Spotlight & Giveaway: Rob Starr by J. A. Howard

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author J. A. Howard to HJ!

Hi J. A. Howard and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Rob Starr!

 
Dear HJ Readers. I am so happy to share some of my new book, Rob Starr, with you. Please check out the giveaway!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Rob Starr is actually about a girl, Mia Morgan. Mia is a snarky, awkward, sixteen-year-old who is resigned to her mostly invisible, unpopular existence. That is until Rob Starr, Ellsworth High School’s hottest basketball hero, moves in with her family when his mom is hospitalized after being hit by a car. Quickly, Mia becomes Rob’s math tutor, confidante—and his secret girlfriend. Soon, Mia’s world is changing in ways she never thought possible: new clothes, new friends, partying with the popular kids, and leaving her old, loyal friends hurt and confused.
Mia senses it can’t last and she’s not wrong. Chloe Olsen, Rob’s on again, off again girlfriend is plotting behind her back which leads to a devestating act of bullying. A humiliated Mia is forced to figure out who she can trust, how to get through it, and most importantly, who she really wants to be.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Letter to Reader,
Before you start this, you should know one important thing, this book is NOT for adults. It’s not a charming adventure story or a teen romance (with or without vampires) or a story about some amazing kid who bravely survived a war, or famine, or poverty. It’s a story about high school and not even one of those books where things work out if you’re a “good” kid or if you do the right thing. Adults will hate it.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• While Rob Starr is totally imagined, the original spark came from an experience my college roomate had in high school in which she tutored the star basketball player.
• Chapter 15 was the most fun to write. It’s about a Halloween Event in Ellsworth, the town in which the story takes place. It was fun for me to imagine the costumes and who would wear what. I find Halloween fascinating because I think that costumes are very revealing. There is a Halloween scene in my first book ,The Third Coin, as well.
• The hardest part to write was the sex. I really wanted to capture the akwardness and honesty of those early sexual experiences.

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

Mia, the protagonist, is part me, and definitely a little of each of my daughters. Moreover, she is the embodiment of expexperiences that I have had, or heard about over the years.

I think what surprised me about Mia is how strong she is, and how she always knew who she was even when she was making stupid choices. It was as if the real her was fighting her way out from the inside.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

Some spoiler alerts here but here goes:
I would choose the scene in which Mia and Rob kiss for the second time. It would give me a chance to see how each character would play their part; Mia awkward and trying to navigate something completely new and Rob charming and maybe a little manipulative. It would also allow us to see their chemistry.

“You aren’t mad about the other day, are you?” Rob asked looking up, his eyes searching my face, his words coming out in a rush. “I mean I hope you’re not. But you sort of ran out of the room and I realized that you might think I was trying to get over on you – you know, like…take advantage of you or something … and you’ve been so nice and your family has been so nice and I don’t know… it was kind of weird with everything else going on. I mean I don’t know if you even like me that way.”
By this point, I couldn’t really process what I was hearing. He was talking about the kiss of course but at first it sounded like he was trying to tell me that it was too weird, and he was sorry he did it, but then it also sort of sounded like maybe he meant something else.
“You’re right,” I gambled.
“I am?”
“Yeah, it was a little weird.”
“Right,” he said pulling his finger away and nodding. “I’m sorry.”
Was I crazy or did he actually look disappointed? He stood up and started to put his books in his backpack. I followed his lead and finished collecting my things. We stood there, packing up in silence for a minute and for some reason, I felt like I might cry. I was completely confused about what was happening. Had I just dissed Rob Starr?
I took a deep breath. “You don’t have to be sorry about kissing me if that’s what you mean. I’m not… mad or anything. It was okay… you know… it was nice.”
Rob stopped and turned to me. “It was?” he said hopefully, his head tipped to one side. He looked so innocent and sincere I couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah,” I said, quietly.
“Really nice?” He asked. One eyebrow was up and there was a smile pushing at the corners of his mouth.
“I guess…” I said looking down at the papers – not that I could actually see anything, “really nice.”
“Ha!” he grinned. “I don’t know who you’ve been kissing, Mia Morgan, but that kiss was not nice.”
For a moment, my heart stopped. Was he goofing on me? Was this some kind of cruel upperclassman thing – the old get-the-nerdy-sophomore-to-admit-she-liked-kissing-you-then-completely-humiliate-her joke?
But then Rob stepped closer to me. He put his arm around my waist and pulled me towards him, so our bodies were touching. Then he put his mouth to my ear and whispered.
“That was the hottest kiss in the history of history.”

