Authors are Rockstars: Jody Gehrman

I was recently approached about participating in the Authors are Rockstars tour hostted by Fiktshun and Two Chicks on Books and of course I accepted. I was literally honored to get to present my author!! The amazing Jody Gehrman is here to talk about magic and her new book!

Author of:

Babe in Boyland

Description: When high school junior Natalie-or Dr. Aphrodite, as she calls herself when writing the relationship column for her school paper-is accused of knowing nothing about guys and giving girls bad relationship advice, she decides to investigate what guys really think and want. But the guys in her class won't give her straight or serious answers. The only solution? Disguising herself as a guy and spending a week at Underwood Academy, the private all-boy boarding school in town. There she learns a lot about guys and girls in ways she never expected-especially when she falls for her dreamy roommate, Emilio. How can she show him she likes him without blowing her cover?

Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft (this is her new book!!)

Description: Falling in Love, baking a magical cake, fighting an evil necromancer—it’s all in a day’s work for Audrey Oliver, seventeen-year-old witch-in-training. When her mother goes missing and her twenty-one-year-old witchy cousin shows up out of the blue, Audrey knows something’s gone horribly, dangerously wrong. Now it’s up to her to get her own magical powers up to speed before everyone she loves is destroyed by the sorcerer intricately connected to her mother’s secret past.

Not convinced of it's complete and total awesomeness? Listen to the first two chapters here!!

Top Five Reasons Why Jody Gehrman is a Rockstar

1. She is intolerably funny. I admit she made me snort quite a bit. 
2. I am not a re-reader yet somehow she tangled me so far into Babe in Boyland  that I had to re-read it or die. Or at least it would lead to my eventual death. 
3. She writes about characters that you can't help but love.
4. She is one of my writer idols, I pretty much want to be her when I grow up.
5. She knows the teenage mind. Perhaps it's mind reading...

Money Spells for Mere Mortals by Jody Gehrman:

I've always been a wannabe witch. Unlike my main character in AUDREY'S GUIDE TO WITCHCRAFT, though, I have no magical powers (alas). I can't absorb emotions or weather and channel them into a powerful weapon like Audrey. I can't communicate with any living thing like Audrey's mentor Sadie. And I'm definitely not a necromancer like Audrey's nemesis, Cormack (actually, I'm quite glad about this last bit. Controlling the dead sounds very...stinky).

In my teens and twenties, though, I did dabble in witchcraft. I grew up in Northern California in the eighties, so my adolescence was steeped in new age mysticism. I stayed on the lighter side of the magic spectrum, favoring love spells over voodoo dolls, goddess worship over satanic rites. Even as a child I felt a spiritual power flowing through the trees and the creeks and the rainstorms. As I got older, extending those pagan instincts to spells and rituals seemed quite natural.

One day when I was nineteen I decided to try a prosperity spell. I was in college, flirting with the idea of financial responsibility, but I'd never been very thrifty and my bank account had dwindled to nothing. Rather than rush out and get a job, I bought a green candle, burned prosperity-enhancing incense, and prayed to the gods of plenty.

The next morning I went to my local ATM machine and discovered an extra thousand dollars in my bank account.

Cool! I thought. This is sooo easy! I'll never have to get a job!

Before you go out and try this for yourself, I should probably mention this is a cautionary tale, not a how-to guide. A few days later, after I'd gone out and blown my gift-from-the-gods on shoes and handbags and a large quantity of moneymaking incense, my bank informed me that they had accidentally credited my account with an extra thousand dollars. They were very sorry for any inconvenience this had caused me, and by the way my account was now a thousand dollars overdrawn.

So magic doesn't solve everything. Most of the time I have to work for a living, like other mere mortals. I'm still a dreamer, though; I'm not above trying a spell to ensure you'll all go out after reading this and slavishly devour my books!

Thanks for stopping by Jody!!

adieu, 

-Kare

Dante's Girl by Courtney Cole

Description: I have spent every summer since I was ten years old with my father in London. Every summer, since I was ten years old, has been uneventful and boring. Until this year. And this year, after a freak volcanic eruption strands me far from home, I have learned these things:

1. I can make do with one outfit for three days before I buy new clothes. 
2. If I hear the phrase, “You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” even one more time, I might become a homicidal maniac.
3. I am horribly and embarrassingly allergic to jellyfish.
4. I am in love with Dante Giliberti, who just happens to be the beautiful, sophisticated son of the Prime Minister of a Mediterranean paradise. 
5. See number four above. Because it brings with it a whole slew of problems and I’ve learned something from every one of them.

Let’s start with the fact that Dante’s world is five light-years away from mine. He goes to black-tie functions and knows the Prime Minister of England on a first name basis. I was born and raised on a farm in Kansas and wear cut-off jeans paired with cowboy boots. See the difference? But hearts don’t care about differences. Hearts want what they want. And mine just wants to be Dante’s girl. My heart just might be crazy.

Epic Wins:

• Reese (Part A)- What I loved most about Reese was her sense of humor. Her thoughts were pretty funny. No matter how pathetic her whining was she could always recognize that level of pathetic, which led to some funny commentary. Plus she had some sayings that were snort worthy. 
• Summer- Beach, sand, and sunsets. They all make for the perfect summer setting. Not a bad place to be stranded.
• The Slight Mystery- This strand of mystery is hard to pick up on and it could totally blow you away if you don't pick up on it. By some miracle I picked up on it about half way through and it became the thing I held onto through the story. 
• The Climax- It totally through me off. I mean I knew something was going to happen but I hadn't put the pieces together fast enough. Seriously, where did that come from? It was intense. 
• Message 1- Love is the most important thing. 
• Message 2- Everything will be okay, eventually. 
• Message 3- Trust your creeper vibe, always. 

Epic Fails:

• Reese (Part B)- She was a whiner and seemed to contradict herself a lot. Sure she was love sick but she gives us girls a bad name when she laments every other page. Plus she seemed all too willing to forgive Dante's treatment of her. Okay rant over. 
• Dante- He was God like and all but Reese put him on far too high of a pedestal. I have a few complaints about his character but I am probably just being nit picky so I'll leave them out. 

Overall: This book confused me. It was trying to be an epic action-packed book but it would careen into whinny romantic land far too often. Yes there were explosions but the stuff in-between was really hard to get through. 

it wasn't a bad book, in fact it was quite funny at time, but it just didn't do it for me. 

Adieu, 

-Kare