And while I hope it clears up in time for the book fair in Miami this weekend, it’s kind of a good opportunity for us to dip into Meg’s Mail Bag, since it’s been a while.

So let’s take the plunge!

My best friend is really SO lucky. The Galera Record (who publishes your books here in Brazil) is raffling two books (Of course, Yours).

Now, guess what? She wins!

I really love her, so I didn’t blame her, or nobody. But, the fate or something like that is so unfair! I mean, I love you so much more than her.

And you FOLLOW her on Twitter, and didn’t follow me.

One day Fate should be fair, right?

So much love,
I’m Not Going To Put Her Name

Wow. What I loved most about Brazil was the hot-blooded PASSION of its residents.

Anyway, here’s the thing:

Twitter is new. We’re all still just trying to figure it out.

People seem to be doing one of these three things:

Following everyone who follows them; just following their friends; or following no one.

To me, following no one is kind of boring.

And I think “just following your friends” is kind of stuck up (no offense, clique-y celebrities. But we’re not in high school anymore)!

And I agree with Nameless Above that it’s a little bit rude not to follow back someone who is following you (as long as it’s a real person, who isn’t a spammer or a total psycho).

I understand that people with a million followers can’t read EVERY SINGLE ONE of their posts. As much as I’d like to, I can’t read all of my followers’ posts, either, or I wouldn’t have time to write my books and stay on the cutting edge of popular culture by watching every television show known to man.

But if someone is following me, I really do want to see who she is.

So I do try to check in on each and every one of my followers from time to time, when I get the chance. I don’t tweet back personally, but I do get a great feel for who my followers are–fun, fantastic people.

So my policy is, I follow EVERYONE who follows me (except spammers and pervs, of course. If I see that you’re a spammer or a perv, of course I will drop you, after first reporting the pervs to the appropriate authorities).

This just seems like the princessy thing to do.

The rest of the populace may do as they see fit.

Hey Meg,

Was just browsing the internet and I saw this totally awesome thing. I got a lot of humour out of it and thought you would too!

Best Thing Ever

Cheers!
Jennifer J.

Shut. Up.

Jennifer, you get a tiara for a day for that:

Wear it in good health.

From Diana P:

Kathy Griffin Signs Up For Another Season Of D Listed!

Yay! Diana P gets a tiara for the day, too!

Also, Kathy’s book, Official Book Club Selection, which I’ve been reading in bits and pieces when I get a chance, is so GOOD!

I really had no idea how much Kathy struggled to get to where she is today. It’s seriously awe-inspiring, and I think a must-read for all career-minded women, especially anyone who wants a career in the arts.

(And the chapter featuring Andy Dick was so laugh-out-loud funny, He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog actually came running upstairs to check on me when I was reading it because he thought I was having a seizure.)

Re: Heather Wells:

Are you planning to publish another book in this series?

Ever since reading Big Boned almost 2 years ago I have been waiting for the next book in this series.

By the way, I know you write a lot of books. However, I really want another Heather Wells mystery!

I know. My bad.

Here is the status on this series:

The next Heather Wells book is all plotted out and I even have the first couple of chapters:

Heather is currently stranded in a J Crew dressing room, trying on those wedding gowns you see in all the catalogs, and not having a very good time because you know those J Crew wedding dresses almost never look as good on as they do in the catalog.

(I know because I just ordered a bunch and was trying them on recently. And they looked AWFUL on me. Possibly because I ordered them in green, but whatever. They looked really, REALLY bad.)

But I got sidetracked from that project by my adult editor, Carrie Feron (who edits the Heather Wells books, too). It’s her fault. BLAME HER!!!!

It was one of those things where Carrie said all casually at lunch one day, “Have you ever thought about doing _______?”

And I was like, “Um, no. Why would I do THAT???”

And then for the next year I couldn’t get the idea of doing THAT out of my head.

It turned into one of those “shark” ideas. You know, the kind that sneak up and bite you and won’t let go until you start writing them?

