Genre:
young-adult, urban-fantasy/paranormal-romance
Publisher:
Curiosity Quills Press
Date
of Publication:
November 6, 2014
Description:
Dead
is such a strong word …
Lucy
Day, 15 years old, is murdered on her very first date. Not one to
take that kind of thing lying down, she awakens a day later with a
seemingly human body and more than a little confusion. Lucy tries to
return to her normal life, but the afterlife keeps getting in the
way.
Zack,
her crush-maybe-boyfriend, isn’t exactly excited that she ditched
him on their first date. Oh, and Abraham, Lucy’s personal Grim
Reaper, begins hunting her, dead-set on righting the error that
dropped her back into the spongy flesh of a living girl. Lucy must
put her mangled life back together, escape re-death, and learn to
control her burgeoning powers while staying one step ahead of
Abraham.
But
when she learns the devastating price of coming back from the dead,
Lucy is forced to make the hardest decision of her re-life — can
she really sacrifice her loved ones to stay out of the grave?
--
About
B.C. Johnson:
Born in Southern California, B.C.
Johnson has been writing since he realized it was one of the few
socially acceptable ways to tell people a bunch of stuff you just
made up off the top of your head. He attended Savanna High School in
Anaheim, and an undisclosed amount of college before deciding that
weird odd jobs were a far greater career path.
This lead him to such exciting
professions as: aluminum recovery machinist, lighting designer,
construction demo, sound mixer, receptionist, theater stage hand,
wedding security, high school custodian, museum events manager,
webmaster, IT guy, copywriter, and one memorable night as the bouncer
at a nightclub. He is trying very hard to add “vampire hunter”
and “spaceship captain” to that list.
He currently lives in Garden
Grove with his supernal wife Gina, his half-corgi, half-muppet dog
Luna, and his new half-grayhound, half-living-tornado-of-destruction
Kaylee. He also spends time with his two brothers, his parents, and
his close friends, whose primary pursuit are usually healthy debates
about movie minutiea. When he’s not working or writing, he’s been
to known to pursue all conceivable geeky avenues of interest
including but not limited to video games, the sort of TV shows/movies
Benedict Cumberbatch might star in, graphic novels, podcasts, funny
gifs, the whole thing.
He’s also been known to apply
his special brand of hyperbole and mania to pop-culture humor essays
for various websites that can be found on his homepage,
bc-johnson.com. B.C. also has a high school noir short story called
“The Lancer” available on Kindle.
Deadgirl is his first novel.
Find B.C. Johnson Online:
Website
(http://www.bc-johnson.com/)
| Facebook
(https://www.facebook.com/pages/BC-Johnson/350421414990138)
| Twitter
(https://twitter.com/BobbyCJohnson)
| Goodreads
(https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5818208.B_C_Johnson)
Becoming
a Teen Girl - Signed, a Dude
I
never had to buy a prom dress, I've never been catcalled, and as a
6'1, 260+ lbs guy I've never had to worry about walking down a dark
alley. Well, I worry anyway because I'm a crazy person and I'm scared
of werewolves, but you get the gist. Basically, why the choice of
first-person protagonists?
It's
funny, because the idea to have Deadgirl star a teen girl was
actually a self-imposed challenge to try to make myself a better
writer. I'd written dozens of short stories and a full book before I
wrote Deadgirl, and they'd all featured male protagonists. Some of
the stories didn't even have girls in them! It's not because I was
afraid of or didn't like girls – quite the opposite. I liked girls
quite a bit, even if their feelings for me were more subdued,
and maybe I was only a tiny bit scared of them.
For
the most part, I hadn't even realized that my stories were complete
and utter sausage-fests until my girlfriend-now-wife finally pointed
it out to me.
"You
know there are two genders on the planet, right?" she asked me,
possibly sarcastically.
Turns
out I did know that, and when she asked me why I didn't write about
girls, the best, totally lame excuse I could offer was something like
this: "What do I know about girls?"
"Well,
they're people, for starters," she told me, and her words hit me
like a zen koan made of bricks attached to a space rocket.
“People,”
I said, muttering to myself, possibly wandering out of the house and
walking the earth for awhile. When my senses came back to me, I knew
I wanted to write a story not only with a girl, but with a teenage
girl, from her own point of view.
I
had an idea, an idea I thought might be a bad idea. So I went to my
girlfriend-now-wife, and asked her “Would you mind letting me
read all of those diaries you used to keep in highschool?” I
expected a hearty laugh and maybe some karate kicks, but instead she
seemed to actually consider the idea.
A
few days later, she dumped five tattered composition books of various
eye-scorching colors onto my desk. Then she handed me a piece of
paper that annotated exactly which pages, in which books, I was
allowed to read. We were both around our mid-twenties at the time,
and I could see the hint of fear blossoming in her eyes.
“I
was fourteen-to-sixteen, okay,” she told me. “You knew me
back then, but I didn’t realize how emo I was until just now.”
She
didn’t say “please don’t judge me,” but the words were
written on her face and in her thorough notes of her own teen
journals.
I
spent the next week or so pouring through the books, respectfully
respecting her wishes on where to read and where I must never, ever
venture. And despite all her worry, and all my trepidation, I learned
some extremely valuable insight into the human condition: Her teen
thoughts were exactly the same as mine.
She
was afraid of what I was afraid of (the opposite sex, older teens,
sex), and she was excited about what I had been excited about
(freedom, a wide open future, sex), and she ate the same bad food and
wrote the same bad poetry and thought the same dumb, smart, wise,
confusing, silly, awesome things I’d thought when my brain had been
stewing in its own hormonal juices. Sure the pronouns were different
about who she thought was dreamy, and she mentioned shoes more often
than I did, but wonder-of-wonders, I found out that girls
are people.
For
a boy, that’s a startling revelation. It helped me write a book,
and that’s great and everything, but the tools it gave me to live
my life were by far the greater contribution. Girls aren’t
mysterious puzzles waiting to be solved, they’re just humans with
different bits and pieces that have the same entire suite of
emotions, fears, flaws, and strengths as dudes. Okay, they’re
better at pattern recognition and slightly worse at spatial
awareness, and they look way more fetching in tights than I do, but
otherwise it’s really a wash.
And
that, if you’re wondering, is how I’m occasionally a teenage
girl. Just, like, on weekends.
-B.C.
Johnson
* * * * *
Sister Sinister's Review of DEAD GIRL
* * * * *
Having had the opportunity to read DEAD GIRL as part of the book's blog tour, I was delighted to find it was as enjoyable as I had hoped. And it didn't even occur to me that the book was written by a guy. Which I dare say, impresses me; not every guy can pull off writing for a female protagonist without making them look like caricatures of the female species. So, score one for the team!
DEAD GIRL starts off with a literal bang before taking us back a few days prior to the event, as teenage Lucy hangs with her friends and thinks about boys. Life seems pretty ordinary for Lucy until she loses it. And then things get really strange.
This book was awesome in my very humble opinion and I highly recommend it to lovers of the YA and supernatural genres.
I am actually very impressed. A thirty year guy able to put himself in the shoes of a fifteen year old girl? Very impressive. And written in such a way that you didn't even notice the author was male! I think I might have to try this just to see what it's like in style of writing and all that ^^
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