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

On the surface Rob Starr is about first love, but really it’s a book about self love. It’s about forgiving yourself for your mistakes and learning to choose yourself when someone is not giving you the respect you deserve.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

I am currently working on a post apocolypitc, YA Scifi novel with a female protagonist who is a shape shifter. I think it will be a series. I am also contemplating a sequeal to Rob Starr.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 3 Signed copies of ROB STARR by J. A. Howard

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What moments in high school were the most embarrassing or difficult?
Who or what got you through it?
How and when did you learn to stand up for yourself, be yourself?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Excerpt from Rob Starr:

Ellsworth High School Case #1141
Transcript of interview: March 21
Student: Mia Morgan
Counselor: Dr. Janis Dubrovski

Dr. Dubrovski: So, you’re saying you don’t know if you were raped or not?
Mia Morgan: No. I mean… yes. I mean… I don’t remember things clearly, but I’m pretty sure that specific thing didn’t happen, and I think I would remember that so…no.
Dr. Dubrovski: So, it wasn’t rape. Well, that’s a relief, I suppose. But, in the pictures it does look…
Mia Morgan: I know what it looks like in the pictures but they’re not real – I mean… it’s not what happened.
Dr. Dubrovski: So, you are saying that the pictures are fake?
Mia Morgan: Not fake… faked. You know, edited and posed when I was…out of it. And they made it look… they made me look like I was…it looks really bad. Like I was into it. But I wasn’t. It didn’t happen like that.

