Special Guests: Hartley Grace Featherstone and Dani Spevak

Amanda is away at the Washington Romance Writers retreat this weekend, but first she's signing Codename: Dancer at Turn The Page bookstore, along with 15 other amazing authors including Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, Robyn Carr, Elizabeth Boyle, and others! Wow!

Since she's busy this weekend, we decided to invite two special guests for you today. Hartley Grace Featherstone, star of Gemma Halliday's Deadly Cool and the brand-new Social Suicide, will be interviewing Dani Spevak, star of Amanda Brice's Codename: Dancer and the upcoming Pointe of No Return. Here is the unedited transcript of their IM session.

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Hartley Grace Featherstone here, reporter for the Herbert Hoover High Homepage paper. I'm totally excited today to have a special guest interview for all of you HHH fans. Her name is Dani Spevak, prima ballerina in training!

Hartley: Thanks for doing this interview with me, Dani. I know how between school and dancing you're totally busy.

Dani: No prob! I'm frothy-dog excited to be here. My sister says I'm an attention ho, and I guess I am! (Wait, can I say "ho"? Is that allowed?) LOL But seriously, very cool to think that kids at another high school would be interested in what I have to say. Craziness!

Hartley: Are you kidding? I'm totally jealous that your school has dance as a subject. All we get is line dancing for a quarter in P.E. So not the same.

Dani: Line dancing? Definitely not. That's how it would've been if I'd stayed back home in NJ for high school, but somehow I managed to get my parents to agree to send me here. What happens in boarding school stays in boarding school!

Hartley: Totes jealous! Anyway, so you were on the show Teen Celebrity Dance-Off. What was that like?

Dani: Best. Experience. Ever! I was super excited to get to dance with Nick Galliano and meet all the other celebs, but for a while there I thought the show would be canceled because the set was being sabotaged. And people were blaming me! Can you believe it? So I did what any other girl would do and figured out who was behind it all. Go me!

Hartley: Wow, craziness! And bigtime Oh. Em. Gee over Nick Galliano. He's so freakin hot. What was it like working with him?

Dani: I won't lie. I was a mega fangirl at first, fawning all over him. Definitely not one of my smoother moves. LOL

Hartley: Well, it is Nick Galliano. Okay, you gotta give me the deets... is there something romantic going on between you and Nick?

Dani: Well, I thought there might be for a little while there. I mean, he did kiss me and all. (Wait a second, if this is on the interwebz, can my mom read this?!)

Hartley: Dude, we have a strict no-parents policy here! Lol! But, um, yeah, seriously maybe I should edit that part out... Okay, as you were saying?

Dani: Okay, yeah, at first there was something going on. But then, well, you know... But it's okay. I'm over it. I have a new crush in mind now. And he's way hotter than Nick, if you can believe that. We'll see where that leads!

Hartley: Reeeeally? Care to dish on the new crush? (Yes, I know I'm nosey. It comes with the reporter territory.)

Dani: As my mom the lawyer would say, "No comment." ;)

Hartley: I hear that you're set to dance in the Nutcracker this year. Tell me more about that?

Dani: Well, I was supposed to just be the understudy for the Sugar Plum Fairy. I'll be honest -- not a lot of fun to always be in Hadley Taylor's shadow. She's a junior, and her dad is a major donor to the school, so she's always getting all the good roles. (That sounded kinda catty. Oops.) But -- and here's the weird part -- nobody knows where she is. It's like she totally disappeared.

Hartley: Wow, she just, like, disappeared? You know, with that experience you have tracking down the saboteur (vocab word alert!), I bet you'd be really good at tracking down missing people, too. Any plans to investigate further?

Dani: No, not really. I mean, I get to dance her role now. You can hardly blame me. Gotta grab my 15 minutes while I can, y'know?

Hartley: Oh I hear ya! But, you know, I've had a bit of experience in the investigating arena myself lately.

Dani: Oooh, oooh. Spill.

Hartley: One thing I've learned for sure is that the cops NEVER know what's going on when it comes to high schools. For example - last year one of the Color Guard girls at my school was killed and the cops thought my ex-boyfriend, Josh, did it.

Dani: No way!

Hartley: Way! I mean, the guy did kinda cheat on me (hence the"ex" part), but it was a way big leap from cheating to murder. Thank God I decided to do a little digging on my own, because the real killer might have gotten away with it altogether if we'd left it up to the cops. I'm just sayin'.

Dani: Crazy! Yeah, good point. The cops really don't know. Especially the ones around here. The so-called "America's Favorite Sheriff," Sheriff Jim Walker -- I'm sure you've seen him on TV before -- spends way too much of his time trying to bust Mexicans for their immigration status. Total racial profiling. Way uncool. Anyway, unless he can find a way to blame an illegal immigrant for her kidnapping, I'm sure it'll go unsolved.

Hartley: With your past experience, it sounds like you might be in the perfect position to find out what happened to Hadley.

Dani: Hmmm. I guess so. But you might do a better job. Any chance I could convince you to come take over the case?

Hartley: You are so sweet! But I've totally got my hands full here in California. My editor at the paper - Chase Erikson - thinks for some reason that I'm not a "real" reporter yet. I was all set to change his mind with this great story about a cheating scandal at our school, when the main cheater ended up dead. Right before I was supposed to interview her and break the story wide open! Talk about timing. Oh, and get this... she died tweeting. My friend Sam calls that Twittercide - a homicide by tweet.

Dani: See, I knew Twitter was dangerous! Now I can finally be proud of my lack of tweeting. Crazy. But you can still salvage your reporter rep. Just break this story wide open!

Hartley: Hold up - did you just say you don't tweet?

Dani: It's not my fault! My parents, in their infinite wisdom (insert eyeroll), refuse to get me a smartphone, since they think all I need a phone for is emergencies. And I haven't figured out a way to convince them that surfing on-the-go is an emergency. Lame! So I'm stuck with this old skool cell circa 2006. We're talking ancient history here. Belongs in a museum. Anyway, I can text or IM no prob, but without a smartphone, Twitter is kinda out of the question. I can see it becoming an obsession if I tried, but with rehearsals all the time I just can't stay tied to my laptop. So it's prolly best if I sit this trend out.

Hartley: Gag, gasp, so unfair! And they expect you to grow up normal like that? But, yeah, I'm totally all over this story. Sam and I have a couple of leads, so I'm hoping we can get to the bottom of it and prove my worth to Chase in the process.

Dani: Ooh, good luck! And Chase...is his name as appropriate as it sounds?

Hartley: Let's just say our relationship is a little complicated. I'll admit, there was The Kiss, that wasn't all together unpleasant, but I'm pretty sure it was a heat of the moment thing. Pretty sure. Kinda sure. Maybe. Okay, so one more very important question before we go... got any summer plans? Personally, I am counting down the days until school gets out!

Dani: I'm hoping to go to the summer intensive program at the Manhattan Ballet Conservatory, but I don't know. It's pretty rare for 15-year-olds to get in. If not, my parents will probably make me teach dance to two-year-olds at the rec center.

Hartley: Oh, good luck! I hope you do, that sounds awesome. Me, I'll be sleeping in, watching Nickelodeon, and hanging out at the mall. (Huh, suddenly I feel like a bit of a slacker.) Anyway, thanks so much for doing this interview and good luck in the Nutcracker. I'll be crossing my fingers it all works out with Hadley!