Awesome Authors: Kristen Kemp

Kristen Kemp has written 7 young adult novels for Scholastic, including Breakfast at Bloomingdale's, The Dating Diaries, and I Will Survive. She's a longtime freelancer for women's magazines such as Cosmo, Glamour, Self, and Seventeen. She currently writes till her fingers turn purple for CafeMom.com. She lives in Montclair, NJ with her twin girls, a baby boy, a big Swedish husband, her cat, and her new puppy.

Blogs are a central part of the Bradford Novels universe. Why did you start blogging, and how did you come up with the name for your blog?
I have a few blogs, but I won't name them here because they're not cool. Well, okay. One is http://www.cafemom.com/dailybuzz/healthy_living. I do it because they pay me. The second is a labor of love, www.montclairkids.com. I would love to have a personal one eventually, too.

What's your favorite thing about blogging?
I just get to be myself and make jokes and not worry so much about technical things, like grammar. Kidding, grammar is very important, but it's not essential in blogging like it is everywhere else. Speed is more important than grammatical perfection--both is even better.

What's the difference between a blog and a diary?
Blogs are more immediate. They're more frequent. They're juicier, too.

Spencer Grace Kelly, the main character in GoldenGirl, is named after her distant relative, the Princess of Monaco. What's your favorite Grace Kelly movie, and why?
Rear Window. She's just so beautiful. I'm not actually old enough to know a lot of Grace Kelly movies. My mother, though, is a diehard fan.

GoldenGirl is full of scandals and exposed secrets. What was the biggest scandal at your high school?
The football team was jumping off a railroad bridge once into the Ohio River. I grew up there, in Louisville, KY. I wrote a story about it for the school newspaper, and the local TV news picked up the story. We all got put on probation. It sucked.

What's the worst thing you ever did to a friend? Are you still friends with her or him?
I sent a hurtful email about a friend to that friend accidentally. Thank goodness she forgave me. I had to send her a voodoo doll with my name on it and take her to many nice dinners. But she's my best friend, and she did forgive me.

What are your most recent books? What new projects are you working on now? Breakfast at Bloomingdale's. I'm writing health, diet, and nutrition for a few websites, and I hope to start on a young adult book about a fairy with a short attention span and boy problems soon.