“Loved this story! Fun, warm and witty, Meredith First perfectly captured the feelings of a high school girl trying to navigate her way through the halls of Gridley High. Whether you’re 15 or 55, you’ll enjoy the trials and tribulations of this vulnerable yet bright and scrappy girl as she grows, both emotionally and physically, into a woman.” Karen H.
“Very interesting and entertaining story. All the makings of a great movie!” Cindy G.
“This book is creatively written and will pull you into tears followed by laughter.” RoseMarie J Curcuru
MEREDITH FIRST left an insanely great recruiting career with Apple, Inc., to write the books that were haunting her dreams. After studying abroad at the University of London, she graduated with a broadcasting degree from Oregon State University. She is the founder of Gridley Girls, LLC, the publisher of her Gridley Girls series of books and hopes to empower young people through the website, GridleyGirls.com and through the donation of 10% of all profits to children’s charities.
That’s the traditional author bio, but the real story is that I’m a geek. Let’s get that out right now. Oh sure, I’m a cheerleader geek. I’m not a geek you’d necessarily feel sorry for, but I’m a geek nonetheless. I had two dreams growing up: I wanted to write books about my group of friends and our crazy childhood and I wanted to work with computers. Neither of those are the dreams of a super-cool kid.
As often happens with creative-type careers, the first dream got pushed aside for a more economically feasible career and I entered the high tech world upon college graduation. I loved it. I felt like I was living my dream, helping people get jobs with Apple, the greatest company in the world. Until I started having vivid dreams involving the characters in my book. Heart-pounding dreams that kept me up at night.
Dreams that were so real, sometimes I awoke with my heart beating out of my chest. But I was never scared. It took me a few months, but I finally realized that the main character in my dreams was an older version of one of our best friends growing up in The Group (what my group of friends were called since middle school).
Weird thing was, this friend I was seeing in my dreams had passed away. 30 years prior. Why was she visiting me in my sleep all these years later? The only answer I could surmise was that I was supposed to write my books. The books where I kept her alive. I’d wanted to write them since we were in Mr. Erickson’s eighth grade English class where we published short stories. I wanted to re-imagine Jennifer’s life and let her grow up with us. Do for us what God couldn’t.
Keep my friend alive.
Gridley Girls is the first book in a series of the same name. Each book will flash back to a different year in our childhood to show us that regardless of how hard we may try, we never escape our high school images and decisions we make in our youth really do come back to haunt us. Sometimes literally.
As for the virginity thing? I’ve long believed that everybody has a virginity story and most of those stories are so strongly woven into our DNA that they should be shared. Embraced. We need to have more open views of our sexuality. Maybe if we could talk about it more, we could make it more special. Especially for young women. So, there will be a virginity story (or blatant lack thereof) in each high school book as well.
10% of the profits from my company, Gridley Girls, LLC, will be donated to children’s charities. For this first book, GRIDLEY GIRLS, the donations will go to one specific charity (they who shall not be named) who works to prevent catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. No child should ever be denied treatment when they are sick.
Thanks for stopping by my author page. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. Check out my website at www.GridleyGirls.com and pop on over to Facebook (Gridley Girls, Meredith First) and Twitter (@GridleyGirls @MeredithFirst) too.
(This is a sponsored post.)