I agree with Jennifer Weiner, who proclaims on the cover of Sarah Pekkanen’s THE OPPOSITE OF ME, “Fresh and funny and satisfying.” For the couple days it took me to fly through this book, it was my constant companion. It came with me on the train, into the tub, and to bed. It’s a swift, irresistible read, the kind of book you race to finish.
Lindsey is a plucky, winning narrator, and I strongly identified with her struggle to redefine herself. After her carefully constructed professional identity comes crashing down, she’s stuck wondering, Who the hell am I, and what do I do next?
Pretty much every woman I know has asked herself those questions at one point or another — and has been forced to answer them. Lindsey’s journey is one of discovering just what, and who, really matter to her. It’s very affecting, very real.
Very real, too, is THE OPPOSITE OF ME’s exploration of sibling rivalry. As her twin sister reveals some surprising secrets, Lindsey must find the inner strength to change her own heart, and reconcile her feelings.
I loved guessing which love interest Lindsey winds up with. I loved her hilariously oblivious parents. I loved every fun, unexpected twist. Reading along as she confronts the challenges that eventually serve her was a true pleasure.
You’ll want to buy your copy of THE OPPOSITE OF ME right now. And while you’re at it, buy another copy for a friend or favorite relative.
Please join me in congratulating Deb Sarah on her sparkling debut!
~Alicia Bessette
March 10th, 2010
| Posted by Alicia Bessette | 2010 Debs, Sarah Pekkanen, The Opposite of Me, deb sarah
| No Comments
Manicure, CHECK (thanks for that tip, everyone – my nails are growing!)
New outfit that isn’t stained by baby spit up, apple juice that sloshed over the top of the cup, or Starbucks coffee that I spit all over my shirt because I was so desperately in need of caffeine that I sipped it before letting it cool – CHECK!
High heeled, open toed shoes – CHECK! (Also pedicure in a shade called “Starter Wife,” which totally cracks me up)
Stress zit on my chin – CHECK! (Noooooo…. why me? Must rush to store for cover up)
I’m ready for Debut Day. I’ve been waiting so long for this moment – maybe every author feels that way – and I can hardly believe it’s here. Tonight I’ll walk into the Barnes & Noble in Bethesda, past the window where my face is featured on a poster advertising my reading, and talk to an audience about The Opposite of Me. I’ll remember what it felt like to sit upstairs at the cafe, hunched over my laptop and doubting myself, and how I’d look around at all the shelves filled with books and tell myself that if all of those authors could do it, that maybe, just maybe, I could too.
These past few weeks have been incredible, and thanks to Jennifer Weiner, my book is off to a terrific start. I’m excited and nervous and thrilled and ecstatic, all rolled into one. Thank you all for coming along with me for the ride. I value and appreciate the friendships I’ve found through this blog – from the Graduate Debs to bloggers to readers and fellow authors — and feel as though you’re all with me in spirit today. I’m raising my chocolate martini to you all tonight!
March 9th, 2010
| Posted by Sarah Pekkanen | 2010 Debs
| 14 Comments
Things I really, really enjoyed about Sarah Pekkanen’s debut novel, The Opposite of Me:
1) I’m a tough girl to surprise. I can see the end of a joke, the point of a sermon, or pick out a killer on CSI or Law and Order right from the start. But, I had no idea who the heroine of The Opposite of Me was going to end up with. There were several men naturally in her life, both newly and from old friendship, and I honestly didn’t know where Sarah was taking the story. Brava, Sarah! Being truly surprised is one of my favorite pleasures. You provided it.
2) I had complete sympathy for the heroine’s sister. In fact, I had sympathy for *everyone*, even when they were mucking things up for our heroine. Sarah didn’t villainize anyone. She didn’t need to–people doing the best they can still hurt each other. In a lesser book, the sister would have been all foil for the heroine, all contrast. But Sarah made everyone real, not just the viewpoint character. She had me caring about everyone’s happiness, and led to an ending that was indeed hopeful for all of them. Just lovely.
This is a “women’s fiction” novel with near slapstick-level farce in part one, a light “chick lit” vibe in the middle, and a serious, satisfying ending that is emotional without being at all maudlin. Does the heroine get a man at the end? Does she get a new job? Yes and yes…and she gets her relationship with her sister back, and a new, interesting version of herself.
Here is Sarah’s website.
You can buy The Opposite of Me from Indiebound, Amazon or BN.
You should!
March 8th, 2010
| Posted by Emily Winslow | 2010 Debs, Sarah Pekkanen
| 7 Comments
Deb Sarah is thrilled to announce that presales of The Opposite of Me broke Amazon.com’s top 100 list and Barnesandnoble.com’s top 30 list this week because of the incomparable #1NYT bestselling author Jennifer Weiner! Read about this unprecedented act of Jenerosity from a bestselling author to a debut novelist here.
