Guest Blogger Friday

I'd like to introduce you to Stephanie Campbell, a fellow author with Musa Publishing. She will be sharing a post on strong women and her newly released novel, Hot Wheels. Enjoy!

Women, Evolving
By Stephanie Campbell

Due to my latest release, Hot Wheels, where my main character, Lindy, has to face a confusing high school world in a wheelchair, I am writing about strong women—and how we have gotten stronger. 

Times are changing. Even just fifty years ago, girls were expected to be the perfect, Leave it to Beaver mothers. Career based women were considered strange. That is no longer the case, and it has begun to show more than ever—with books and movies changing with it. Even cartoon movie classics. Disney used to bring out books based on fairytales like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Both of these movies involved being "rescued" by a man. In the last three years, it’s the movies with strong women that are influencing girls. Tangled features Rapunzel but with a unique twist. She is the one in charge. Sure, at the end she still needs Mr. Handsome to come and save her, but she's pretty darn tough with that frying pan. And now the number one movie on the list is Brave, another story celebrating the strength of girls. 

The intelligence of girls has grown, too. Girls score nine percent higher than boys on educational tests. Girls are leaving boys behind so much that is has become a worry to some educators. At colleges, the averages are forty five percent male and fifty five percent female. Sure, ten percent doesn't appear like a lot, until you examine the amount of students that is.

 In short, girls are getting stronger and smarter at an alarming rate, something that is being celebrated through multiple forms. Hopefully, women will continue to grow—and change the world with it.

Author Bio:

Stephanie Campbell is a novelist in Ogden, Utah, where she lives with her family and too many dogs. Her interests include history, traveling, classic movies, and biographies. She published her first book at seventeen and has continued to write with the goal of being a career novelist. She is the author of the novels Poachers, Dragon Night, Tasting Silver, Keeping Freedom, Late but not Never, Case Closed, Icy Tales of Draga, E is for Eternity, Specimen X, and P.S. I Killed My Mother, all of which are being published or have been published by traditional houses. She has been interviewed by All Romance e-books, Hobbes End Publishing and Night Owl Reviews.

She can be reached at http://stephaniecampbellreleases.weebly.com/

Her blog is http://stephaniecampbellsblog.blogspot.com/

Book Bio:

Lindy thinks her life is defined by her wheelchair, but one secret admirer sees more—he sees Hot Wheels.

Lindy Harris is a quiet, studious high school student who’s in love with books. When she sees a note written in her favorite poetry book to “Hot Wheels”, she’s in disbelief. That’s when she realizes the book belonged to the sender—Mark Ferry, the student body president. She’s all but convinced when she finds out that he, of all people, wants to go out with her.

Excerpt:

It was quiet and dark in the library, the best place in the world for Lindy Harris. She hated the hustle and bustle of regular high school, where everyone always laughed at her. It wasn’t that she was ugly, mean, or dumb. It was because she had been born without the ability to walk.

At her old school, where everyone had known her since the third grade, it hadn’t been a problem. They knew she was nice and liked to go where everyone else did. It was only when her father got a job transfer that she had a problem. She had to leave all of her old friends and move half a country away to a place where people avoided her eyes and giggled when she went by them. It was hard to imagine that anything would ever change for her here.

She rolled over to the shelves and selected her favorite book. It was a poetry book, the one that she read every day when she finished with her homework. She was stunned by the atrocity that had occurred there. Somebody, she didn’t know who, had written underneath her favorite poem in big, bold, nasty handwriting. To someone who didn’t love books, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but she had been taught to respect literature and instantly felt angry at the perpetrator. She looked up at the plump librarian, wondering if he would know who had done this.

She looked back down, noting not just the text now, but the writing itself. It said:

Dear Hot Wheels,
You are beautiful. I just wanted you to know that.
Sincerely,
Your Secret Admirer

Hot wheels? Lindy wondered, feeling shy. She shut the book and looked both ways, as if expecting the person who had written the note to come falling out of the woodwork. She went over to the librarian and showed him the book, and then she felt very hot in the face when he read the message and then stared her straight in the eye. One thing for sure, this had never happened at her old school.

She had never even had a boyfriend in her natural born life, as embarrassing as that was.

What surprised Lindy even more so was when the librarian said, “Do you know what the odd thing is about this entire ordeal? This isn’t even our book.”

“Huh?” Lindy asked, eyes wide. “Of course it is. I’ve been reading poetry from this book for the past month. It’s the same one. I remember the first poem because it was my absolute favorite.”

“Look,” the librarian said, bending behind the high desk. Because Lindy’s wheelchair was seated very low, she was unable to see him for a moment. When he resurfaced, he had the same poetry book, except that this one had a white sticker with a barcode on it. “This is ours. No one has written in it. I have no idea who owns that poetry book, but it certainly isn’t one of ours.”

“But how could somebody know that I’ve been reading this? It isn’t like I checked the book out. I just read it during lunch.”

The librarian smiled. “I don’t know. Maybe somebody has a bit of a crush on you, Lindy. You are in high school, you know. Is it so surprising?”

Lindy lowered her eyes and flushed. Inside, she thought, Yes, it is.

After that, she took the book back from the librarian and went back to her usual table, only she could barely concentrate. The librarian had told her to “hold onto the book for awhile.” She wasn’t sure what the point was in doing so. Wouldn’t the book be better off in the lost and found? It had been a goofy message, a love note, but that was all. Maybe it hadn’t even been for her eyes. Maybe there was somebody in the school that really, really enjoyed rollerblading, for example.
 

These thoughts tangled in her mind even as the bell rang to go to class. She stared at the shelf and then at the book that she held in her hands. What should she do? If she kept the book, then she would have to admit that the note was to her. If she put the book back, then that would confuse the librarian as well as the person who had sent the note. If she put the book in the lost in found, then that felt almost like a refusal in her mind…

She gave the book one last look and slipped it into her backpack, rolling off toward her American History class.

Hotwheels is available directly through Musa Publishing