Book Blurb & Info
Love Spells
by Mia Kerick
CoolDudes PublishingCover by Louis C. Harris
44,300 words
Genre(s): Young Adult, Gay, Romance, Comedy, Contemporary
Strutting his stuff on the catwalk in black patent leather pumps and a snug orange tuxedo as this year’s Miss (ter) Harvest Moon feels so very right to Chance César, and yet he knows it should feelso very wrong.
As far back as he can remember, Chance has been “caught between genders.” (It’s quite a touchy subject; so don’t ask him about it.)
However, he does not question his sexual orientation. Chance has no doubt about his gayness—he is very much out of the closet at his rural New Hampshire high school, where the other students avoid the kid they refer to as “girl-boy.”
But at the local Harvest Moon Festival, when Chance, the Pumpkin Pageant Queen, meets Jasper Donahue, the Pumpkin Carving King, sparks fly. So Chance sets out, with the help of his BFF, Emily, to make “Jazz” Donahue his man.
An article in an online women’s magazine, Ten Scientifically Proven Ways to Make a Man Fall in Love with You (with a bonus love spell thrown in for good measure), becomes the basis of their strategy to capture Jazz’s heart.
Quirky, comical, definitely flamboyant, and with an inner core of poignancy, Love Spell celebrates the diversity of a gender-fluid teen.
Guest Post
A First Kiss
The teen years are times for firsts.
First day of high school, first love, first job, first taste
of freedom, first time behind the wheel, first time voting.
No, I didn’t forget it… I was just saving the best for last.
It is during the teen years when most of us experience our
very first kiss.
We all remember that special little story that accompanies
our first kiss. Most probably, we also recall tiny details of the smells and
sounds and sights and physical feelings that surrounded us at that moment.
Famous firsts in our lives have a way of etching themselves into our senses,
into the very fabric of our memories, don’t they?
Well, in honor of first kisses, and my June 1st release Love
Spell, in which Chance César experiences his magical first kiss, I will share
the little story of my own first kiss.
It was the summer between middle school and high school,
although back then, middle school was referred to as junior high. I was
involved in a community summer theater project for high school students—as a
rising high school freshman, I qualified.
The Burnham Hall Players. That was the name of the theater
group. Our rehearsals and performances took place in Burnham Hall, the side
building of the 1700’s Claflin-Richards House, where I gave tours on Sunday
afternoons. (And I earned twelve dollars every Sunday, which kept me in the
money all week.)
True to my romantic teenaged nature, I had “fallen in love”,
or more, “fallen into infatuation” three times over by the end of the first day
of auditions. I had a crush on the director, Ronnie Baylor, a local high school
graduate who had been highly involved in the theater and music programs, and
was soon to be off to major in these fields in college. (He once gave me a ride
home from play practice that was so fast and screeching, it left my head
spinning. I have warned my own children against accepting rides from relative
strangers.) I developed a crush on the assistant director/pianist, who was in
my older sister’s grade, and about whom I’d already been warned to keep my
distance for various assorted reasons that all involved my innocence and his
total lack thereof. I also had a crush on my co-actor, Alex Faymor, a rising
junior in the local high school who possessed the comedic timing of Will
Ferrell and the voice of a …well, not so much and angel, but he possessed a
decent tenor sound with a pretty good range.
The Wizard of Oz.
Well, a short, but sweet adaption of it, in any case. And guess who landed the
role of Dorothy?? You have one guess…use it wisely. That’s right—it was me. Alex, of course,
landed the role of the great and powerful Oz.
How ironic. But as Dorothy I got to sing a solo of
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow, jazz style, but that’s a different story.
Prior to a week of daily performances, we rehearsed for two
weeks, Monday through Friday, from nine to five. I memorized my lines, I
mastered “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and learned that pubescent girls’ voices
crack, too. I acted my thirteen-year-old heart out. “Aunty Em! Aunty Em!” You
get the picture.
On the day of the dress rehearsal I was high on an
adrenaline rush. With my hair in braids, sporting eye-pencil freckles, donned
in a slightly baggy, very faded, blue-checked gingham dress (courtesy of the
director’s great aunt), and my feet slipping around in my older sister’s red-spray
painted, glitter-covered old leather flats, I awaited my entrance in the
storage closet. (Not even slightly glamorous, but that was how Burnham Hall was
set up.)
Heart pounding and knees knocking, I listened to the action
on the stage. That was when Alex, all suave and cool and collected, moved
directly in front of me in the dark closet, held my painted-on-freckled face in
his steady hands, and planted my very first kiss on Dorothy’s red lipstick-smeared
lips.
I’ll set the scene:
The closet was dark and cool.
But I was warm all over, with the anticipation of my first
REAL LIVE ACTING PERFORMANCE.
My mouth was dry, my breathing a bit too fast.
Alex, stepping just a bit closer than he ever had before,
smelled like pancake makeup. Suddenly he was right in front of me…and I mean
RIGHT IN MY FACE and…
And then his lips—soft, almost mushy—were on mine.
My trembling increased. Alex didn’t tremble at all.
My heart lurched.
My mind went blank—my carefully memorized lines shot out of
my brain through my ears, lost to the dark coolness of the closet.
And we kissed. At least Alex kissed me; I’m not too certain
what I did.
And then it was over.
He pulled away.
He winked at me slyly.
I would never be the same.
That kiss was monumental. It changed everything for me.
That first kiss meant that Alex and I were now an official
couple, right? I started to plan how we’d drive together to and from school
together every day in his beat-up not-quite-yellow Ford Pinto. Opposite one
another, we would star in all of the high school musicals. Alex would be the handsome leading man, I his effervescent
leading lady.
Um… not quite.
At the cast party I walked into the basement playroom to
find Alex Faymor—yes, my Alex
Faymor—introducing stage hand Faith Lowry, another rising freshman, to her first kiss, amidst the cast’s congratulatory
balloons and streamers.
My heart broke. How
can this be?
“I still want to date you, Mia. I just want to date Faith
too,” Alex informed me with a smirk, catching my eye over Faith’s shoulder.
Strangely, Faith nodded, seemingly quite comfortable with
this arrangement.
I was not comfortable. Because nowhere in my high school fantasies—or in that tiny beat-up Ford
Pinto—was Faith Lowry.
All I remember beyond that brain-smacking moment when harsh
reality shoved my innocence to a cramped corner of my awareness, was lying flat
on the back seat of my mother’s station wagon, crying out over and over, “I’ll
never love again.”
A first kiss is monumental. It changes you. It pries open
your youthful consciousness to an intimacy you have never before encountered or
anticipated or even imagined.
A first kiss makes you vulnerable.
Experience Chance’s first kiss in Love Spell.
Author Info
Mia focuses her stories on the emotional growth of troubled young people and their relationships, and she believes that physical intimacy has a place in a love story, but not until it is firmly established as a love story. As a teen, Mia filled spiral-bound notebooks with romantic tales of tortured heroes (most of whom happened to strongly resemble lead vocalists of 1980s big-hair bands) and stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to Dreamspinner Press, Harmony Ink Press, CoolDudes Publishing, and CreateSpace for providing her with alternate places to stash her stories.
Mia is a social liberal and cheers for each and every victory made in the name of human rights, especially marital equality. Her only major regret: never having taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology.
Stop by Mia’s Blog with questions or comments, or simply share what’s on your mind. Find Mia on Facebook, Goodreads, and Amazon.
Thank you for having me on your blog today!!! What better topic than my first kiss?
ReplyDelete