Excerpts From My Novel

I've spent a lot of time writing about the story behind REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD, but haven't shared too much about what's actually inside my book. In order to whet your appetite, here are a couple of excerpts:

Introduction of Josh

Josh is a junior and is pretty cute with his shaggy, light-brown hair and deep blue eyes. But the feature that stands out -— at least to his many female admirers —- is the lopsided grin he flashes whenever something amuses him.

When it comes to Josh, though, he thinks everything is a joke. He's a musical prodigy and plays trumpet even better than Mr. Francis does, but insists on sitting last chair. If our conductor forces him to audition, Josh will purposely make mistakes. He claims that it's because he doesn't believe in the auditioning process, but I think he just enjoys getting a rise out of Mr. Francis.

Meantime, Josh shows about the same amount of respect in the rest of his classes. Though he aced his PSATs and gets straight A's without studying, he often skips classes. When he is there, he's always pulling pranks on his teachers. One time he brought a lawn chair to math, then plopped down in it holding a beer as if he were at the beach (he got a week's suspension for that). Another time he locked his English sub out of the room when she was clueless enough to step outside (that only got him a week's detention). Last year, he even got us a day off from school. When workers began fixing the roof, several students complained about the fumes but the school refused to let us go home. So what did Josh do? He alerted the media about our "plight." Not wanting to look bad, Principal Muller was forced to let us stay home until the roof was fixed. Needless to say, Josh became the school's hero. Now he's never without a girl on his arm and gets invited to the jocks' parties, even though he's not on any sports teams.

Introduction of Mel's best friend, Lana

Lana Brody and I have known each other since kindergarten when her family moved in across the street from mine. But that's about all we have in common. While I've always been quiet and studious, Lana's more outgoing. She's not afraid to go up to guys at the diner and tell them she thinks they're cute or to do something funny like dance on top of a table at a party. When we were younger, my parents loved it when she'd come to our holiday dinners (since she's Jewish, we always have her over for Christmas) because while I preferred to watch all of the action, she'd chat with all of their grown-up friends. "Why can't you be more like Lana?" my mom would ask me after everyone else had gone home and we were cleaning up the dishes. "All you have to do is talk to people like she does and they'll like you."

My parents don't understand that some people are just born friendly, like Lana. She has this way of making everyone notice her, whereas I always seem to say the wrong thing or even worse, can't think of anything to say at all. This is why everyone likes her and I’m basically invisible. Sometimes I worry that the only thing that keeps us friends is the proximity of our houses, but so far, she hasn't ditched me for the cooler crowd.

Please read and review my novel REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD.