Jeri Smith-Ready

Blogtoberfest Day 16 - Christine Marciniak

The winner of Shana Norris's Troy High is...cait045! Congrats!

Today's Blogtoberguest is Christine Marciniak, whose debut YA novel, When Mike Kissed Emma, came out recently from Climbing Roses, the YA imprint of Wild Rose Press.

Emma Landon has a plan: she's going to be in the high school musical and sing the most romantic song possible to her boyfriend. She's not looking for the lead, just a decent part where she and Trevor can dance together on stage. The plan starts to unravel when she gets the starring role, and playing opposite her is not her perfect boyfriend, but the school loner, Biker Mike. When Mike kisses Emma at the school dance, everything changes. Emma must figure out what is more important—the way things look or something deeper.

I can totally relate. In my wilder days (don't laugh), I used to do theatre and had a tendency to fall for my co-stars, due to my inability to distinguish between fiction and reality. I quit theatre when I met my husband (but we wouldn't have met if it weren't for a play, so there).

Christine is giving away a signed copy of When Mike Kissed Emma to one lucky commenter, so give a warm welcome to this fabulous debut author!


First I want to thank Jeri for letting me share in her blog birthday celebration.

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to write a Halloween-inspired post. Because, you see, the thing you need to know about me is that I am a complete wuss when it comes to scary things. The commercials for horror movies would give me nightmares. Remember the movie Edward Scissorhands? I don’t think that was supposed to be a particularly scary movie. I can’t be sure because I never saw the movie. I had nightmares for months just from the commercials. So, the scarier aspects of Halloween: I don’t do them. I do like the candy though.

So, now that we’ve established what a wimp I am regarding scary things, let me tell you a ghost story.

We lived in an old dorm in college. It had character. It had squeaky pipes and hidden corners. It had stories.

One cold and rainy night we were hanging out in the hallway eating pizza, because that’s what we did. (We tried to get a pizza delivered to the hallway once, but they made us give an actual room number.) So we were eating pizza, and joking around and moving out of the way for anyone who might want to actually walk down the hall, when Mike said: “You know, this dorm is haunted.”

“Haunted!” Lisa and I exchanged nervous glances. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“There was a girl who died here like twenty-five years ago.”

“That’s true,” I said. “My mom’s friend knew her. She lived in this dorm.”

“They say she committed suicide.” Mike said. “Hung herself.”

“In what room?” Lisa asked.

Mike shrugged. “Could have been any of them.” But none of us knew for certain.

AJ lit a cigarette and continued the story. “They say she walks the halls at night.”

“No way,” I said.

“It’s true,” Bob picked up the story from there, “And one time she unscrewed one of the light fixtures and it fell on top of someone.”

“I bet it was the light she hung herself from,” AJ said.

“Did that really happen?” Lisa asked, bumming a cigarette off of AJ.

“Absolutely.” Mike said. “Fish’s older brother knew the person the light fell on.”

Who could argue with a source like Fish’s older brother?

But there are no such things as ghosts. I knew that. I wasn’t worried about the ghost of student-past coming and haunting me in this dorm. Talk moved on to other things. We finished the pizza, people started drifting off to finish homework or watch something on TV. Lisa and I, both with early classes, headed down to the communal bathroom to get ready for bed.

“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” I asked her as we lathered soap on our faces.

“I don’t know,” she answered, which wasn’t the complete denial I’d been looking for.

Just then something squeaked. Was it a screw turning in the light fixture? We both looked up. Everything seemed in place. “Why’d you look up?” Lisa demanded.

“You did, too!” I answered.

Another squeak and hearts thumping we looked back at the light again.

“Don’t look up!” Lisa insisted.

One more squeak and we ran, screaming out of the bathroom, our faces covered in soap.

The hallway was empty and once we were standing there we looked at each other. “Heh heh” we sort of laughed and slunk back into the bathroom before anyone could see us. The light never fell off the ceiling, but the heater continued to squeak and thump as it always did on cold days.

Christine's Blogs:
The Simple and the Ordinary
Simply Put: The Writing Blog of Christine Marciniak


To enter to win a signed copy of When Mike Kissed Emma, leave a comment below. And remember, each comment automatically enters you in the drawing for the grand prize package: all 25 books!

For complete rules, read the introductory post.

Deadline for entry: Wednesday, October 28, 11:59pm Eastern. NOTE: THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. The winner is yabooknerd!

Linda Joy Singleton and Dead Girl in Love
Linda Gerber and Death by Denim
Alexandra Diaz and an ARC of Of All the Stupid Things
Melissa Walker and Lovestruck Summer
Sydney Salter and My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters

Thanks so much to Christine for sharing her "ghost" story!

Labels: Blogtoberfest, Contests, guests

• posted by Jeri @ 8:00 AM
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