Deb Class of 2009

Deb Kristina Riggle
Kristina Riggle is a former newspaper reporter and mother to a preschool son and baby daughter. Her short fiction has also appeared in Espresso Fiction, Net Author’s E2K, and the Cimarron Review. She is co-editor for fiction at Literary Mama.

About Real Life & Liars (Women’s fiction, June 2009, Avon HarperCollins)
Faded flower child Mira Zielinski isn’t about to have surgery for her newly diagnosed breast cancer, which will no doubt upset her grown children — when she gets around to telling them. They’re coming home with their own lives falling apart over spousal secrets, an elopement, and withered dreams. As this all comes to light on one pivotal weekend, will it shake Mira’s resolve?

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Deb Katie Alender
Katie Alender is a producer/writer and a graduate of the film school at Florida State University. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found at her sewing machine or spoiling her dog. She’s married to her college sweetheart and lives in Los Angeles, California.

About Bad Girls Don’t Die (Young Adult Thriller, April 2009, Disney-Hyperion Books)
When 15-year-old Alexis Warren suspects that her younger sister Kasey’s strange behavior is more than just angst, she thinks she can handle it on her own. But creepy parlor tricks are just the beginning, and it soon seems that Kasey may actually be living out the violent legacy of the Warrens’ gothic home. Alexis is forced to seek out the help of her arch-rival, cheerleader queen, Megan Wiley. Working together, they’re the only ones who can save Kasey. But what if the green-eyed girl isn’t even Kasey anymore?

BAD GIRLS DON’T DIE has been selected for the Tayshas Reading List of the Texas Library Association, Scholastic Book Clubs, and the New York Public Library’s 2009 Stuff for the Teen Age list. The sequel, FROM BAD TO CURSED, is due out June 14, 2011, and Book 3 will follow in 2012.

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Eve Brown-Waite

Deb Eve Brown-Waite
Eve Brown-Waite was a finalist for both an Iowa Review Award and a Glimmer Train Award, and the first runner up for the 2008 New Millennium Writings Award for stories she wrote about her time abroad. She lives with her husband and two children in Massachusetts.

About First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and a Third World Adventure Changed My Life (Travel Memoir, April 2009, Broadway Books)
Eve Brown, college diploma in hand and notions of saving the world in her head, was unsure about what to do with the rest of her life. Something noble…yet glamorous, she hoped. With some ambivalence she looked into joining the Peace Corps. When she fell for her dashing and altruistic Peace Corps recruiter, John, all the ambivalence disappeared. She absolutely had to join the Peace Corps, if for no other reason than to win John’s heart. Off to Ecuador she went—and after a year in the jungle, back to the States she ran, vowing to stay within easy reach of a decaf cappuccino for the rest of her life. But John—now her husband—had other ideas. Before long, the couple was off to Uganda, and the fun was just beginning.

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Deb Meredith Cole
Meredith Cole grew up outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. She is a graduate of Smith College where she majored in Women’s Studies and minored in Film. She went on to receive her Master’s degree from American University in Film and Video Production where she was a Teaching Assistant and Master Scholar.

She wrote and directed the dramatic feature, “Floating”, about a group of friends growing up and apart. It premiered at the New York 
Film and Video Festival in 1998, and received a Kodak Film grant. Her second feature, “Achilles’ Love”, was a romantic comedy shot on 
35mm. It was released by Castle Hill in 2000.

Meredith was named a Playwriting/Screenwriting fellow by the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2004. She won the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic best traditional first mystery contest with her book “Posed for Murder” and it will be released in 2008. Her short story “Out in the Cold” was accepted into a Sisters in Crime anthology “Murder in New York”. She is a member of both Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and currently serves on the board of the local chapter.

About Posed For Murder (Mystery/Suspense, February 2009, St. Martin’s Press)
Lydia McKenzie, an edgy art photographer who recreates murder scenes in a film noir style, finally achieves her dream of putting her art on display. That night, Williamsburg homicide cops find the model of one of her photographs murdered, her body arranged in the same fashion as one of Lydia’s photographs. When another of her models disappears, Lydia is determined to protect her friends and find the killer using everything she’s learned in her day job as an assistant to a team of private eyes. But time is running out because the killer pictures her as his next victim.

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Tiffany Baker

Deb Tiffany Baker
Tiffany Baker lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the same small town she grew up in. She has an MFA from UC-Irvine and a PhD in Victorian Literature, and has taught literature and writing at UC-Irvine and the Cooper Union in Manhattan. When she’s not writing novels or running after her three young children, she’s either just plain running, hiking, cooking, or dreaming about the beach. She is a firm believer in the therapeutic value of trashy magazines, eating what you want, second chances, and good manners for all.

About The Little Giant of Aberdeen County (Literary Fiction, January 2009, Grand Central Publishing)
When Truly Plaice–part Behemoth, part Witch, part Cinderella–is born larger than life into a small-minded town, her birth rocks the pillars of tiny Aberdeen, New York, and breaks her family into smithereens. Truly spends a painful childhood in the shadow of her older sister Serena’s beauty, but when Serena unexpectedly leaves her son in Truly’s care, she must become the woman of a house she did not choose. It’s only when Truly finds her calling helping townspeople with herbal remedies that she begins to regain control of her life. However, unearthed family secrets will lead to a devastating betrayal, and as Truly reckons with her own demons, she must come to terms with her role in Aberdeen’s destiny and the possibility of finding out that love doesn’t always come ordered to size.

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