Today, instead of messing around with a difficult part of my new work in progress, I went for a walk. I also let Cricket off the leash. She bounded through a tangle of branches into a tilled corn field and I followed, trying to step in places where I didn’t sink to my calves in mud. I pretty much failed, and she watched me slog from forty feet away while she devoured the rotting remains of somebody’s Halloween pumpkin. I used to own a dog that came when called and I was angry that I had let nostalgia interfere with the… Continue reading

• Publication Season/Year: Summer 2009
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Release Date: June 11, 2009
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-0399250439
• ISBN (paperback): TBD

Twelve-year-old Paris Pan’s life is a mess. She’s just moved to a tiny town in Nowheresville, Oklahoma; her family life is a comical disaster; her new friends are more like frenemies; and the boy she has a crush on is a dork. Things couldn’t possibly get worse, until she discovers that a girl mysteriously died years ago while taking a seventh-grade rite of passage–the Dare– right near Paris’s new house. So when Paris starts hearing strange noises coming from the creepy run-down shed in her backyard… Continue reading