Today an email blast went out to the members of the Courage Campaign that I wanted to share.

Author Tom Dolby and his husband, Drew Frist, wrote the following message to the Courage Campaign community in the aftermath of the 9th Circuit stay of Judge Walker’s historic decision striking down Proposition 8. Tom and Drew have been phenomenal supporters of our work, from funding Camp Courage to our Testimony campaign. Please read their very personal message below and help us build the “Courageous Families Photo Project” today. Thanks!

– Rick Jacobs and everyone at the Courage Campaign

Dear Friend –

When we were married in Connecticut last year, we knew that the federal Prop 8 trial might change our lives in 2010. What we didn’t know was that we would be anxiously awaiting the birth of twin girls, via a surrogate and egg donor.

So when we heard the news a few weeks ago that Judge Vaughn Walker had ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional, we were overcome by emotion. In that moment, we realized that by the time our daughters were born, our family might have the same rights and dignities as every other loving family in California.

Unfortunately, that possibility of equality is on hold yet again, following the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to stay Judge Walker’s ruling indefinitely.

Still, we know that this journey to marriage equality is just the beginning. And we know that if we want our daughters to be raised with the inherent belief that their family is no less important than anyone else’s family, we need to change the way Americans think and feel about LGBT families.

We need to change hearts and minds. All of us — LGBT and straight — together. Starting now.

That’s why we’re inviting you to join the Courageous Families Photo Project today. Will you send us a picture of yourself or your family, just like the one of us at our wedding below? We’ll add it to a nationwide body of evidence demonstrating the joys of full equality and countering the destructive power of discrimination. Your family photo may even be chosen to be featured prominently on the Courage Campaign’s web site. Just click here to upload your photo now:

As we progress along this new journey of parenthood, with the joy and fear that every prospective parent feels, we’ve found ourselves wondering: Will our children feel that they are valued in the world, that their parents are just the same as any other loving couple?

We hope so. That’s why we are supporting the Courage Campaign as it launches the next phase of Testimony: Equality on Trial — an unprecedented online storytelling project to bring the Prop 8 trial into the lives of Americans and change the conversation about marriage equality across the country.

In the coming year, the Testimony project will collect your depositions in the form of videos, pictures and written submissions. Every two weeks, the Courage Campaign home page will feature a real family picture selected from those pictures submitted through the Courageous Families Photo Project. This campaign will demonstrate that no two families look alike, but all families share the common bonds of love and — most importantly — deserve equal dignity and respect.

All families are welcome in the Courageous Families Photo Project: LGBT or straight. Single or coupled. Legally married or not. Together for one month or 50 years. We are all in this together. Will you help to change the way Americans think about families by sending a picture of you or your family today? Just click here to upload your photo:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/CourageousFamilies

At our wedding celebration for family and friends in Sonoma, our celebrant quoted the activist Parker Palmer as saying, “There is often a tragic gap between what is and what could and should be. To live in this world, we must learn how to stand in the tragic gap with faith and hope.”

We ask that you stand with us in faith and hope as we work to ensure a safe and loving society for all of our children.

Thank you for joining us in launching this special project.

Tom Dolby and Drew Frist

I know some of you have been waiting months for this…so here it is, the flap copy for The Trust, coming out February 2011!

Who can you trust when everything is secrets and lies?

It’s a new semester at the Chadwick School, and even with the ankh tattoos that brand them, Phoebe, Nick, Lauren, and Patch are hoping for a fresh start. Each day, however, they are reminded of their membership as new Conscripts in the Society. The secret group that promised to help them achieve their every dream has instead turned their lives into a nightmare.

Exclusive membership lost its luster as the Society revealed its agenda to them, and two of their classmates were found dead. Now they can’t help but wonder: who’s next? While they search for the elusive truth about the Society, the Conscripts are forced to face their darkest fear—that they truly can’t get out.

Will Nick and Phoebe’s new relationship endure this strain? Can Patch and Nick’s longtime friendship survive the truth that will come to light? The deceptions of the group’s leaders, once trusted friends, and family will test these four as they fight to leave the Society behind.

The Trust, Tom Dolby’s sequel to Secret Society, is an alluring glimpse behind the facade of a life of entitlement, where secrets aren’t merely fun—they’re deadly.

Yes, I know, I’m about two weeks late in posting this…but if you didn’t catch it on Twitter, here’s our house in the fabulous June/July issue of Lonny magazine (go to page 164). In case you’re wondering, I usually work in the yellow guest room — it’s a lot messier in real life than it is in the photo — though that will have to change once the room becomes a nursery. Enjoy!

Last night was the San Francisco Public Library’s 14th Annual Laureates Dinner, an event which never fails to remind me how important libraries are in our lives. The evening was great fun, with an eclectic group of authors (Greil Marcus, Frank Portman, Susie Bright, and 25 others), fabulous food (yes, in a library!), and guests dressed up according to the theme, “urban legends.” I attended as a laureate, and spoke to my “salon”–a collection of five tables in a wing of the library–on urban legends and the early role of books in my life. Here are my comments:

Thank you so much for having me. I‘m very lucky to be considered an honorary San Franciscan, to be a part-time resident of a city that values authors and books so much.

I have had an extremely bookish few days in the city. While I live most of the time in New York with my husband, Drew, I had the task this week of cleaning out my childhood bedroom, as my parents moved two months ago to a new house after twenty-five years. My room had become a time capsule, albeit one that was added to each time I visited. I have always been a collector—this week I sorted through piles of photographs and journals and schoolwork; I culled through Herb Caen clippings and Armistead Maupin novels and yellowed tearsheets from the Chronicle magazine.

