Hop on over to my Huffington Post blog and read about twittering professors!

Hop on over to my Huffington Post blog to read about the prevalence of scandalous sex in campus fiction, as well as the fuss John Grisham has stirred up with his new book, The Associate, which is set at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Did you eat too much, drink too much, and make a list of resolutions you have already broken?! I did.

If you want to know what professors get up to at holiday time (hint: it has little to do with books and a lot to do with late-night, extracurricular antics at academic conferences!), then hop over to my new blog at Huffington Post.

It's celebration time in our house. My third novel just sold!!!! Woohoo!! No title yet, I'm afraid. But I can tell you that the book is set at Manhattan U. again (like The Professors' Wives' Club and my forthcoming Crossing Washington Square) and follows a professor who's intrigued with Mary Shelley, the "mother" of Frankenstein!

I know its hard times out there. Publishing houses are suffering. Writers are losing great editors. New book acquisitions are being frozen. Readers are feeling the pinch so they're cutting back on they're book buying. So I'm very very happy and grateful that New American Library/Penguin decided to make an offer on this next book.

When I read the blurb for this week's Girlfriend's Cyber Circuit book, I chuckled so hard at the term "lazy sperm" I nearly spat Tetley tea onto my precious laptop keyboard! Melissa Clark's Swimming Upstream, Slowly is clearly a funny novel with an intriguing premise and thus definitely one for your Christmas stocking or your Holiday gift list.

"Lazy sperm, what on earth...?" I'm sure you're wondering. Okay, here's what the book's all about:

After too many vodka tonics at her best friend's baby shower, twenty-seven-year-old Sasha finds herself having a ladies' room epiphany. How quickly life can change, she thinks to herself: one minute she's writing a master's thesis about a TV comedy show for kids–and the next, the program actually gets optioned with her as the star. But Sasha's awe at the twists of fate proves to be premature. The real shock comes the next day, when her routine visit to the ob-gyn reveals that she's pregnant—even though she hasn't slept with anyone in more than two years.

To her unbelieving ears comes the doctor's diagnosis: Sasha's body has unwittingly hosted a cellular hitchhiker, a medical anomaly known as "lazy sperm." And now that this plodding genetic contribution has finally fulfilled its destiny, it will be up to Sasha to summon the courage to revisit her past loves even as her future slowly takes shape inside her. Which of her exes will be the father and how will he take the astounding news? And what will the end of the mystery mean to Sasha? The answers are revealed in this wonderfully inventive debut about the bonds that linger between people even after they part ways, and how the future can change in the twitch of a tail.

Melissa is the creator and executive producer of the award-winning television series, 'Braceface', and has written for shows on the Disney Channel, Cartoon Network and Fox. She received a master's degree from the writing program at U.C. Davis, and currently lives in Los Angeles. Swimming Upstream, Slowly is her first novel.

Melissa took some time out of her busy TV-writing, novel-writing life to answer some questions:

Tell us about the inspiration behind Swimming Upstream, Slowly.

The idea was born because I was having lunch with a friend, and overate. I lifted my shirt to expose my bloated belly and the friend said, half joking, "Are you sure you're not pregnant?" and I said, "Yeah, right, from a lazy sperm." I went home that night and started outlining the idea for a movie. I decided, eventually, to write it as a novel instead.

Could you tell us a little about your writing background?

My dad is a writer, so I was always playing on his typewriter and writing on legal steno pads. I wrote short stories from the time that I could write. I studied writing and literature in both college and graduate school. In my 20's to mid-30's I worked as a writer in television. I created a kid's show called "Braceface" which ran for 5 seasons. I loved that experience, but really wanted to write a novel, so I quit my own show and set out to write "Swimming Upstream, Slowly." It was the best risk I've ever taken!

What comes most naturally for you to write, dialogue, plot, or character? And what's hardest?

I love writing dialogue. I've written a few plays in the past and found it incredibly satisfying. I learn so much about my characters through what they say. I often have the feeling that they speak through me and I'm just listening and transcribing their words. I know a lot of writers feel this way. It's hard for me to slow down and be descriptive - really describe a setting or something. I am very aware of this and tried to do it more consciously in the new book.

