Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit Tour - Caridad Ferrer
I am very excited about this week's guest on the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit, because Caridad Ferrer's first book, Adiós to My Old Life, is one of my all-time favorites. It's one of those novels that proves that you can appeal to teens and adults at the same time (as confirmed by its RITA® Award, which was for Best Contemporary Single Title Romance, an adult category--rock on!).So I can't wait to pick up Caridad's new novel, When the Stars Go Blue, this weekend. (Butting in here, completely inappropriately, to mention that I will be at Waldenbooks at the Lebanon Valley Mall in Lebanon, PA, this Saturday from 2-4pm. Sorry, Caridad! Back to your book.)
About the Book:
A dancer driven to succeed. A musical prodigy attempting to escape his past.
The summer they share.
And the moment it all goes wrong.
Dance is Soledad Reyes’s life. About to graduate from Miami’s Biscayne High School for the Performing Arts, she plans on spending her last summer at home teaching in a dance studio, saving money, and eventually auditioning for dance companies. That is, until fate intervenes in the form of fellow student Jonathan Crandall who has what sounds like an outrageous proposition: Forget teaching. Why not spend the summer performing in the intense environment of the competitive drum and bugle corps? The corps is going to be performing Carmen, and the opportunity to portray the character of the sultry gypsy proves too tempting for Soledad to pass up, as well as the opportunity to spend more time with Jonathan, who intrigues her in a way no boy ever has before.
But in an uncanny echo of the story they perform every evening, an unexpected competitor for Soledad's affections appears: Taz, a member of an all-star Spanish soccer team. One explosive encounter later Soledad finds not only her relationship with Jonathan threatened, but her entire future as a professional dancer.
About the Author:
Caridad Ferrer is a first generation, bilingual Cuban-American, whose young adult debut, Adiós to My Old Life won the Romance Writers of America’s 2007 RITA® for Best Contemporary Single Title Romance as well as being named to the 2009 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults list, awarded by the ALA. Her second novel, It’s Not About the Accent was released in 2007 with Publisher’s Weekly stating, “…this twisting book amply rewards readers.”
She has also contributed to the anthology, Fifteen Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles, and Other Quinceañera Stories. Her newest young adult novel, When the Stars Go Blue, is a contemporary retelling of Bizet’s Carmen, and will be released by Thomas Dunne Books in November 2010. Booklist calls it, “Beautifully written, with contemporary characters and an engaging story line.”
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And now, my interview with Caridad!1. If you could inhabit the life of any of your characters, enter their world and deal with it as that person, which one would you choose?
Despite the difficulties she encounters, I'd love to be Soledad (the lead in STARS) for just a bit. I'd love to be able to dance the way she does and get to hang out with Raj and Mamacita and be in corps again, for just a little bit.
2. On the flip side, which of your characters would you most like to bring to life in our world (as a friend or a little bit more ;-) ?
There's a character in a manuscript I just finished, Remy, who's a Creole chef and more than a little bit of a bad boy. I've never been that attracted to them, but something about Remy-- maybe it's the fact that he can cook. ;-)
3. What's the weirdest tidbit of research you've ever incorporated into a book?
That individuals without any kind of a pharmaceutical tech license can handle medications and label them in the state of Ohio.
4. Let's say there's a TV show, movie, or recording artist that has a cult of you. Which is it? (i.e., what do you like that no one else you know likes)?
There's an anime series called Witch Hunter Robin that ran on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim several years back. It was a limited run series with only 26 episodes and it centered around a young craft-user named Robin. It only ran once, but I was addicted and absolutely fell in love with the storytelling-- it just had a gorgeous story arc that threaded within the stand-alone episodes. I still haven't been able to find the English dubbed DVDs for sale-- most anime purist would want the Japanese language version with the subtitles, but I really loved the voice cast they had for the dub, especially for the male lead, Amon, who was portrayed by voice actor Crispin Freeman who's got an AMAZING voice.
5. Do you have any phobias?
Ants. I hate, hate, hate ants. They creep me out monumentally. *SHUDDER*
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Congrats to Caridad on her new release! May Black Friday make those books fly off the shelves.
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