March 2008      Lauren here, writing on behalf of myself, Sarah, and the Mysterious E. (I just call her that to bug her. I also call her the Dignified E. Y’all should, too. It’ll be great.) Anyway, I’m sitting at my favorite bakery, scarfing down YUMMY BACON (which is not what you think of as bakery fare, I know) and thinking about how lucky I am. Lucky to have friends, lucky to have fans, lucky to have bacon. It’s a good, good life. I bet y’all feel that way, too—and I *know* y’all are as appreciative of your friends as I am. You probably email them all the time (even if they’re sitting next to you at your school’s media center, hee hee) and give them pressies on Facebook and leave them comments on MySpace. Am I right, or am I right? (The bacon is making me feel tough and MANLY, and I’m filled with the need to talk like a. . . .tough, bacon-eating, Mafia-esque person, I guess. Don’t Mafia-esque people say, “Am I right, or am I right?”?) Yes. Well. E., Sarah, and I do all sorts of friend-y stuff over the Internet, too—as a matter of fact, our novel, How to Be Bad, was born on MySpace. That’s right, baby. Here’s how it happened. Sarah—because she’s, like, crazily motivated and energetic and COOL—started a MySpace group all about books for teens (wanna see? It’s at http://groups.myspace.com/teenlit), and I posted a message on it saying that I’d always wanted to write a book with another author, alternating chapters back and forth and generally having a grand old time. “Anytime, baby,” E. replied. Within minutes Sarah had emailed something on the order of “Me too! Me too!” We decided to go for it—even though we barely knew each other—and after many discarded ideas, we settled on a road trip: Three girls. Three voices. Three problems. One novel. And now!!!! Excitement, excitement!!!!!! We’re making a whole How to Be Bad MySpace page. Yaaaaaay! It’ll launch in April, and we are expecting every single one of y’all to come friend us, ’kay? It has pictures and stories and all kinds of groovy, goofy stuff. (Maybe a little too goofy—à la a photo of Sarah at fifteen eating a watermelon as big as her head and another of E. wearing puffy peach-colored pants that are sooooo eighties. But y’all can take it, yeah?) We also threw in some memories about times when we ourselves were bad, although of course yours truly was never anything but—ahem—an angel. (Mom, you’re not supposed to be reading this. Go away.) (Just kidding! Love you, Mom!!!) And, of course, there are some fun pictures of us on the road trip we went on together. Here’s one of the three of us wearing our How to Be Bad–inspired T-shirts; they’ll make more sense once you read the book. But here are some hints: Marco is a hottie the girls meet on the road, Brady is a sweet and somewhat confused boyfriend who just went to college, and God is, well, God, with whom Jesse has a somewhat complicated relationship. Anyway, our whole road trip was a blast. In addition to sauntering around in our homemade T-shirts, we also soaked in hot tubs, got caught in thunderstorms, ate way too much chocolate, and even met some alligators. In one way or the other, most of our adventures from that little road trip made it into How to Be Bad. And now we’re posting ’em on our MySpace page! Mwahahahaha. . . . E: I cannot defend the puffy peach pants. They are true monstrosities of fashion and I can’t believe I ever wore them. They would look bad even on Sarah Jessica Parker. But I loved them! I wore them all the time! When I went to Paris and could only pack, like, two pairs of pants, I packed those, even though they were so puffy they took up a ton of room in my suitcase. Sarah: I don’t know about cool, but I am feeling especially energetic today! Could be because I’m sitting at Starbucks and I’ve already had two Caramel Macchiatos. Not bacon, but still yummy. The coffee has also made me especially observant. . . .so observant that I’ve noticed we almost forgot to give you the MySpace page address. You can find us in all our puffy-peach-pant glory at www.myspace.com/how_to_be_bad. Enjoy!