Caela Carter, author of ME, HIM, THEM, AND IT, Guest Post!!

Me, Him, Them, and It
By: Caela Carter
Release Date: 02/26/13
Synopsis:
ME is Evelyn Jones, 16, a valedictorian hopeful who's been playing bad girl to piss off THEM, her cold, distant parents. HIM is Todd, Evelyn's secret un-boyfriend, who she thought she was just using for sex - until she accidentally fell in love with him. But before Evelyn gets a chance to tell Todd how she feels, something much more important comes up. IT. IT is a fetus. Evelyn is pregnant - and when Todd turns his back on her, Evelyn has no idea who to turn to. Can a cheating father, a stiff, cold mother, a pissed-off BFF, and a (thankfully!) loving aunt with adopted girls of her own help Evelyn make the heart-wrenching decisions that follow? With the popularity of Juno, Teen Mom, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager, this novel has a built-in audience. Gripping, heartfelt, and responsible, Me, Him, Them, and It is not to be missed!

Here's the buy link!

Guest Post

Hi Caela! I am so excited that you're taking time out of your busy schedule to stop by today!

Hello Lovely Fall-Into-Books Readers! I’m so pumped to be guest blogging for you today to start off my awesome first blog tour ever for my first book ever. And, I want to thank the Amazing Amber for hosting me today!

So...the book is ME, HIM, THEM AND IT and it will be officially hot-off-the-presses one week from today! (That’s what they tell me anyway. I’m still 90% sure that this is all a dream and I’m going to have a very disappointing alarm clock in my ear any second now...no? the dream is still going? Ok, I’ll keep writing.)

Much has been said about my angry, intelligent, misguided and—oh, yeah—pregnant, narrator Evelyn Jones. If you choose to read the book (and—shameless plug—you should!) you’ll either love her or you’ll hate her in the first two pages.

But, to be honest, one of the most fun aspects of crafting this book was creating the cast of characters who react to Evelyn’s situation. Let me introduce you to some of my favorites:

Aunt Linda is Evelyn’s aunt. She’s Judy’s (Evelyn’s stiff mother) younger sister, adopted from China, and the only adult Evelyn trusts.

Lizzie Is Evelyn’s bubbly, popular best friend who’s greatest wish is to find and meet her long lost father.

Tammy and Cecelia are Aunt Linda’s adoptive daughters. Though they are Black and therefore will look nothing like Evelyn’s own baby, they are able to make her face some of the facts about parenthood.They also have a unique ability to tease out Evelyn’s soft side.

Maryellie is Evelyn’s only friend at the all-Latina high school she attends in the second-half of the book. And Evelyn’s only friend who is also pregnant.

Nora is Aunt Linda’s blond-and-beautiful but strict partner.

Yes, the variety of the characters above made the drafting of this novel about 100% more difficult to write. It meant more research, more revising, more chatting with many different actual real-live people to make each character as genuine as possible.

But, once Evelyn got pregnant (which was like the third sentence of the first draft of the book, but I wasn’t quite sure she was pregnant before I got that far) it was important to me to portray a variety of reactions. There isn’t one defined way to react to a teenaged pregnancy and there certainly isn’t a correct way to react. Evelyn’s own reaction is so visceral and isolating, I wanted to force her to face some alternatives and to admit to the advantages she does have.

The way a person reacts to a problem as big as an unplanned pregnancy has everything to do with her cultural and family history. We’re lucky in America to have a plethora of cultural histories and definitions of family that all brush up against each other, overlap, clash, and, in the best circumstances, dance.

Evelyn comes from a two-parent one-child Southern, White, Catholic family. But she doesn’t live in a vacuum. She lives in America. She has access to many other ways of thinking and living and loving if she manages to look for them. So, in choosing and creating my secondary characters, I attempted to develop a scope of opinions and attitudes that would challenge her to open her mind, and, ultimately, her heart.