 I’m delighted to have Alissa Grosso here today as my guest. She’s an amazing writer debuting her first novel last year, Popular, and her second, Ferocity Summer releasing May 8 of this year. To check out her sweet Ferocity Summer trailer click HERE.
Here’s a little taste of her incredible new YA novel:
Scilla Davis is haunted by a horrible accident that she was involved in last summer—a drunken, reckless joyride that ended in tragedy. With a big trial looming, life seems empty, unreal, and utterly hopeless. It’s especially painful watching her best friend, Willow, slowly destroy herself with pills and booze. Yet Scilla can’t seem to wrest Willow—or herself—from a path of self-destruction.
But there might be a possible escape from this nightmare. As a dangerous new drug called Ferocity sweeps the nation, an FBI agent asks Scilla to turn narc and help locate the Ferocity kingpin. In exchange, she could avoid conviction for her role in the accident. All she has to do is deceive and betray people she’s known all her life.
 Summer Jobs
I’m currently on a Blog Tour Road Trip to promote my new book Ferocity Summer, which is now available. Don’t forget to read to the end of this post to find out how you can enter a drawing for your very own summer survival pack, which includes a signed copy of Ferocity Summer.
Summer jobs are pretty much a rite of passage for teenagers. From experience, I can say that some are awesome and some are awful. Scilla Davis, the main character in Ferocity Summer, has one of the awful variety. She is stuck working behind the counter of the local convenience store. I’m relieved to report that I never had a summer job quite this bad, but I’ve had a few interesting ones.
Like many teenage girls, my first “job” was babysitting. Lucky for me, I was the only teenage girl in a neighborhood that had a lot of families with younger kids. So, I had pretty steady work. I’ll admit some kids were more fun to sit for than others, but thankfully, I don’t have any babysitting horror stories to report.
When I was in high school, my father started his own law practice. This meant that one of my summer jobs became working with Dad. I did typing and some miscellaneous secretarial things. My father used to put in long days. This meant we left the house when it was dark out and returned about when the sun was setting. Keep in mind, this was during the summer when the days can be pretty long. I have to say, the work tended to be pretty boring, and if it taught me anything, it was that I didn’t want to work in an office when I got older.
My next job was not so much a summer job as it was a weekend and after school job. I worked at an outlet store near my house. This was not one of those nice, clean outlet stores that are pretty much just like a retail store. This was a warehouse style bargain basement outlet store. The deals were very good which meant people would wait hours in line to check out or have fist fights over merchandise. Then there were the customers who didn’t think our prices were low enough and would try to rip us off by switching the tags on items. Suffice it to say, it was an interesting job.
My last summer job was working at Waterloo Village, a historical village near my house. It was the sort of place where employees dressed up in costume. When I first started, I was a tavern wench. Later, I moved up to being a costumed tour guide. This historic village had a bit of an identity crisis and was also a well known concert venue. So at nights, I ditched the costume and put on my official event staff polo shirt to be ticket taker, usher and later on the “Queen of Merch” aka the girl who sold the concert t-shirts. By the way, Waterloo gets a mention in Ferocity Summer with a concert that takes place at the Waterloo Concert Field.
That photo of me in an inflatable boat headed down some stairs? That wasn’t from a summer job, but it was one of my favorite full time jobs, working in the children’s department of a library. This staged photo was all part of a summer reading bulletin board display. If you’re trying to find the perfect job, you owe it to yourself to at least look into library work.
Don’t forget to leave a comment and enter to win Alissa’s Blog Tour giveaway. Open until May 20, 2012. No residency restrictions.
You’ve gotta know when to hold and know when to fold…For the past several months I’ve been working on writing a YA novel. I had an idea and ran with it. Then I hit a wall. I wasn’t sure where to go with the plot and the characters I had been developing seemed flat and insincere. So after already writing several thousand words, I scrapped what I had been working on and started over. I made more notes, developed a new plot line that I thought would flow better, and rewrote where I wanted the characters to go and how I hoped they would develop. Then I started fresh.
runnersami.wordpress.com 