Clean
by Mia Kerick
Release Date: December 1st 2015
Young Dudes Publishing
Summary from Goodreads:
High school senior Lanny Keating has it all. A three-sport athlete at Lauserville High School looking at a college football scholarship, with a supportive family, stellar grades, boy band good looks… until the fateful day when it all falls apart.
Seventeen-year-old Trevor Ladd has always been a publicly declared zero and the high school badboy. Abandoned by his mother and sexually abused by his legal guardian, Trevor sets his sights on mere survival.
Lanny seeks out Trevor’s companionship to avoid his shattered home life. Unwilling to share their personal experiences of pain, the boys explore ways to escape, leading them into sexual experimentation, and the abuse of illegal drugs and alcohol. Their mutual suffering creates a lasting bond of friendship and love.
When the time finally comes to get clean and sober, or flunk out of high school, only one of the boys will graduate, while the other spirals downward into addiction.
Will Lanny and Trevor find the strength to battle their demons of mind-altering substances as well as emotional vulnerability?
Clean takes the reader on a gritty trip into the real and raw world of teenage substance abuse.
Promo
#2
Hello,
and thank you so much for welcoming me to your blog today to promote
the release of Clean!
Open
up your recipe box! Give us something that would thrill us.
I
shared this a long time ago, in one of the first blog posts I ever
wrote. This is my secret recipe. Okay, I’m lying. This is the Brown
Family’s secret recipe. I stole it.
Ruth
Brown moved into the house up the street in junior high. She was not
a popular sort of girl, in that she was rather ordinary looking, not
the typical popular-girl-beautiful, she was extremely outspoken, not
the popular-girl-quiet- and-coy, and she just had this way about her
that made people want to run…
But
Cookie Brittle changed all of that for her.
Ruth
would show up at all sorts of important high school events—play
practices, football games, Homecoming Parade Float meetings—carrying
a lunch size brown paper bag in each hand. The bags were full of
something warm… and judging by the smell emanating from the bag,
something buttery and chocolatey. The bags were filled to the brim
with fresh from the oven Cookie Brittle.
Everyone
flocked to Ruth Brown when she came armed with these goodies. Hungry
athletes, cheerleaders with chocolate cravings, the loud and
obnoxious… the shy and detached… the studious… the total
slackers. No one could resist the smell… and then there was the
taste.
MAGICAL!!!
Maybe slightly addictive….
Ruth
Brown became the most popular girl at the high school.
She
guarded the secret “Cookie Brittle” recipe with her very life.
But one day, her absentminded mother left the recipe, written in neat
script on a worn notecard, out, face up on the countertop. I read the
card and like a secret sleuth committed it to memory. It is still in
my memory right now.
I
started attracting people to me with this secret recipe in college.
My kids have attended many parties and swim meets and meetings armed
with the stuff.
We
have no shortage of friends.
Cookie
Brittle
2
cups flour
1
cup sugar
1
cup softened butter
pinch
salt
tiny
bit of vanilla extract
1
bag or Nestlé’s Semi-sweet Chocolate chips
Mix
together in a bowl. Should make a crumbly dough. Press onto a cookie
sheet. Bake for 20 minutes or until just a tiny bit brown on top.
Cool on cookie sheet. Break into pieces like peanut brittle.
You
will have to fights off the crowds. You have been warned.
About the Author
Mia Kerick is the mother of four exceptional children—all named after saints—and five nonpedigreed cats—all named after the next best thing to saints, Boston Red Sox players. Her husband of twenty years has been told by many that he has the patience of Job, but don’t ask Mia about that, as it is a sensitive subject.
Mia focuses her stories on the emotional growth of troubled men and their relationships, and she believes that sex has a place in a love story, but not until it is firmly established as a love story. As a teen, Mia filled spiral-bound notebooks with romantic tales of tortured heroes (most of whom happened to strongly resemble lead vocalists of 1980s big-hair bands) and stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to Dreamspinner Press for providing her with an alternate place to stash her stories.
Mia is proud of her involvement with the Human Rights Campaign and cheers for each and every victory made in the name of marital equality. Her only major regret: never having taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology.
Contact Mia at miakerick@gmail.com.
Mia focuses her stories on the emotional growth of troubled men and their relationships, and she believes that sex has a place in a love story, but not until it is firmly established as a love story. As a teen, Mia filled spiral-bound notebooks with romantic tales of tortured heroes (most of whom happened to strongly resemble lead vocalists of 1980s big-hair bands) and stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to Dreamspinner Press for providing her with an alternate place to stash her stories.
Mia is proud of her involvement with the Human Rights Campaign and cheers for each and every victory made in the name of marital equality. Her only major regret: never having taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology.
Contact Mia at miakerick@gmail.com.
Sounds like a great book I should read. I like a lot of YA books even though I am old. :)
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