"What is the best and worst writing advice you've ever received and why?"

LITTLE BLACK LIES is a funny, poignant tale of high school intrigue taken to the nth degree (and occasionally times Pi).  With effortless panache, Tish Cohen creates the ultimate private school story.  All the usual suspects are there: the new kid, the popular girl, the unattainable boy . . . but she gives each a unique and unexpected twist.  Nor is this book all light and escapist fluff.  Cohen tackles such complex issues as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, divorce, and the insane pressures put on students in gifted programs, and she does it with such a deft touch that the book never feels heavy-handed or veers into movie of the week sentimentality.  LITTLE BLACK LIES might be about deception, but it is a brutally honest book with a fabulous sense of humour that keeps you turning the pages right until the very end.  In other words:

(wicked sense of humour) + (awesome characters)(searingly astute observations) - sentiment = (one great read)

Tish Cohen's LITTLE BLACK LIES is a searingly clear-eyed, sharply funny portrait of High-School-Peer-Pressure Gone Wild. Social misfit Sara Black's account of her year at America's premier institute for hyper-over-achievers is full of gut-punch emotion and compelling insights from a smart girl forced to navigate the treacherous hallways of Anton High--a school of piranhas in kilts and knee-socks. This is a place where good things only seem to happen to bad kids and a good kid has no choice but to do bad things. By turns charming and ironic, brave and infuriating, Sarah makes you want to stand up and cheer for her--and send her to her room all at the same time.

- Lesley Livingston, author of WONDROUS STRANGE and DARKLIGHT

There's a special uncategorized category of books I refer to as comfort books. These are books I'll return to again and again, not because of what happened in the story necessarily, but because I want to revisit the lives of the characters that inhabit it.

These books have heart.

I've read every book ever written by Rosamunde Pilcher simply because the homes her characters create embody the way I'd like to live. These cottages are strewn with threadbare rugs, merry fires, and sleeping dogs. There's always a scrubbed wooden table, some sort of stew bubbling on the Aga, and a dried-up heel of gingerbread to offer to whoever happens by in search of a restoring cup of tea. When I read her books, I take a bit more pleasure in cooking, cleaning, and nesting in general. I pull out my vintage tablecloths and use only vinegar to clean the house (lest you get the wrong idea, my house isn't as pristine as I'm leading you to believe here).

Then there's Jane Austen. Her brilliant stories and characters aside, I love to revisit a world of elegant country homes, simple needs, and short lace-up boots meant to be worn with long cotton dresses. Alexander McCall Smith brings me comfort in the stark functionality of Precious Ramotswe's detective agency. Patricia Wood in her Orange-Prize shortlisted book, Lottery, brought me comfort in bringing me back to the summers I spent with my grandmother when I was young.

I could go on and on listing books that warm my heart. But I won't.

Today is the launch day for my novel, Inside Out Girl, in the U.S. I've been asked a few times why I wrote the book and my answers can be found in the Q&A on my website in the book section. But there's another reason I haven't spoken about. Inside Out Girl is a story of two splintered families who are affected by a young child with a severe learning disability. Both families bring their own busted histories to the scrubbed wooden table. It's a story about parenting. About frustration and guilt. Doing the right thing, doing the wrong thing. But most of all it's a story about a girl who has never had any power of her own and how she surprises everyone by becoming a neighborhood hero. And while Rachel Berman's house probably won't inspire you to go at your kitchen grout work with vinegar and a scrub brush, I hope you'll find this to be a story about heart.

You know how you used to see a guy walking down the street talking to himself and you'd cross over to the other side, just in case? But nowadays you know he isn't crazy at all, but is so extraordinarily important he needs a phone screwed into his ear so the world doesn't crack apart in the time it takes to pull a regular cell phone from his front pocket?

I've become one of those guys.

I haven't installed a phone in my head (too ridiculous and who needs the radiation?), but in preparation for the launch of my new website--which was going to arrive complete with its very own blog--I've been doing a lot of internal talking. More so than usual. Fabulous, fully formed posts flash into my mind and glitter for about an hour. These are seriously good posts, posts my mother might copy and send out as a bulk email saying, "Look what my daughter said today..."

There is one that begins with a rant about this year's black flies hanging around Northern Ontario way longer than any other year in history just when we buy our first cottage and how my husband never gets bitten because I'm his own personal No-pest strip. Then, because this first black fly post will be so comprehensive and adorable and I won't want to tax my blog readers (should I have more than one) with too much, too soon; I have a the next day's post all set to further examine black flies and their undocumented fascination with fuchsia sweat pants. Which could only lead into the next probing essay--this one about the psychology of and logic behind the wearing of fuchsia sweat pants in the first place (they were half price at American Eagle and it was early spring. Please, you'd have pulled out your debit card too). Then, as one might expect, this dissertation would be followed by a rant against the person who decided fuchsia should be spelled as if it should read "fucks ya."