Deb Sarah is profiled on page 50 of DC Magazine’s March/April issue, and she was interviewed in Bethesda Magazine, which also printed an excerpt of The Opposite of Me. She has been having fun touring blogs and writing guest posts at spots like The Divining Wand, Free Book Fridays, Chicklitisnotdead. And Sarah’s first reading is at Barnes & Noble Bethesda on Tuesday, March 9 at 7 p.m. – her Debut Day! She’ll also be speaking at the Friendship Heights Village Center on Monday, March 15.
Beth Hoffman, bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, has this to say about SIMPLY FROM SCRATCH by Deb Alicia: “In her wise and delightfully fresh debut, Alicia Bessette has composed a tender song that rises through the clouds of loss and grief until it bursts into a joyous celebration of the human heart. To read this story is to embrace life.”
March 7th, 2010
| Posted by admin | 2010 Debs, Simply From Scratch
| 2 Comments
The Debs are all excited to welcome debut author Laurie Strongin to the Ball today. Laurie’s memoir, Saving Henry, describes her family’s incredible fight for her son, Henry, who was born with a rare illness – and how, through it all, they learned to live every day with laughter and joy. Here’s what Lisa Belkin, a New York Times reporter, had to say: “Henry’s story is important and newsworthy; a testament to how the debate over medical technology and stem cell research is not just an academic argument, but also a searingly personal one. Mostly, though, it’s an intimate love story. We should all learn from Henry what his family has learned–to live well and laugh hard.”
Laurie is the founder and executive director of the Hope for Henry Foundation, which brings entertainment, laughter, and smiles to seriously ill children. She also acts as a family advocate in the national discussion of ethics and genetics. She is a regular panelist on Clear Channel’s Sunday radio program Women Talk and lives with her family in Washington, D.C. Please visit her website for more information.
Welcome, Laurie, and thanks for telling us about your path to publication!
I think there is a correlation between the time it takes to get a book published and how good it feels to hold it when the very first copy arrives at your door. Yesterday afternoon I found two cardboard boxes on my porch secured tightly with tape advertising in bright red, NEW RELEASES, NEW RELEASES, NEW RELEASES. The boxes were imprinted with the following beautiful words, “Strongin/Saving Henry.” After taking photographs of the tape, the boxes, along with a close-up of the words, I carefully opened a box, and pulled a book out. I hugged the book. I posed for more pictures with the book. I kissed the book. I watched the Olympics with the book by my side. I slept with it on my night table. It was still there when I woke up this morning.
In the end, it took less than a week to secure a publisher for my first book, Saving Henry (Hyperion, March 2, 2010). That delightful development in the summer of 2008 was preceded by five years of hard work, a good mix of persistence and patience, and a tolerance for seemingly relentless rejections which were only made better by reminding myself that JK Rowling got 12 rejections before Harry Potter was accepted by one wise and talented (and probably rich by now) publisher. JK Rowling’s was “too long and complex” for the children’s market; Saving Henry was “too sad.”
I first started writing the book that became Saving Henry while my husband and I were engaged in a battle to disassociate the word “fatal” from the disease that threatened to steal my firstborn son Henry. We had the good fortune of being among the first in the world to use genetic testing to knowingly get pregnant with a baby who would be healthy and whose umbilical cord stem cells could save Henry’s life. Being first meant that there was little to no information, no one to talk to, and no success rate in which to take comfort. Writing gave me an outlet for my combined feelings of gratitude for having something we could do to help Henry, fear for his life, and growing concern as we came to learn what now seems obvious and inevitable – new scientific discoveries rarely work for the first people who try them.
Shortly after Henry died, I decided to write a book about Henry’s valiant fight and magnificent but far-too-short life; and our experience on the medical frontlines. In the spring of 2003, I wrote a query letter, proposal, and sample chapter which I sent to a list of agents who represented all the authors I knew. The reaction was consistent, flattering, and ultimately totally disappointing. That the story was “compelling,” and the writing was “beautiful” was unanimous, as was the decision to pass.