CHAPTER 5
Picture Day
October 21st
The next day was picture day. Not a big deal or anything but everyone did try to look at least marginally better than they normally do. I spent the better part of an hour straightening my wavy, frizzy, annoying hair and did my makeup better than just my usual mascara and lip gloss. When I came down to breakfast, I was surprised to find Rob was there wearing a jacket and tie.
“Morning,” he said. “You look pretty.”
I must have looked shocked because Rob chuckled. “What? You do. Your hair looks good like that.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled trying to regain my composure. “You do too.” I said. Although in all honesty, he looked really tired again.
Rob nodded. “I have to wear a tie for the student government picture.”
Did I mention Rob was senior class treasurer? The irony of this was not lost on his math tutor.
The rest of the morning was like walking around in a cloud because – in case you missed it– Rob Starr said I looked pretty. Okay, so I knew it wasn’t a big deal or anything. I knew he was only being polite – just acknowledging I’d made an effort – but still, it wasn’t like he’d said I looked nice – which is what most people would have said, or cute which would have been flattering but also might have meant that he still thought I was a little kid. Nope – he said pretty – which, in my opinion, is better than nice and cute put together.
What was even more amazing was that it sort of seemed like maybe Rob wasn’t the only one who thought so. I swear that ever since Rob had moved in, boys at school had started to look at me differently. At first, I thought it was my imagination but no… guys were definitely giving me looks and not just looks but smiling and trying to make eye contact.
I could only conclude that my increased proximity to Rob (and the increased effort in my appearance) had somehow made me more attractive. Not surprisingly, I was clueless how to react to the attention – terrified I might do or say something stupid – like dropping the apple off my tray in the cafeteria when I was walking to my seat. Yup, that happened. It rolled under one of the Heam Tottie tables. I just kept walking and tried to pretend I didn’t notice but…well…mortifying.
While all this was very new and actually kind of exciting (with the exception of the apple incident), my new status was seriously messing up my schedule. I had missed the last two band practices and the last two Art Club meetings. On top of that, Stephanie and Carmen Ruiz (another one of my good friends) got mad at me when I said I had to tutor Rob instead of joining their project group for Global History. The funny part was, they didn’t really need me. Carmen was very likely going to be the valedictorian of our class, and Stephanie, while ditzy, was a solid A student. I suspected the real reason they were mad was that I – now offi-cially – knew Rob Starr and was getting a lot of attention. I should have seen this as a warning sign – a foreshadowing of things to come – but I was too engrossed in my new experiences to give it a second thought.
So, before I go on, I need to explain something. In elementary school, I had tons of friends. Not that I was Miss Popularity or anything, but I never had to worry about not having friends. However something happened that summer between fifth and sixth grade. It was as if I’d missed some an-nouncement that said it was time to stop playing with Barbies and Legos and to grow up and start liking boys. From the first day of middle school, I could tell something was wrong with me. Why was I the same goofy, Polly-Pocket-hoarding, friendship-bracelet-making kid, but everyone else had changed? The girls I used to hang out with almost every day after school suddenly had other plans. I was left out and hurt. I tried to make new friends, but no one seemed very interested. I lost my confidence and eventually I just gave stopped trying.
When I met Carmen and Stephanie the second week of sev-enth grade it was a huge relief for all of us. Turns out we had all gone through a brutally lonely and miserable first year of middle school. So, when we finally found each other, we swore to always be friends. We promised to never leave one another out or talk behind each other’s backs. We vowed we’d be there for each other no matter what. And we swore that no new friend or boy-friend would ever come between us. At the time, it seemed like an easy promise to make – I’d finally found people who I could be myself around; kids I could trust. I never imagined that it would ever be hard to keep these promises or how quickly things could change.
I guess with all the recent events, I shouldn’t have been sur-prised to find Chloe Olsen standing at my locker at the end of the day, but I was. I was very, very surprised. There she was in all her tiny glory wearing a cropped, pink #endbullying t-shirt, without a hint of irony. She was flanked by two other Baditudes. All three were looking at something on Chloe’s phone and laughing.
Several feet away, trying to act casual, were Stephanie and Carmen who, although annoyed with me, were still apparently willing to wait for me so we could walk home together. Or maybe they just wanted to find out what Chloe Olsen had to say.
I waited several seconds for Chloe and the Baditudes to notice me, but they either didn’t or were pretending they didn’t. Finally, I said, “Uh, hi. Do you mind if I uh …get in there?”
“That’s what he said,” said the taller of the backup-singer Baditudes and they all cracked up. I should mention here that I, like everyone else, had heard this joke a million times before. It was really popular for a while in middle school and we used to giggle about it back then knowing it had something to do with sex. Of course, we’d probably said it at all the wrong times, not fully understanding what we were suggesting. But now, when these girls said it, it sounded like they really knew what they were talking about. And when you’re fifteen and kids – practically your own age – are joking (knowingly) about sex it was pretty awkward for those of us who were still in the dark.
Finally, Chloe looked up at my face and then slowly scanned me up and down. When her gaze returned to my eyes she said, “Are you Mia,”? pronouncing it My-ah when it should be Mee-ah, but hell, who am I to correct Chloe Olsen?
“Yes…”
She frowned prettily. “So, Rob has been, like, staying at your house, right?”
I nodded.
She smiled sweetly. “And you’ve been, like, helping him with his Trig homework?”
I nodded again and cleared my throat nervously. But when I spoke my voice was froggy. “I’m his tutor,” I croaked, hoping she understood that it was just a job – that I wasn’t trying to flirt with him or anything.
“That’s so nice of you,” she said smiling generously. Her tone reminded me of my kindergarten teacher, Miss Mruz.
“Oh…yeah… sure.”
“You know we’re all, like, counting on you My-ah. Rob needs to pass Trig.”
“Yeah… definitely.”
“And, well, I know I like, probably don’t have to say this but…that’s all he needs.”
It didn’t come out exactly like a threat. Her tone was sweet and sing-songy. But the general idea was clear. Stay away from Rob.
When they strolled away, Stephanie and Carmen came rushing up.
“Shhhhh,” I hissed before either of them could speak. “Don’t say anything until we’re sure they’re gone.”
When the Baditudes were safely out of earshot, I conveyed the conversation to my friends. Stephanie was so excited, I thought she might faint. “Oh… my… God,” she gasped hysteri-cally, “Chloe Olsen thinks you’re her competition!”
“No, she doesn’t,” I said – although Stephanie did kind of have a point. “She’s just upset because Rob hasn’t been an-swering her texts.”
“What?” Carmen said. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t. I mean, I don’t know anything. Except that he’s really stressed out about his mom and school and I think he’s not acting like his normal self, is all.”
“I don’t blame him.” Carmen said thoughtfully. “But really, what does he know about being normal anyway? He’s like the most gorgeous person on earth!”
I did my best not to roll my eyes. Why did they always have to be so ridiculous? I headed home with the excuse that I needed to do a lot of homework, but the truth was, I just couldn’t get away from them fast enough.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Rob Starr (sigh) was out of Mia Morgan’s league. Of course, she had a crush on him. Everyone did. But in her case, it would just be way too weird to admit that. For starters, their moms were best friends and Mia had known Rob since she was five. But while Mia was now a demi-geek with relentlessly frizzy hair, Rob had become a demi-god and Ellsworth High’s basketball superstar. Besides, he’d been going out with the totally perfect Chloe Olsen since, like, forever.
But one October afternoon, a terrible accident changed everything. Suddenly, Mia and Rob were living in the same house and spending a lot of time alone together.
Soon, Mia’s world was changing in ways she never thought possible: new clothes, new friends, and an incredibly hot boyfriend. But was any of it real? Would any of it last? And did getting everything she thought she wanted mean giving up who she really was?
From J.A. Howard comes a refreshingly honest novel perfect for readers who loved Thirteen Reasons Why, I’ll Give You the Sun and Eleanor and Park. Told with sincerity and humor, Rob Starr takes on truth that first love isn’t always a fairytale, and that learning to love yourself may be much more important.

Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Kobo | Google |
 
 

Meet the Author:

J. A. Howard is a New York based author, podcaster and beauty industry executive. Howard is a life long fan of fantasy, science fiction and YA fiction. Her aspiration is to write the books she always wanted to read as a middle grader and teen. She is also advocate for the healthy development and empowerment of young women and equality for all women.

Her podcast, Sisters Cracking Up, which she cohosts with her real life sister, psychotherapist Abby Rodman, is a honest and humorous look at the challenges of midlife and can be found at podcasts.apple.com
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | GoodReads |