Is Kissing a Girl Who Smokes Like Licking an Ashtray?

Written by Randy Powell

Narrated by Ed Sala

Meet Biff, a weird, wild-haired high school senior with a couple of problems. He's 18 but looks more like 14, which makes it hard for people-especially girls-to take him seriously. He's too shy to say anything more than "Hi' to Tommie, the girl he's had a crush on for two years. The way things are going, it doesn't look like Biff will ever find a girlfriend or get the chance to kiss a girl. That is, until he meets Heidi. A beautiful, brash cigarette smoker, she's the kind of dangerous girl Biff usually tries to avoid. But the more he gets to know her, the more he realizes Heidi may be the best friend he's ever had. If he trusts her, she might even teach him how to talk to Tommie. Randy Powell delivers an authentic and poignant look at the real-life anxieties of today's teenagers. Smart dialogue, sassy characters, and swiftly-paced prose make this ALA Best Book for Young Adults an exciting choice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781470356835

Randy Powell

Randy Powell I've lived in Seattle all my life -- since 1956. I live here now with my wife, Judy, and our two sons, Eli and Drew. I like the outdoors, books, fresh crab and raw oysters, and rain. As a kid, I was crazy about sports. All sports. When I wasn't playing the real thing, I was playing some imaginary form of it. I wasn't a great athlete, just obsessed. I peaked when I was eleven. Our little league football team won the city championship, and the coach gave me the game ball. I lost that ball a few years later. I'm still looking for it. I had fun reading and writing. When I found a book I liked, I threw myself into it, into the main character's skin. I'd try to write in the author's style. Writing was hard work, but what a rush it gave me, coming up with the right phrase, finishing a piece and feeling it click, reading it to the class and getting some laughs. In high school, in the early 1970s, my hero was Arthur Ashe, the tennis pro. I concentrated on tennis and worked hard at it, but not hard enough. Today it's still my game of choice, and I still don't work hard enough. High school is also where I became serious about writing. I became even more so in college, at the University of Washington. I made two trips to Europe, worked summers in Alaska as a deckhand on a fishing boat, and wrote short stories, novels, and even formula romances. After college, I got a job teaching at an alternative school for junior high and high school dropouts. I taught for four years and loved it, but finally left because it ate up my writing time. My breakthrough in writing came when I learned to look inside myself and write about the things I cared and felt deeply about. I guess it was only natural that my first published novel, My Underrated Year, should be about a high school football and tennis player. Yes, there's a lot of myself in that book, although hardly any of the incidents actually happened. That's true of my other books as well. I enjoy visiting schools and talking to students about writing. I also love hearing from readers. You can write to me in care of my publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I promise I'll write back!