Guest Post: High School Dances With YA Urban Fantasy Writer, Jo Ramsey!
 The very cool, talented author Jo Ramsey agreed to be on my insane blog! I'm so happy to have her here and encourage you all to check out her website: www.joramsey.com. This woman is amazing! |
Hey everyone! I'm just off my blog tour, and I'm very lucky to have the lovely Jo Ramsey gracing my blog with a story that my YA-loving soul absolutely loves. Remember prom? Was yours magic? Did you go? Did you dance? Ditch? Celebrate another way? Jo is sharing her story here, and I'd love to ask you guys to share your favorite prom memories in the comments. Also make sure you check the links to Jo's awesome book, From the Ashes, which is book 5 in her fabulous Reality Shifts Series, and the cover of her upcoming short story The Harvest Dance (where we get to see Shanna enjoy her school's version of Homecoming)!
High School Dances
If you’ve attended school, chances are you’ve been to a school dance. And
if you’ve attended a school dance, chances are that at least once, you ended up
upset or embarrassed.
Dances can be fun. My sixteen-year-old daughter went to a semi-formal
dance at her school last year. Her unofficial date was her best friend, who’s
male and who wasn’t interested in actually having a date to the dance. They
went together because it was that kind of dance. Both of them said they had a
great time, and my usually shy daughter told me she danced with people she
didn’t know.
On the other hand, dances, especially semi-formal or formal ones, can be
pretty stressful. I remember agonizing over what I was going to wear to my
senior prom. My mother ended up finding her old prom dress and having it remade
for me. The problem was, I didn’t have a date. The guy I wanted to go with was
two grades behind me, even though he was only a couple months younger, so I
wasn’t sure I could ask him. Or who would have to pay for everything if I did
ask him. I ended up not asking.
The night of the dance, I got all dressed up, planning to drive myself to
the dance and go alone. Then my mother announced that she was driving me
because she didn’t trust me to drive her car in high heels. (Huh?) She drove me
to the place where the dance was being held, and I saw all the couples walking
in and froze. It was bad enough that my mother was my freaking chauffeur, but
EVERYONE ELSE had dates and I didn’t. I ended up having an anxiety attack and
not being able to go in.
I’ve always kind of wished I had gone alone. The next school day, a few
people asked me why I hadn’t, and said they would have danced with me and that
they had admired me for saying I would go alone. I’ve also kind of wished I had
asked the boy I wanted to go with. But you know what they say about wishes…
I did go to some dances in high school, but most of them weren’t very
much fun for me. I was almost never asked to dance, and to this day I cringe
when I hear “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” because that was the most
commonly-played slow song at the dances I went to. (Though Glee did a pretty
good version of that song.) I kept going to dances because I kept hoping that
“this” would be the time it would be different. It never was, but I kept trying
anyway.
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| If you like YA urban fantasy, this series is a MUST read! |
In book five of my YA urban fantasy series Reality Shift, From the Ashes, Shanna Bailey agonizes
over being asked to her school’s “Harvest Dance” (their version of Homecoming)
by her former next-door neighbor Ken, who seems a lot more interested in Shanna
than he used to. I didn’t manage to write about the dance in the book, since
somehow it seemed more important to have Shanna and Jonah preventing the
Universe from being vaporized, so I wrote a separate short story about the
dance, which will be available this month. Shanna has plenty of reasons to be
afraid of going to the dance, and of going on a date, but she pushes through
and does it anyway.
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You can find out more about Jo and her books on her website, http://www.joramsey.com. The Reality Shift
series so far is available from Jupiter Gardens Press, http://www.jupitergardens.com.
