Some Good News and a Debut Giveaway!

UPDATE: Winner of the Marianne Mancusi Razor Girl giveaway is: CAROL THOMPSON. Carol, drop me an email with your mailing address to receive your book!

I just got some great news: Rites of Spring (Break) has sold in Brazil! This summer, Brazilian publisher Editora Record published SOCIEDADE SECRETA – ROSA & TÚMULO (a.k.a, Secret Society Girl), with plans to follow up with Under the Rose and now, the third book in the series! I’m so excited and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll want to finish up the series with Tap & Gown.

Rites of Spring (Break), like all the books in the Secret Society Girl series, was edited by the talented Kerri Buckley at Bantam Dell.

So it seems only fitting that today’s giveaway should be another Buckley discovery, JESSICA Z, by debut novelist Shawn Klomparens. I was so impressed by this book. It’s set in a world we could be living in tomorrow, a San Francisco that’s as real as the hills and the food and the artists, but dangerous, too. It’s about love and art and lithography and terrorism and saying too much more than that would probably give it all away. The hopefully spoiler-free version is that the titular Jessica Z works in advertising, has an undefined relationship with her upstairs neighbor, and is not entirely sure how to deal with the fact that her morning commute might be life-threatening. And then she meets a passionate lithographer who turns her world upside down.

One of the reasons I really identified with Jessica is that, like her, I’ve also been an accidental model. Jessica at one time poses for an upmarket women’s catalog, and as the book progresses, she agrees to be the subject of her intense new lover’s latest art project.

Did I mention this book is very, very sexy? Part women’s fiction, part discourse on the intersection of love, politics, and art, and part thriller, it’s definitely worth checking out!

Leave your name in the comments to win one of TWO copies of this great debut novel!