I received each rejection with a mix of disappointment and determination. There had to be someone in the publishing world who shared my belief that Henry’s story is inspiring and energizing. For a time, it looked like that someone might have been behind a desk at Kinko’s where I was looking for self-publishing options. It was February of 2008 and I had beyond exhausted all my leads. By August, I had finished the book. I loved the book. I even decided that it would be just fine to print a few copies so my husband Allen and I, and even more importantly, my sons Jack and Joe would always remember Henry. Somehow I think that letting go of the need to find a publisher was just what I needed to ready myself for finding one. Within one week of completing the first draft of Saving Henry – and nearly five-and-a-half years after setting out to write it – I shared dinner with a colleague interested in Hope for Henry, the nonprofit Allen and I founded to bring smiles and laughter to seriously-ill kids who spend too much time in the hospital. He asked about Henry and as I told him of Henry’s courage, sense of humor and spark and all we had done to ensure he’d be in our lives forever, my friend paused and said, “That would be a great book.” I sent him a copy the following day which he in turn shared with his colleague who happened to be Hyperion’s publisher. Within days, I had an agent and a publishing contract. You can read Saving Henry, one of Hyperion’s Inspirational Memoirs, beginning on March 2.
For more information, please visit www.savinghenry.com.
March 6th, 2010
| Posted by admin | 2010 Debs
| 7 Comments
When I set out on this exciting writing endeavour
I sought fame and glory to last me forever.
Back in the dark ages, long before thoughts of the web
I had nothing published and no dreams of ever being a Deb
I plodded on, in my solitary pursuit
With not a soul to talk to, I might as well have been mute.
Times weren’t like now, where by just hitting send
My message will hurl ‘cross miles to a friend
These days, before I can even think about work
Three emails pop in making writing easy to shirk.
Please don’t get me started on distractions galore
Like Facebook and Twitter, I can’t take any more
Friends from my past and new followers each day
Only 140 characters to say what I say?
When I’m not tweeting, I’m writing a novel
For my autograph someday (May 13th), many will grovel
While it’s true that YA has always been my real passion
It’s all about getting published, in the past I did I ration
YA was passé when I first started out
So I looked to the market and charted my route
The Picture Book was selling like hotcakes, oh so chic and so vogue
So I tried these simplest of tales, but somehow my stories always went rogue
How hard could they be? I asked after every editor’s “Pass!”
They’re 32 pages, an easy form, my ass!
Picture Books are terribly deceiving to the eye
They might look very simple, as easy as pie
But that’s all an illusion, they’re truly fine art
And fantastical drawings can’t fix the writing part
Despite all my perseverance, editors’ answers never did vary
“Stop sending us crap, and for God’s sake burn that rhyming dictionary!”
While it’s true that I did start out writing picture books, and one of the first things I bought was a rhyming dictionary, I never thought they would be easy. And I did my homework, reading and enjoying hundreds of picture books. But then I realized I’m just too long winded to write something so elegant and short.
Oh, and there was also the fact that an editor, after turning down a half a dozen of my stories, finally sent me a personal letter, one where she asked me take her off my submissions list – forever. And just in case I found a creative way to interpret this personal note as some sort of encouragement, she also included this sentence: If in future you wish to avoid this editor’s ire, try using your stories to start the fire.
March 5th, 2010
| Posted by Joelle Anthony | 2010 Debs
| 8 Comments
I suck at math. I really do. I’m not afraid to admit I still count on my fingers, stomp my feet like a counting horse when I run out of digits, and suffer from debilitating panic attacks when anything remotely math related rears its ugly head. In school, math class was a daily heave-inducing stress-fest. I hid behind my classmates hoping the teacher wouldn’t call on me. When I did get called on, my hand trembled at the chalkboard. During tests, I wrote answers with blue pen on my hand, but was thwarted by severe nervous sweating, and resorted to cheating off my friend Margaret (kind soul) who purposely never covered her answers with her elbow (yeah, I know, I’m not proud of it either.)
These days, my son’s pleas to help him with his math homework send me right back to grade school…my mouth runs dry and I immediately become light-headed –and he’s only in 1st grade! What will become of me when he’s breaking out algebra, or my true kryptonite –CALCULUS!
As the old saying goes, “When God’s shuts a door, he opens a window.” I wasn’t gifted or remotely enjoy the world of numbers, equations, and hieroglyphic symbols, but I adore the written word. English is the mayo in my turkey sandwich, and luckily it doesn’t clog my arteries and set me up for coronary thrombosis (also known as a heart attack).
See, a word like thrombosis is a total turn on! According to my online dictionary, a thrombosis is: the obstruction of blood flow in a coronary artery by a blood clot or (thrombus). Yay! We all learned something new just then, and someday you might find that knowledge useful, like in a discussion with your physician for example.
On the other hand, I can guarantee with all certainty I’ve never had a conversation where someone said “Hey Maria, if train A leaves Chicago traveling 100MPH and train B leaves New York traveling 150MPH and the distance between the two cites is 600 miles how far from New York will it be when the two trains meet?”
Yep, English rules. Dictionaries are sacred, and math is just yucky.
March 4th, 2010
| Posted by Maria Garcia-Kalb | 2010 Debs
| 4 Comments
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