I just found out from the editor who worked so hard on KITTENS, Marissa Walsh, that the book is featured in Random House's "It's A First!" promotion (that means it's a first published novel, and KITTENS is in fact my very first book!). They've chosen this snappy little excerpt for the brochure:
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I looked in Matthew’s eyes, still feeling Frosty’s encouraging teeth on my thumb, and I opened my mouth, and out came words. They were clumsy, mumbled words that communicated, if you could make them out, some vague sense of an amazing phenomenon that demanded to be understood, one of those ideas so self-evident that it’s easy to miss, and clichés of that ilk.
“Cool,” he says, unfazed by my idiocy. “What is it?”
“It’s, uh, love,” I hear myself say.
“Love. Whoa,” says Matthew. “That’s big.”
“It is. That’s why I want us to work as a team.” My newborn voice is gaining some balance and starting to spread its folded, wet wings. “On their own, poets have only gotten so far on the subject of love, and they’ve mostly been describing the symptoms. And science, basically, is--“
“Primarily concerned with breeding,” he mutters, as Frosty hops from my lap to his and starts chewing a button on his flannel shirt.
“Exactly.” I can see that Matthew’s mental wheels are starting to spin. But before I can continue, Matthew interjects.
“It’s too broad a topic. It needs focus. A place to start.”
“We start with me,” I say, simply.
“You?”
“Me. And you.” Matthew sits up a little straighter, now actually confused. Frosty starts climbing up his chest and sits on his shoulder.
I lean forward. “Matthew, here’s the thing.”
Okay, here it comes, here’s the thing. Breathe in, breathe out. “I have a huge, huge crush on you. I have for months.” There, I said the thing. “And this crush I have on you--it’s really fascinating!” I choose my words with care, working hard to keep this phenomenon of ME BEING TOTALLY (OH MY GOD I’M TELLING HIM!!) IN LOVE WITH MATTHEW DWYER!!!! in the realm of scientific inquiry. “I mean, you’re a great guy, of course, any girl might reasonably have a crush on you,” I go on, reasonably. “But there are so many guys at school! So why you? Why me? How does this type of thing happen?”
Matthew’s not screaming, or laughing, or running away. My pal Frosty’s nibbling on his hair, which I take as a very good sign.
I build up to my big finish. “Based on the amount of poetry, literature, art and song that explores the nature of love, I think a lot of people would be dying to get some answers. Now,” I conclude, with a touch of drama, “it’s time for science to pick up the ball.”
Matthew gently removes Frosty from the back of his neck and puts him on his lap, stroking his cloud-colored fur. He doesn’t look at me at all, he just pets Frosty.
Who winks at me. I swear, he really did.
After ten eternal seconds of no sound at all but the contrapuntal breathing of Love-Struck Kitten, Bewildered Dawg and Genius Rabbit, Matthew finally looks at me.
“I think we could win the Science Fair with this one,” is what he says.
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