And with an assist from me,
To be who you’ll be,
Instead of dreary who you were… uh, are…
AAARRRGGHHH! Still can’t get that song out of my head!

Just wanted to jump in with one last post about Micol Ostow’s cyber launch party for Popular Vote and maybe talk a little about the book too. Again, I must warn: I’ve known Micol for years and years (well, maybe just “years,” we’re not THAT old) so what follows is a completely biased review of a totally enjoyable book.

Popular Vote by Micol Ostow

You’ll have more fun reading this book than you’ll have putting lipstick on a pig.

Not that I imagine giving a pig a makeover to be all that enjoyable a way to spend a Saturday night. And I strongly doubt that the pig would enjoy it either. Although Miss Piggy seems to like the dress up. Which reminds me, the L.A. County Fair is in town. They’ve been running this hysterical ad campaign for a few years about L.A. Girls at the fair who text while bumper car driving, bake an entirely organic pie from leaves and twigs, and pretty much skewer all kinds of other L.A. type traditions in the ads.

But I seem to have gotten off point.

Popular Vote takes place in a small town and tells the story of the mayor’s daughter, Bristol … I mean Erin Bright. Erin’s dating the incumbent class president who is once again running unopposed. When an issue involving big oil comes to the small town, Erin finds herself disheartened by her boyfriend’s hand’s off response and decides that the only way to save a beloved field from becoming a gas station is by throwing her hat into the ring and running against the guy she’s dating. If only she’d talked to her mayor father for some campaign advice first.

Real world hot topics meet relationship politics in this entertaining read about being true to your heart even if it means going up against the ones you love. Once again, it’s a book that takes a serious topic and presents it in a lighthearted manner. (Can you tell those are the kinds of books I like. Which is why I write them.) I don’t want to give too much away, but the thing I love the most about this book is how Micol handles Erin’s campaign supporters and, more specifically, those who SHOULD be supporters, but aren’t. Soon after Erin makes her decision to run she finds out who has her back, who doesn’t, and who realizes politics is not always an easy choice between this guy or that gal.

Considering the current political climate, I can’t think of a more topical teen read.

So, go NOW, check out the party and comment to win a FULL SET OF DRAMA! BOOKS Signed by me.

I said, yes, yes, YES!

No, this is not true confessions. I’m not about to make any startling admissions. I’m talking about the teen novel Rehab by my friend, Randi Reisfeld. [Disclaimer: Totally biased and utterly heartfelt review ahead. Proceed with caution.]

Rehab by Randi Reisfeld

Rehab is a teen version of Entourage mixed with Intervention and served over ice with a shot of The Hills. It’s a story about the excesses of Hollywood and how one young girl can easily be overwhelmed. And it’s one of the most entertaining books about a serious topic that you’re likely to find.

Randi’s biting wit takes a bit ol’ chomp at the celebrity world, dishing out a faux Hollywood story of a good girl gone party girl. Kenzie Cross is about to cross over from popular TV star to tabloid sensation and she’s developing the drug and alcohol dependency that comes with it. At the point her career is about to break, her partying ways start to eclipse her work. Threatened with the loss of a primo role, Kenzie goes in for what her handlers term “pre-hab” to stop the growing problem that she doesn’t see that she has.

Randi captures the Hollywood fakery so well you’d think she lived out here. What I love about Rehab is that it’s a message book that presents the message in an entertaining way. Sure, there are a million little books out there that show the ugly side of rehab and withdrawal: the vomiting … the shakes … the root canal without anesthesia. If that’s what you’re looking for, don’t look here. This is a book that is meant to entertain as well as educate. It’s laugh out loud funny at times, bringing a much appreciated lightness to a touching story of romance and rehabilitation.

So check out Randi’s book. And Randi’s website … which I’ll add to the links page as soon as I do that long promised website update.

And speaking of my writer friends, check out Micol Ostow’s blog all this week for the cyber launch party for her new book, Popular Vote. I’ll be popping in on Friday to join the party that promises to have a bunch of young adult authors stopping by. You should drop in too. There’s going to be prizes galore!

Seeing as how the TV is kind of limited over the summer, I’ve been using the downtime to catch up on my reading. I should be using it to catch up on my writing, but that’s neither here nor there.

But HERE are some of the fun books I’ve been enjoying of late…

Kitty Kitty by Michele Jaffe
First off, kudos to Michele’s parents for spelling her name with only one “L.” Speaking for my sister, who is also a “Michele of the One L,” it’s nice to have some “One L” solidarity out there. (Sorry to any “Two L” Michelle’s, but you get all the monogrammed junk at the souvenir shops—like mugs and key chains and collectible thimbles—spelled your way so you already have that solidarity.)

Kitty Kitty is the sequel to Bad Kitty and is just as highlysterical as the first. I’m talking the kind of hysterically funny that you shouldn’t read them on a plane for fear of embarrassing yourself when you laugh out loud and scare the small child in the seat in front of you which sets him off into a screaming fit. Not that I’m speaking from experience.

Also fun is the graphic novel Bad Kitty: Catnipped.

The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer

On the total other end of the spectrum, this one is not a comedy AT ALL. This is a sort of sequel to Life as We Knew It – the story of what happens to a girl and her family after an asteroid collides with the moon, leaving disaster in its wake. I say “sort of sequel” because this book doesn’t pick up where the first left off. Instead, it’s a parallel tale about a boy and his family coping with the tragedy and what befalls them. Though this book is about survival and hope, it is not one to read when you’re depressed. Unless depressed is a normal state for you and you actually enjoy it. Then, by all means, dig in. But maybe save Bad Kitty and Kitty Kitty to read afterwards to lighten the mood.