I now debate cursing on the new blog. Do I want to appear demure and bookish? Or edgy and eccentric? It is at this point that all previous imaginary blog posts lose their gloss. My internal debate about swearing has brought forth the terrible truth that, still, after decades of vowing to watch Oprah but never noticing it was four o'clock, I still have no idea who I am.  Which makes the voices in my head go silent.

But then a black fly lands on my green yoga shoe... 

THE ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS synopsis:
One summer day, at a gas station in a small Vermont town, six-year-old Ernestine Florucci is abducted by a person wearing a rabbit suit while her mother is buying lottery tickets. Rhonda Farr is the only witness, and she does nothing as she watches the scene unfold - little Ernie goes with the rabbit so casually, confidently getting into the rabbit's Volkswagen bug, smiling while the rabbit carefully fastens her seatbelt. The police are skeptical of Rhonda's story and Ernie's mother blames her outright. The kidnapping forces Rhonda to face another disappearance, that of her best friend from childhood - Lizzy Shale, whose brother, Peter just so happens to be a prime suspect in Ernie's abduction. Unraveling the present mystery plunges Rhonda headlong down the rabbit hole of her past. She must struggle to makes sense of the loss of the two girls, and to ask herself if the Peter she grew up with -- and has secretly loved all her life -- could have a much darker side.

Many of you know Patry through her touching blog, Simply Wait, or through her earlier (and equally touching) blog, I'm Not Really a Waitress. Many of you are meeting her for the first time today, online. Spend a few moments on either, and you'll understand why so many people are tripping over themselves to help Patry Francis. She is the dearest soul imaginable.

So I'm not going to talk about public Patry. I cannot possibly do her justice--go to her blog and you'll see what I mean. Instead, I'm going to tell you about my Patry.

Patry and I met online as fledgling authors navigating the publication process. We soon discovered ourselved to be rather alike, from our names (both distorted versions of Patricia), to our neuroses, to our collective inability to end a conversation (which would, on the day we finally met in person, result in an 8-hour dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Hyannis).

Patry is the sort of person you cannot get enough of. She's at once self-depracating and wise, mirthful and wry, serene and full of bliss. She'll never turn a friend away, hell, she won't even turn a frenemy away. We roomed together in New York and Boston, where we attended writerish events, but the time I cherished most were those moments we stole away from our schedules to scuttle off to parks and courtyards to write our little words.

We wrote our New York words at the foot of a gorgeous church, in a big park with iron tables and racks birds that hopped around at our feet, in a tiny courtyard beside a building being demolished. I should remember the names of these places, they were that special. But those moments weren't about names. They were about our words and dreams. Okay, they were also about the two of us feeling incredibly cool indulging our writerly sides in the most writerly city in the world.

We wrote our Boston words in the Boston Commons, sitting on a dewy bench across from a fountain that had all but run dry. As we wrote, packs of schoolchildren on class trips and young couples milled about our statue. Sparrows tried to bathe in our statue dust. Occasionally, we looked up and smiled. Nothing needed to be said. We were in our glory, damp asses and all.

At night, we'd fall into our hotel beds exhausted. But we wouldn't sleep. Not because we're both insomniacs, but because neither of us was willing to miss out on a single word we might share in this writerly adventure. Like a couple of middle graders, we talked half the night. We planned books, we planned more writing ventures in parks, churchyards, and beautiful jackhammer-plagued courtyards.

So when I heard the news that the dreaded "C" word had invaded Patry's life, I was devastated. Not wanting to add to the gush of well wishers surrounding her upon her return from the hospital, not wanting to intrude on her much-needed family time and rest time, I wrote her emails, but refrained from calling. Inside, however, I was falling apart. Thank God for Robin Slick, we kept each other upright during this time when we really didn't know Patry's diagnosis. When Patry was rested enough, with her assurance that I wouldn't be disturbing her, I finally called. I was terrified that she'd have changed. That a light might have gone out. But Patry got on that phone and had me laughing for nearly an hour. Not only was her prognosis positive (thank you, God, for that), but she'd noticed and taken delight in every absurdity, every irony, every moment of bliss during her hospital stay, and made sure to make me feel better by sharing it.

This girl did not come out of this experience looking for people to comfort her. She came out of it looking to comfort us.

And that's my Patry.