What's the most surprising thing that has happened to you on your publishing journey? Have you learnt things about the industry you never knew before?

I was invited to speak at the Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival. There is a famous food writer named Melissa Clark who writes for the NY Times and I was sure they meant to invite her. I wined and dined with the likes of Frank McCourt and Elizabeth Edwards. I gave a talk during which I explained that I thought they invited the wrong Melissa Clark. The audience thought it was hysterical. They were cracking up, but I was really venting my insecurity. The head of the program came up to me after the reading and said it was great, but never assured me... a few months later a friend, after hearing that story, told me she knew the other Melissa Clark - they had been in a wedding together - and gave me her email. I wrote about that experience and she replied, "That's okay, everyone thinks I wrote the lazy sperm book."

What's next for you?

I JUST completed a draft of a new novel, "Imperfect". It is another medical anomaly type of story, but very different than "Swimming..." This one is more of a coming-of-age story. I sent it to my agent last week and am now on pins and needles waiting for her response.

Thanks, Melissa! I'm intrigued to know what the next "medical anomaly" is going to be. How can you top lazy sperm, after all!?

Anyway, to pick up your copy of Swimming Upstream, Slowly either click over to Amazon or order from your local indie bookstore.

It's only ten a.m. on a Sunday morning and where usually I'd be slobbing about in my PJs, drinking cups of Tetley tea, and telling myself that it's okay to procrastinate during Benny-sleeping hours because, after all, it's Sunday, today I'm all fired up and ready to blog. The reason? This article in today's New York Times about the supposed "trouble" with book groups.

Titled "Fought Over Any Good Books Recently?" the piece starts out with a profile of Jocelyn Bowie, a woman who enthusiastically joined a bookgroup in her hometown of Bloomington, ID, only to find that, gasp, her group wanted to read Oprah picks and The Secret Life of Bees over literary classics like Emma. Ms. Bowie decided leave the group.

The Times piece then goes on to report the eternal wranglings, acrimony, and competing agendas going on in bookgroups across the country - from the woman who left her group because she could not talk politics, to others disullionsioned by too much talk of "poopy diapers and nap times" instead of book talk.

Another woman, we are told in the piece, left her book group because she "wanted to read more chick lit" and in response to this Esther Bushell ("a professional book-group facilitator who leads a dozen suburban New York groups and charges $250 to $300 a member annually for her services") made the comment, "I hate to sound ponderous, but I have a certain moral obligation. I don't feel I can be paid for leading a discussion about 'The Devil Wears Prada.'"

This last comment made me cringe, laugh a bitter laugh, and shake my head - as did most of the article. I'm sure it's true that there is acrimony among many book groups. I'm sure there are book groups who are paying facilitators (with "moral obligations"!) to come lead their discussions. I'm sure there are some groups who are more concerned with the quality of the scones baked by the host, than the books themselves. But not all book groups, surely?

The skewed and negative way bookgroups come across in the piece wasn't what bugged me most, however. What grated most of all was the article's implicit, but oh-so-familiar, denigration of women, women readers and women's fiction (for any of you reading this blog long enough will know I have a lot to say on this matter!). The image which heads the article depicts women throwing books at each other and within the piece we are told, I'm sure accurately, that most book groups are "all female." The subtext of the piece is that bookgroups are for women and thus they are plagued by "feminine" problems: bitchiness, competition over whose scones are best, "poopy diaper" talk, and a penchant for "fluffy" popular books written by sell-out women authors!

What the article fails to mention is that precisely because so many are all female, book groups offer great joy and community, fun and support. Women join book groups to read books they will enjoy. But they also join to be with their friends, to escape their families, the laundry, their kids, and the drone of a ball game for one night a month.

I had the good fortune of being invited to a book group last week. Ten women had read The Professors' Wives' Club and wanted me to come talk with them about it. They were the most fantastic group of thirty-something moms. They were bright, funny, engaged, kind, and between them they had a grand total of 36 kids at home! I asked them if they ever argued about the choice of books and they laughed and said "Of course." But it seems they always worked it out in the end. As a visitor, I wouldn't have known if there was acrimony behind the scenes, or whether someone was disgruntled by too much diaper-talk. But what I found last week was a group of women who had thoughtful and interesting things to say not just about my book but all books, and a group of women who relished their "night off" from the kids and who, most of all, enjoyed being together.

