become a full-time writer. Now she uses her mad spreadsheet skills to build complicated outlines for her books.
  • Appropriately, when writing this book, Jessica couldn’t decide on a title. So she polled 50 of her closest friends to finally come up with My Life Undecided.

    Visit her online at: www.JessicaBrody.com.

Bestselling Author of:

The Karma Club (young adult)

My Life Undecided (young adult) - Coming June 2011!

The Fidelity Files (commercial fiction)

Love Under Cover (commercial fiction)

www.JessicaBrody.com

And coming soon: www.MyLifeUndecided.com, where you can post your own undecided questions, poll the community, and get some answers.

My Life Undecided

  • Reading level: Young Adult
  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); First Edition edition (June 7, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0374399050
  • ISBN-13: 978-0374399054


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