Oh, our latest shared dream, now that Patry is able to look forward to a long, healthy life? An annual writer's retreat on a lake in Northern Ontario, in Canada, with three of the most fabulous women Patry and I have ever met--all of whom we met during that delicious trip to New York: Jessica Keener, Susan Henderson, and Robin Slick.

Honestly, a week in a lake house with the four of these women sounds, to me, more exciting than any trip Oprah has ever been on.

A little about the book...

The official description is below, but I'll tell you this was one of those rare books I could not put down. Read it while cooking, while walking to the mailbox, while driving to the store (shh!). It's truly unputdownable, so while you're picking one up for yourself, why not grab one for a friend as well?

Answering the question of what is more powerful--family or friendship? this debut novel unforgettably shows how far one woman would go to protect either.

They couldn't be more different, but they form a friendship that will alter both their fates. When Ali Mather blows into town, breaking all the rules and breaking hearts (despite the fact that she is pushing forty), she also makes a mark on an unlikely family. Almost against her will, Jeanne Cross feels drawn to this strangely vibrant woman, a fascination that begins to infect Jeanne's "perfect" husband as well as their teenaged son.

At the heart of the friendship between Ali and Jeanne are deep-seated emotional needs, vulnerabilities they have each been recording in their diaries. Ali also senses another kind of vulnerability; she believes someone has been entering her house when she is not at home--and not with the usual intentions. What this burglar wants is nothing less than a piece of Ali's soul.

When a murderer strikes and Jeanne's son is arrested, we learn that the key to the crime lies in the diaries of two very different women . . . but only one of them is telling the truth. A chilling tour of troubled minds, The Liar's Diary signals the launch of an immensely talented new novelist who knows just how to keep her readers guessing.

A little about what you can do to help...
Ready to buy the book? Why not buy one for yourself and one for a friend? And if you like it, tell people!

Here is links to THE LIAR'S DIARY at Amazon.

You can also buy directly from Penguin to save 15% (after you add the book to your cart, just enter the word PATRY in the coupon code field and click 'update cart' to activate the discount).

Were you ever tempted to write this as a memoir?
Well, with the exception of "Permanent Midnight," all the addiction and recovery memoirs that I read came across as almost skin-crawlingly earnest once the writer got sober and I'd find myself savoring over their tragic stories of sucking on crack pipes or sucking on other things in order to get the money to put crack in their pipes and then becoming incredibly bored by their stories of sobriety. And I read most of them when I was already sober! So I knew I wanted to avoid that. Also, one of the main things I learn in my sobriety isn't just how addicted I was but how insane my thinking always was -- how self-absorbed and utterly filled with self-pity I used to be. And I wanted to be able to mock myself -- to create a character that's funny because she's always getting in her own way and utterly incapable of ever seeing that -- in a way that I didn't think I'd be able to do in a memoir.

Anna David
overannalyze@yahoo.com
www.annadavid.com
www.partygirlthebook.com

I then discovered Sagittarius is a masculine sign. I liked that too because I was something of a tomboy--typical for Sag. And that Sagittarians are typically creative, optimistic, lucky, enthusiastic, outdoorsy, intellectual, and they hate to cook or clean. They retain their faculties and wit until the end of their unusually long lives. Which gives me that much more time to worry about things I, apparently, don't need to worry about.

I later learned that Sags have a many negative characteristics, such as restlessness, recklessness, impatience, high foreheads, large (but well-shaped!) skulls, and something called foot-in-mouth disease. Which is an ugly way of saying we ask women who aren't pregnant when the little bundle of love is due. Not only that, but our metal is tin. Tin. There's no way to make that sound appealing. But far worse than the tin and the constant apologizing is that Sagittarius is said to be associated with horselike hips and thighs, and "bigness in general." Translation: step away from the rocky road brownies.

What I learned later more than makes up for the extra lunges and leg lifts. Higher learning, communication, human progress and especially publishing are strongly linked to Sagittarius, and many Sags become writers, poets, publishers, philosophers, teachers. Sag writers include Louisa May Alcott, Woody Allen, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Emily Carr, Willa Cather, Emily Dickenson, Joan Didion, James Thurber, just to name a handful. Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were also Sags.

They say when a Sag meets another Sag she feels she's looking in a mirror. Which brings me that much closer, at least physically, to my idol...Woody Allen. When I slip on my black glasses and khaki jacket, and muss my hair just so, you can barely tell where he ends and I begin.

Surfing for Sagittarian info, I found the following description - Sag willl stride purposefully forward, head high, face proud. Then he'll trip over the curb and his briefcase will snap open, scattering his papers all over the street. But she who helps him up will probably take him for a nice bowl of soup.

Sounds about right.