I saw many of my literary and artistic influences—there was Salinger and Raymond Carver and Fitzgerald; Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis; Pam Houston and Natalie Goldberg. Andy Warhol and David Hockney. The Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones, and lots and lots of really embarrassing 1990s music on audio cassettes.

There was one collection I thought coincided rather nicely with tonight’s theme. It had been packed up years ago and put into a storage unit, but I remembered it, and I wanted to take it with me to the new house. It was my collection of Hardy Boys books. Though they were fictional characters, the Hardy Boys were as real to me as any urban legend, and at eight years old, I thought about them almost constantly.

I would wake up early in the morning and sneak a few chapters; I would take the latest mystery to Town School, where I would read under my desk after I finished my assignments. Luckily, back then, reading was reading, and no one made the distinction between good literature and bad.

The Hardy Boys were my urban legend—though the books had been written as early as 1927, even in the 1980s, they seemed incredibly current. I started digging deeper into their world; I even wrote to the publisher, Grosset and Dunlap, asking for more information on the series, though I never got a reply.

I spent many afternoons with my friend, Jason Bley, who is here tonight, searching for rare editions of the series. We would take the bus to Green Apple Books on Clement Street, where we would sit in the stacks for hours, debating the merits of each copy for sale. Used copies went for fifty cents or a dollar—two dollars was expensive, and ten dollars was a verifiable investment. Was a pristine fourteenth edition of The House on the Cliff better than a third edition with a tattered cover? Did it really matter that my copy of The Mystery of the Flying Express was stained with rings of chocolate milk? Green Apple Books wasn’t a library, but we attempted to turn it into one, reading entire portions of novels while sitting on the floor of the dusty shop.

The books were quirky, and they were specifically designed to appeal to adolescent boys. Every chapter ended with a cliffhanger. There were detailed descriptions not only of car and boat chases, but also of elaborate meals and home life. The books never used the verb “to say”—characters would interject, suggest, deny, or exclaim, creating a roller coaster ride of a narrative in which every sentence was breathlessly uttered. The stories were about crime, but they weren’t really about evil—they were more about friendship and the bond between two brothers. According to writer Arthur Prager, “Never were so many assorted felonies committed in a simple American small town. Murder, drug peddling, race horse kidnapping, diamond smuggling, medical malpractice, big-time auto theft, even (in the 1940s) the hijacking of strategic materials and espionage, all were conducted with Bayport [their hometown] as a nucleus.”

I found the world of the Hardy Boys and their fellow adventurers in other series undeniably exciting. In fact, had I not gone into fiction writing, I think I might have joined the FBI.

A few months ago, I picked up a copy of The Mystery of Cabin Island (Hardy Boys number eight) at a junk shop, and I read it in an afternoon. While entertaining, it was terribly hackneyed, dated writing. Though I had not read a Hardy Boys novel in twenty-five years, this had always been my suspicion. The boys were a jumping off point, not a final destination.

When I wrote my two recent books for teens, Secret Society and its sequel, The Trust, I would sometimes think about the legend of the Hardy Boys. In a world of texting and Facebook and Gossip Girl, the books represented for me a preservation of American childhood through reading—both my own childhood, and the childhood of the books’ characters, nearly fifty years earlier. I hoped that with my own foray into writing for young adults, I might be able to capture some of what had fascinated me so many years ago.

I’m saving those boxes of books. My hope is that when Drew and I have children and they are old enough to read, they will sit with them in a window seat somewhere, enraptured, just exactly as I was. Thank you.

I will be signing at Books of Wonder in New York City on Sunday, March 21, from 2:45 to 3:30pm along with a host of other fantastic authors. Go to the NYC Teen Author Festival Facebook page for more information.

A few updates during this snowy, copyedit-filled month!

-The television show inspired by Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys will air on the Sundance Channel starting in August 2010! This is the announcement in Variety.

-Secret Society is part of the Great Scavenger Hunt Contest this month! Just search for my name under “by author.” Here’s the list of questions.

-I will be part of the San Francisco Public Library’s 14th Annual Laureates Dinner on April 16, 2010. This fabulous event is always fun — and the theme this year is “urban legends”!

My revision of The Trust: A Secret Society Novel (current release date is winter 2011) is finished for now, so I’m taking a break for the holidays. My mind is going to other novels, other projects, other ideas. What’s next?

In somewhat Society-like fashion, we are changing the rules! There was so much excitement over the first round of Secret Society Teen Ambassador Kits that we have decided to give all thirty kits away at once. Apologies to those of you who were planning on entering in the second round — we’ll have more goodies for you in the future, but we wanted to get the tattoos and other treats out while everyone’s enjoying the first copies of Secret Society. On the plus side, we’ll be giving away 30 tattoos in each kit — so the winners can initiate TWO classes of Society members.

All winners will be emailed a confirmation, and their kits will be sent out within a week.

Thanks for entering!

October 13, 2009, New York, NY: Dogs truly are man’s best friend. Woody sent me this postcard, complete with ankh charm, while I’m here in rainy California!

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, please join me next week, on Friday, October 16, for a reception at Books Inc. Opera Plaza (601 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco). There will be a reception from 5:30pm-7pm and then I’ll be heading over to be part of the Teenquake event at the San Francisco Public Library (100 Larkin Street at Grove). See you there!