What’s new in the New Year for all the Debs!

Class of 2007:

Check out Deb Mia King‘s newest book – Friendship Bread – hitting shelves in April!

Class of 2008:

Deb Founder Eileen Cook has a very busy year planned. Her new YA, The Education of Hailey Kendrick, will be out in just a few days January 4, 2011. She also has a new middle grade series with all three books coming out this year starting in April. The first book is called The Fourth Grade Fairy.

Deb Jenny Gardiner: In 2011 I’m thrilled to be contributing to an anthology of humorous dog stories spearheaded by Deb friend Wade Rouse called I’M NOT THE BIGGEST BITCH IN THIS RELATIONSHIP (NAL), which features 11 New York Times bestselling authors, two Emmy award-winners and a Tony award-winner.  The paperback version of Winging It will arrive in March.

Former Deb Lisa Daily (Fifteen Minutes of Shame): I have two new YA novels in the works for 2012 which I’m really excited about, even though writing two books in one year may give me a nervous breakdown.  (Kidding, I LOVE the pressure.  I’m just going to channel Meg Cabot and have a truck deliver a palate of kettle corn and JOLT cola to my office door.)  The first book, due to my publisher in a month, is BEAUTY — a comedy about a plain-Jane teenage girl who thinks all her problems would be solved if only she were prettier — and gets the shock of her life when a mystical twist of fate turns her into the most beautiful girl in the world — to be released in 2012 from Razorbill/Penguin (Like the movie BIG, but with a girly twist.)   I also have another book in the works —  BEING AUDREY HEPBURN, a YA novel that I’m co-writing with Emmy-award winning director and writer (and former SNL writer) Mitchell Kriegman, also to be released in 2012 from St. Martin’s Press.  I’m also still doling out love and dating advice every week on DAYTIME, a nationally-syndicated morning TV show.  Feel free to write me with your romantic dilemmas.  Deb Ball readers obviously get first priority.  Obviously.

To find out more about what’s been going on with me since I left the Debutante Ball (or, you know, to tell me about the lack of decent men in your city, or your boyfriend’s commitment issues,) please stop by my blog!

Best of luck to all the 2010-2011 debs!  We’re so proud of you!

Class of 2009:

Deb Meredith Cole is finishing up her third book (tentatively titled Murder Under Development) which continues the adventures of Lydia McKenzie in Brooklyn. She has a busy 2011 planned so far: she will be teaching novel writing at the University of Virginia, speaking at events at libraries for The Big Read in Charlottesville, Virginia, and giving a presentation at the Nancy Drew Convention.

Deb Kristina Riggle‘s next book is coming out June 28, called THINGS WE DIDN’T SAY. It’s a messy, grown-up love story with a family in crisis, about divorce, remarriage and whether you can ever really start fresh. This book has once again a large cast of complicated characters, and for those who missed a male narrator in my previous book, they will be happy to read from the point of view of Michael, a decent guy trying to hold his family together through a combination of willpower and perfectionism. This is also the first time I’m tackling narrative voices of children (ages eight, fourteen and sixteen, respectively) which was an exciting challenge. My editor came up with the title and it’s so perfect for the story. Our words can hurt, but so can the secrets we keep.

In the spring of 2011 the ARCs of Deb Tiffany Baker’s new novel, The Gilly Salt Sisters, will finally be ready! The Gilly Salt Sisters is the story of three women in a salt Marsh on Cape Cod who all have a history with the same man: Whit Turner. Whit was Jo’s childhood sweetheart, her sister Claire is his wife, and when his teenaged pregnant mistress enters the mix, things go up in flames. It’s juicy and Tiffany hopes you all love it. To stay updated, visit Tiffany’s website!

The sequel to Deb Katie Alender‘s Bad Girls Don’t Die, titled From Bad to Cursed, will arrive in June!

Eve Brown-Waite has recently become the Executive Director of ACT NOW!, a non-profit organization that teaches improvisational movie-making to youth (giving EVERYONE the power to tell their own stories). She has also recently become a Hospice Volunteer, something she finds enormously fulfilling. She has several writing projects underway including the sequel to First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria.

Class of 2010:

Sarah Pekkanen‘s second novel, Skipping a Beat, will be published on Feb. 22, 2011. It’s the story of a woman named Julia Dunhill, whose husband suffers cardiac arrest, is clinically dead for four minutes and eight seconds – and wants to change everything about their relationship when he is revived.

Sarah Pekkanen will also have an essay out in the summer of 2011 as part of an anthology edited by Wade Rouse and featuring contributions from Chelsea Handler, Jen Lancaster, Merill Markoe, and many other authors!   Some proceeds from the anthology, which centers around our relationships with our dogs, will go to the U.S. Humane Society.

In 2010, Emily Winslow wrote her second book for Delacorte, The Start of Everything. Like The Whole World, The Start of Everything is set in Cambridge, England, and it links unidentified female remains found in the fens with a recent death on Cambridge train tracks. Also like in The Whole World, part of the plot dwells on difficulty driving. Subliminal fear on Emily’s part, perhaps? In 2011, she will learn to drive stick and finally get a British license.

Class of 2011:

Deb Eleanor is counting down the ever-smaller number of days until January 20th – the release of The Weird Sisters!  Check out the list of events on her site and come out and visit if you’re nearby!  She’s also looking forward to all the new Deb books this year, playing in the snow in her new Colorado home, and lots and lots of traveling!

Deb Sarah is excited to share the trailer for The Violets of March! View it at her Web site, or on YouTube!

Deb Kim will be in San Diego in January and continuing her book tour through April at least – which is autism awareness action month. Email me at kimstagliano@gmail.com if you’d like a free signed bookplate, to schedule a SKYPE bookclub appearance or a speaking engagement. I promsie to make you laugh, not cry!

While Deb Elise counts down the months to the August 1 release of Populazzi, she’s busily working with Hilary Duff on the sequel to Elixir, writing more Barbie movies, and keeping her fingers crossed about some other projects in the works.  She hopes to bring luck to these projects by toasting them with champagne at 9pm New Year’s Eve (the east coast feed of the ball dropping — don’t tell my daughter it’s not really midnight here).

Deb Tawna has spent the last 10 months thinking of her August 2011 release date as some distant, far away time that will probably coincide with her moving into a retirement home. It just occurred to her that 2011 is here, Making Waves will hit shelves in eight months, and she’d really better get cracking on that retirement thing.