And Finally … Kiki Strike!
A series by Kristen Miller

FYI: The exclamation point is not part of the series title. That’s my invention. But with a name like Kiki Strike! I think it’s fitting to have should an exclamation point at the end. Paul Ruditis does not require an exclamation point. Although it would be cool if my name had that weird, wavy hyphen thing. I don’t know what it’s called, but I think it would be fun to write my name like this:
Paul Ruditis~
Kind of looks like I’m sticking my tongue out at the world.

Anyway, the Kiki Strike! books tell the story of a group of delinquent girl scouts who discover at abandoned city underneath New York. These are not the kind of scouts who are cookie pushers (mmmm … thin mints!). These are kick butt teens who save the city through their adventures combining international intrigue, high (and low) tech gadgets, and lots and lots of disgusting rats. So, check them out:
Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City
Kiki Strike: The Empress’s Tomb

These should keep you more than entertained until the release of DRAMA! Entrances and Exits on August 5th.

Signing off,
Paul Ruditis~~
(Okay, maybe two is overkill.)

Whoops. Missed a day of blogging yesterday in the promised seven-days-of-blogging. Hmmm … maybe I need to come up with a name for this event. Unfortunately Blogfest is taken. I should have thought about this earlier. Either way, I’m surprised that I’ve been this good about posting considering my less than stellar track record around here.

I realize that recommending another book in the same week that my own book comes out is kind of a silly thing to do from a promotional standpoint, but I’m kind of a silly person. Besides, the book I’m going to recommend isn’t really my competition, but it does follow the theatrical theme (and it’s like three times the price, so Show, Don’t Tell is clearly the bargain here.)

During my crazy writing blitz of the past couple months I made sure that I read every night before bed. If I don’t do that, I’ll keep writing until lights out, which always results in me being unable to shut off my brain and actually fall asleep. And if I don’t get a good three to four hours of sleep a night you can’t do anything with me the next day. Nor would you want to. So reading is very important to me—and to those around me—in these crash periods.

One of the best books I read during this time was Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews.

First of all, it is almost sickening that one person can be this talented. She was blessed with a beautiful singing voice (that, tragically, a bad surgery has all but demolished) and is clearly a terrific actress, but I never knew what an incredibly talented writer she is. This book is stunningly written. It mainly deals with her childhood in vaudeville and the early part of her stage career. Though she certainly lived an interesting life, it’s the way that she writes about the mundane aspects of her world, her family, and childhood playmates (who tended to be adults) that kept me enthralled. This is not some scandalous tell all that seems to be all the rage in celebrity books. This is a sweet, simple story of a young girl in a more innocent time. And it is so NOT my usual reading choice, but I am really glad that I picked it up. So, after you get finished reading Show, Don’t Tell, I suggest you pick up this one too.

Oh, and on a unrelated musical theatre topic, the “Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber Night” on American Idol was nothing more than a series of huge mistakes. HUGE. Which, pretty much, everyone else has said as well. But really, Memory?

I’ve been very busy lo these many weeks since my last blog. I’d love to say that I’ve been so deeply immersed in the writing of my latest book—and I have been writing—but the lack of blogging probably had to do with all the TV on DVD I’ve been watching, a trip home for the best wedding ever! (Congrats Tim and Kate!), and all the time spent working my way through my summer reading list … Not that I’m going back to school or anything, but once the new TV season starts my reading tends to drop off dramatically.

Here’s just a highlight of some of the great books I’ve been reading lately…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: So much has already been said about the Harry Potter books by the likes of Stephen King and other writers much more articulate than me … than I … than moi? All I would like to add is simple thank you to JK Rowling for inspiring imagination.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series: Thanks to Al Roker’s suggestion, I picked up The Lightning Thief, the first book in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. (I know. I feel like such a sheep following a television book club suggestion. But I still have no plans to read Anna Karenina, no matter how much Oprah extols its virtues.) The Lightning Thief and its follow up books take mythological characters from Ancient Greece and bring them into the modern day in stories that follow the quests of Percy Jackson, the half-blood child of a mortal and one of the gods. Highly recommended for anyone who likes mythological stories.

Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse: When I first read Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight, I enjoyed it enough, but didn’t feel all that motivated to get the next book. Then, all of the sudden, she became the biggest thing in young adult publishing, so I felt like I had to give it another shot and I’m glad I did. I don’t think anyone has ever done a better job capturing the “reality” of how difficult it would be for a mortal girl to fall in love with a vampire, though many people have certainly tried. (I remind you that Buffy wasn’t exactly mortal so I’m not counting her star-crossed love with Angel … and Spike in that comparison.) Sure, the books can get a little angsty at times, but wouldn’t you suffer some angst if the person of your dreams happened to be the undead?

Lean Mean Thirteen: My mom, my sister, and I love the Janet Evanovich numbered mysteries. The characters she creates to fill the Trenton, N.J. locale are incredibly stereotypical and outrageous and totally remind me of home back in Northeast Philly. Always good for a laugh. As some of the situations can be more mature, I’d suggest this for older teens and adults.

And now, I have to get back to my reading … I mean writing … I have to get back to writing.