Yesterday, during a casual conversation, someone asked me what my book was about. After I told him about the characters and plot, he looked at me without blinking and said, “Oh, so it’s about gay teen suicide?”

While PROMISE ME SOMETHING has plenty of lighthearted moments, it also tackles some weighty subjects, including bullying, homophobia, and yes—teen suicide. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that a certain character in the book commits suicide because her friends, family, and teachers react with cruelty when she comes out to them as gay.

I cried at multiple points while writing this book, but the day I cried the hardest was the day I sat at my desk doing hours of research on all the news stories of teens who have committed suicide as a result of homophobia. Not fictional characters. REAL PEOPLE. Young people who were betrayed in the worst possible way by their families, schools, churches, and even their friends.

Once I started looking for these stories, they didn’t stop. I found dozens of them, each story eerily similar to the one before it. The same “characters” seemed to appear again and again, from bigoted teachers making offhand comments in the classroom to parents who—intentionally or not—taught their children to be ashamed of themselves just because of their sexuality.

I felt outraged. I felt heartbroken.

And then I found The Born This Way Foundation. Led by Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia, The BTWF is a nonprofit that aims to “reach youth and create a new culture of kindness, bravery, acceptance and empowerment.”

I have been a huge fan of Lady Gaga ever since she was my summer camp roommate when we were 14 years old. (Yes, we’re the same age! And no, she wasn’t called Lady Gaga back then.) When I first met her, I remember thinking that she looked like a popular girl—she had blonde hair with highlights and designer jeans. Because of those jeans, I remember thinking that she was probably going to be mean to me. After all, I wasn’t exactly popular, and I definitely didn’t own designer jeans.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Stefani was the best roommate I could have asked for. She was incredibly kind—not just to me, but to everyone in our hall. She didn’t think she was “above” anyone. Whether you were black, white, gay, straight, short, tall, popular or unpopular, she treated you with respect, kindness, and acceptance. And that’s when she was only 14.

So when I saw that Lady Gaga was behind The BTWF, I was intrigued and impressed. I’ve been following the progress of their Born Brave Bus Tour, which encourages teens to tell their stories of bravery. If my character Olive Barton were a real person, she would totally be all over this. After all, she has quite a story of bravery to tell.

So if you are a fan of PROMISE ME SOMETHING, I want to encourage you to get involved with the Born This Way Foundation, whether as a youth ambassador or just by participating online in the virtual Born Brave bus tour. Because while Olive may be a fictional character, she’s not alone. There are so many real teens out there who need your help in creating a more kind, loving, tolerant, supportive world.

Welcome to my new feature, Deleted Scene, in which I blog about a scene that I deleted from my YA novel, Promise Me Something.

In some cases, these deleted scenes were cut for good reason–many were so bad they made me laugh or cringe or want to hide under a rock in embarrassment. But the deleted scene that follows was cut for a different reason altogether: my editor thought it gave away too much. The truth is, when she raised this little seemingly innocuous question in her editorial letter, I had one of those clutch-your-chest-heart-attack moments. I did NOT want to get rid of the prologue. It was my favorite part of the whole book–the one part that I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt was good because I had combed over it and polished it so many times over so many years. In fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I wrote the first line of this book when I was in high school. Not even a senior in high school. A sophomore.  I know. I’ve been writing this book for a long time.

So when my editor suggested we cut the prologue, or at least drastically reduce it to a single paragraph, I did a lot of soul-searching. How many times had I told my own editing clients that they needed to “kill their darlings” or “drown their puppies” or “strangle their babies” or any number of other horrifically violent metaphors about cutting out their most precious images, metaphors, and paragraphs? How many times had I explained to other people that often a prologue is like scaffolding? You need it there to build the house, but once the house is finished, you can take the scaffolding down. In fact, you have to, to admire the house.

In the end, I tore town my scaffolding. My editor was right–it revealed too much, too soon. But if you don’t mind some (very slight) spoilers, go ahead and read on. I’d love to hear what you think.

Deleted Scene:

The night Olive Barton lay down on the tracks at Talmadge Hill, I got my first kiss. I was fourteen, wearing sticky drugstore lip-gloss that smelled like a creamsicle, and it was freezing inside the movie theater. Sugar-drunk off cherry soda and peppermint patties, I had no idea that, a mile away, a train was gliding like a ghost to swallow a girl.

Olive Barton was not the kind of teenager my father warned me about. She wore pleated skirts to school and had a small, pale face with a hawk nose. The boys in homeroom called her Miss Florida, after the flattest, skinniest state in the country, and the girls teased her about her glasses—a plain, wire-rimmed pair through which she quietly judged them. After the fact, somebody pointed out that Florida had beautiful beaches and all the boys said it was a shame Olive never knew that was what they meant.

By then, they were already re-writing her. People said: Remember how pretty she was? How kind? When the obituary ran in the Belltown Beacon, cheerleaders sobbed in the hallways. The boys who hot-glued Petri dishes to her pants in fourth grade walked around in a daze. Nobody called her “Olive Garden” anymore.

Me? I didn’t cry that day, though I’d known Olive better than most. I couldn’t stop thinking about Levi—about our lips colliding simultaneously with the train—and about “Disappearing,” the anonymous poem published in the lit mag. When Mr. Duncan came on the loudspeaker to announce the date of Olive‘s memorial service, he said, “She was a different kind of girl, too good for this world.” But all day long, I couldn‘t shake the feeling he was wrong.

I didn’t know then what Olive had planned—nobody did. A different kind of memorial service, definitely. And a different kind of disappearing altogether.

It’s here! Today is the official release day for PROMISE ME SOMETHING. You can actually walk into bookstores around the country and buy my book! Here it is at the sunset valley B&N in Austin. This is a good feeling, people.

With T-minus 5 days until the release of PROMISE ME SOMETHING, I’m thrilled to announce the Sara Squared Blog Tour, which kicks off today! It’s a joint blog tour with me and Sara Polsky, a contemporary YA debut author who has written a beautiful novel called THIS IS HOW I FIND HER about a teen whose mother has bipolar disorder.

The blog tour runs from today through September 10, and signed copies of both books will be given away throughout the tour. See below for links to all the stops on the tour. In the meantime, you can also enter to win one signed book directly from Albert Whitman Teen!  Please send an email to online@albertwhitman.com with the subject heading “Teen Book Giveaway.” Include your snail mail address. A random selection of 10 entries received by the end of the day, September 10, 2013, will receive one signed book.

Sara Squared Blog Tour

August 26-September 10, 2013

Sara Kocek ( Promise Me Something )

Sara Polsky ( This Is How I Find Her )

I am beyond excited to announce that my debut novel will be published in 2013 by Albert Whitman & Company. Here’s the blurb from Publisher’s Marketplace, making it official:

Sara Kocek’s debut PROMISE ME SOMETHING, in which a high school student is trusted with a secret by the most hated girl in the class and must either find the courage to be her friend or face a cascade of tragedy if she falls short, to Kelly Barrales-Saylor at Albert Whitman, by Logan Garrison at The Gernert Company (world English).