The story of their book group, and the many similar non-acrimonious, joyful book groups across the country, will never get written about in The Times. As highbrow at the NYT thinks it is, it can't help loving a scrappy, nails-out, hair- pulling bitch fight. And women supporting and enjoying each other over a book just aint a dirty bitch fight!

I had the good fortune of meeting new cyber-girlfriend Malena Lott at this summer's Romance Writers of America convention...and she was as lovely as her new book Dating Da Vinci! Rightly so, Malena's novel is getting rave reviews. Publisher's Weekly, who can be harsh on popular women's fiction at times, described the book as "smartly written...satisfying and uplifting."

Dating Da Vinci is Under the Tuscan Sun with a little How Stella Got Her Groove Back thrown in for good meaure. Here's the full description:

Ramona Elise is in a rut - a 36-year-old widowed mother of two, she can't seem to find what make her truly happy in life. Making sure her kids are happy isn't the hard part; Ramona's looking for the passion she lost two years ago when she lost her husband and her world turned upside down. When a handsome Italian immigrant walks into her English class, Ramona never expects to find la dolce vita (the sweet life) in a younger man or in her self!

Dating Da Vinci is Malena's second novel (her first was called The Stork Reality). She is a married mother of three and lives in Oklahoma.

Malena stopped by to answer some questions.

How did you get the title of your book?

The title came pretty quickly, early on. I love alliteration and really wanted to incorporate da Vinci since he's the catalyst that starts Ramona's renaissance. Since publishers have final say, I don't get too attached to my working title, though. I do like getting credit for this one, though! Of course the book isn't just about da Vinci and romance is only a part of the story, but I think it's catchy and hopefully it will catch people's eye to learn more about the book.

What pulled you into this story, and as a writer made you think 'I have to write this' ?What do you consider the heart of your story?

Women, especially mothers, tend to put themselves last on the list. I wanted to share the story of someone who has lost the love of her life and has focused on just "getting by" each day, but is ready to find a way to be joyful again, even through the pain. The heart of the story really is, is there love after death, and the courage it takes to not only survive but to build a great life again.

What is your author fantasy?


Writers already have active imaginations, so this one is a no brainer. Vision board, here I come! Hit the top 10 of the New York Times bestseller list, have a long line waiting for me when I arrive for book signings, have my books optioned for films that actually get made and made well, and a few national TV appearances to boot. TODAY show, The View, Oprah, you know. Just the small stuff, you know? Not that I've given any of this much thought. Not a bit.

What is a typical writing day like for you?

Kiss the older kids goodbye for school. Coffee next, with sugar and peppermint mocha creamer. Take my laptop upstairs to the playroom while my toddler still sleeps as synapses start firing. Re-read the last chapter I wrote the day before, however short or long that might be. Only slight modification, no re-writing, yet. First half of first cup of coffee is drunk, so now can dig in to actual words on page. Write until I hear my toddler yell my name. If he did not wet the bed (yea!) it's downstairs for cereal and a cartoon while he eats. Second cup of joe for me. When he's done, he usually wants to play games on the computer for about an hour, so I get at least a chapter written if I didn't stop to look up some research fact online. (I can't wait; I'm impatient.) Then I'll usually close things down for my fiction writing and work on any marketing consulting work here and there throughout the day when I'm not playing with my toddler or running errands before it's time for the older kids to get home from school. Get on laptop again in the evening, but usually only for marketing Dating da Vinci type of work.

Do you pay attention to book reviews? If so, has there been any particular review that made your heart do a little dance?

I use Google Alerts so I'm kind of like Santa. I know when people have said naughty or nice things about my book! Fortunately, reviewers have enjoyed Dating da Vinci, so that's a thrill when you click that link and get to read what people are saying about your "baby." I've selected some of my favorite quotes on http://www.malenalott.com/.

I hope Oprah, the Today Show, and the NYT list awaits you too, Malena!

Order your copy of Dating Da Vinci at Amazon or your local indie.