Brent Crawford – författare

Meet Will Carter, but feel free to call him Carter. (Yes, he knows it’s a lazy nickname, but he didn’t have much say in the matter.)

Here are five things you should know about him:

1. He has a stuttering problem, particularly around boobs and belly buttons.

2. He battles Attention Deficit Disorder every minute of every day…unless he gets distracted.

3. He’s a virgin, mostly because he’s no good at talking to girls (see number 1).

4. He’s about to start high school.

5. He’s totally not ready.

Join Carter for his freshman year, where he’ll search for sex, love, and acceptance anywhere he can find it. In the process, he’ll almost kill a trombone player, face off with his greatest nemesis, suffer a lot of blood loss, narrowly escape death, run from the cops (not once, but twice), get caught up in a messy love triangle, meet his match in the form of a curvy drill teamer, and surprise the hell out of everyone, including himself.

School is finally over, and Will Carter has (barely) survived his freshman year. Unfortunately, he quickly learns that the summer break he’s been craving just might break him. When he and his girlfriend, Abby, part ways, Carter can’t help but think his summer is ruined.

Things start to look up after he’s unexpectedly cast in an independent film opposite the world’s biggest tween sensation, Hilary Idaho. With Hollywood knocking on his door, Carter gets a taste of the good life. Suddenly, his small town, friends, and family don’t seem as great as they used to. As tends to happen when Carter is around, things spiral out of control, and he begins to fear that he’s not the “somebody” he thinks he is but more the “nobody” he’s pretty sure he always has been. But maybe, with the help of a few friends, he’ll start to see things in a whole new light.

After an eventful freshman year and a disastrous summer, fifteen-year-old Will Carter returns to Merrian High none the wiser. The year starts off pretty normally. He’s back on the football field (the bench area of the field). He and his boys start a fight club to defend themselves against Scary Terry Moss, who is out of juvie and hunting Carter. And he goes to homecoming again with Amber Lee. The good news: she’s really into him this year. The bad news: she’s all kinds of pregnant (not with his kid, but that probably goes without saying).

When his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Abby, is accepted to the New York Drama School, Carter’s world is thrown upside down. She wants him to apply to the school too. He knows it would be awesome, and he’s pretty sure Abby would let him see her naked in New York. But what about his boys? And with his sister headed to college, can his parents survive without him? Plus, the application is really long.

It will take a lot of soul-searching (and in-school suspensions) for Carter to make his decision. In the meantime, there are plenty of classes to be late to, parties to avoid, and cops to run from.

The laughs and good times continue in Carter’s Unfocused, One-Track Mind, the third book in the Carter series.