Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit Tour - Jessica Brody
Happy Saturday! Wow, where did the week go? All I remember is lots of sweat and a marvelous concert by Mumford & Sons (best show ever). I only got one good picture because I forgot that my new phone has a "night" setting. Duh. And we were right up front!More details on that later. Because this week wasn't just about the heat wave or beautiful music, but it was also the week that Jessica Brody's My Life Undecided hit the shelves!
This sounds like my kind of book. Anyone who knows me well? Just read the description and you'll be nodding your head so hard you'll get whiplash.
About the book
PLEASE READ THIS! MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!
Okay, maybe that was a bit melodramatic, but I’m sorry, I’m feeling a bit melodramatic at the moment.
Here’s the deal. My name is Brooklyn Pierce, I’m fifteen years old, and I am decisionally challenged. Seriously, I can’t remember the last good decision I made. I can remember plenty of crappy ones though. Including that party I threw when my parents were out of town that accidentally burned down a model home. Yeah, not my finest moment, for sure.
But see, that’s why I started a blog. To enlist readers to make my decisions for me. That’s right. I’m gave up. Threw in the towel. I let someone else be the one to decide which book I read for English. Or whether or not I accepted an invitation to join the debate team from that cute-in-a-dorky-sort-of-way guy who gave me the Heimlich Maneuver in the cafeteria. (Note to self: Chew the melon before swallowing it.) I even let them decide who I dated!
Well, it turns out there are some things in life you simply can’t choose or have chosen for you—like who you fall in love with. And now everything’s more screwed up than ever.
But don’t take my word for it, read the book and decide for yourself. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll scream in frustration. Or maybe that’s just me. After all, it’s my life.
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Yep, that's me. I'm decisionally challenged (love that term!). Sometimes I compensate by making spot decisions very quickly. Like the touch-screen order menus at convenience stores like Wawa and Sheetz? I barrel through those things so fast, because if I don't, I spend forty minutes trying to decide between Swiss and provolone, and then figuring out whether honey mustard or spicy mustard would work better with each choice. The decision tree has too many branches!
Anyway, My Life Undecided has been getting loads of great reviews, including these:
"Brooklyn is a sympathetic protagonist with whom teens will identify. Her journey is fun to read, and decision-challenged readers will learn an important lesson about self-acceptance along the way." --School Library Journal
"Brody taps into a universal human desire...An amusing coming-of-age story with many funny moments...[Brooklyn's] flustered, off-the-cuff narration should keep readers as invested in her actions as her blog followers are." --Publisher's Weekly
And it has an awesome trailer! Check it out!
A few fun facts about Jessica Brody’s own life undecided:
- Jessica was born in Los Angeles, moved to Colorado when she was twelve, moved back to California after college and now indecisively splits her time between both states.
- Jessica graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts with majors in Economics and French because she was convinced she wanted to be an “important business woman.” After a brief stint as a strategic analyst for MGM Studios, she abandoned her business background to become a full-time writer. Now she uses her mad spreadsheet skills to build complicated outlines for her books.
- Appropriately, when writing this book, Jessica couldn’t decide on a title. So she polled 50 of her closest friends to finally come up with My Life Undecided.
And now, my interview with Jessica:Which moment(s) during the writing/rewriting/editing of this book made you tear your hair out?
Act 2! Or the dreaded “middle.” Act 1 is my favorite. It’s the set-up. Everything is fresh, the character is new and fun and novel. You get to lay the groundwork for the story, build suspense, layer in complex plot points that will be resolved later. And then comes the Act 2. The heart of the story. Also known as “my nemesis.” The character is now totally grating my nerves, everything I set up in Act 1 absolutely sucks, I have no idea why I’m even a writer to begin with, I have the vocabulary of a five year old, all the “complex plot points” I thought I was setting up now actually have to be dealt with (yikes!) and I become nearly impossible to live with (my husband will second that.) And yet, somehow, incredibly, magically (as if little elves snuck in my house in the middle of the night and fixed everything that was wrong with my story), I finally arrive at act 3, the conclusion and then I’m like, “That wasn’t so bad. I don’t know why I was so freaked out!”
Which moment(s) made you think, "ah, THIS is what carries me through the hair-tearing bits"?
I’m going to have to say the “Truth or Dare” scene. I can’t tell you what it is without giving away spoilers, but it was my favorite scene to write. It’s pretty exciting and marks a big turn in the story. And that’s all I’m going to say about that!
Which book/movie/TV show have you recently discovered that made you want to kick yourself for not reading/watching sooner?
I actually JUST finished the entire Harry Potter series. I was WAY behind all the hype. I resisted it for a long time, convincing myself that I wouldn’t like it because I wasn’t into all that magical stuff. Then my friend (who’s a HUGE fan) finally talked me into reading it and I was instantly hooked. As a writer, I could really appreciate the complexities of storytelling that J.K. Rowling was able to accomplish in that series.
If your house was on fire, what object (not including living creatures, human or non-human) would you grab on the way out?
My laptop! My whole life (and career) is on there!
Is there anything most people are able to do (such as drive a car, swim, ride a bike) that you can't?
Yes! I can’t wink my right eye. It’s the weirdest thing ever! My left eye winks like a pro, but the right? Nothing!
Do you have any recurring dreams or nightmares?
Yes! I have a terrible recurring dream about my teeth falling out. I hear this is actually a very common dream, especially for control freaks (like myself!). I think it symbolizes loss of control, but I’m open to any other interpretations if you want to offer one!
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I have that dream, too, but I didn't realize I was a control freak. (OK, everyone who knows me well enough to nod that I'm decisionally challenged, STOP LAUGHING!!)
Congrats to Jessica on her new release--I'm definitely checking this one out myself, and you should, too!
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