I was so, so mad. I seriously HATE those! They come from nowhere and you don’t want them and yet…they won’t LEAVE until you write them all the way down.

So, THAT book (called Insatiable) should be out this coming summer (if I get it turned in on time. I’m still tweaking it. It’s quite long).

But Heather will be coming right after that!

As long as I get her out of that dressing room. Poor thing.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Well, since I’m going to be speaking and signing at the Miami Book Festival this coming Saturday (the fair starts TODAY! Click here to see all the amazing authors who are going to be there!) the Miami Herald asked me for some advice for girls.

My response was printed online and in the paper (I think. I don’t get the Miami Herald so I didn’t actually see it)!

The article is about how, by craftily disguising my books to look as if they’re merely about princesses, teen supermodels, and quirky fourth graders, I’ve actually gotten an entire generation of girls to read about important issues, like gender equality….

Shhh! Don’t let anyone in on the truth about my diabolical plot to spread feminist ideology across the globe through my deceptively chick-litty looking books!

So there was that…as well as Taylor Swift’s performance on Saturday Night Live, which was so fun to watch….

And the fact that my MOM won my Significant Object (yes. She wanted it. To go in my baby box. Which is now more like a trunk. Please don’t ask).

So that will be over $200 going to the Heifer Project! Yay!

But other than that, my weekend kind of stank, due to the fact that I ended up engaging in some heavy book licking.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, a book licker is someone who’s writing a novel, but instead of just finishing it and surrendering it to her editor, she keeps going back and re-reading it over and over, finding tiny things wrong with it, and revising it. She never actually gets to The End.

(This is not to be confused with a baby licker, which is a person who fusses over her baby so much, she eventually licks all his fur/skin off. CPS or the zoo keepers eventually have to come and take her baby away from her.)

Baby Licker

I’ve always striven to keep my book licking to a minimum so my books could come out in a timely fashion and thus get to you, the reading public.

But this weekend I started licking my current project and just. Couldn’t. Stop.

I could tell I’d crossed the line when I started calling all my friends and going, “I should just throw this book away, shouldn’t I? I know they already paid me the first part of my advance. But maybe I can just give the money back and start over. I’ve been thinking about starting a new series about zombies anyway!”

My friends offered all sorts of (totally unhelpful) advice:

“I think you should eat some mini-Butterfingers.”

(Like I don’t do this every day?)

And:

“What page are you on? Yeah, well, you know you say this exact same thing every time you get to that page.”

(No, I don’t.)

“Yes, you do.”

And:

“Why don’t you just go watch the crackheads on Intervention until you feel better about yourself?”

Finally, one ultra mega bestselling, highly revered children’s book author with whom I happen to be friends listened to me book lick for like five minutes, then finally burst out with:

“What the hell isa matta with you? It’s just a book, for chrissakes. Quit whining, sit your ass down, and finish it!”

Wait…what?

It’s just a book?

I’m sorry, but no author has ever said that to me before. NO ONE. It’s not “just a book.” It’s…it’s….

Well, I guess it is.

This was just so startling to hear, coming from such a pantheon in the industry. Was this really how he’d managed to write so many beloved, award winning, bestselling books? He didn’t lick them? He just told himself “It’s just a book,” then sat his “ass down and finished the thing?”

That’s just so….

…cool.

I am going to do exactly as he says.

Tomorrow.

After I eat about ten more pounds of mini-Butterfingers, and watch four episodes of Intervention.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I’d tried to read the graphic novel, but somehow I could never finish it. I have no idea why. The book has everything…sex, naked people, romance, sex, mystery, pirates (there were no pirates in the movie)!

I think I got bogged down with the pirates.

So I was excited to watch the movie and see how it all turned out…also to see if the big naked blue guy ever put on any pants.

He did, but only briefly. He found them binding, I guess. I know the feeling, especially after all that leftover Halloween candy.

Like the book, the movie is a little intense. It takes place in this wacky alt universe where Richard Nixon is still our president and we won Vietnam (because of the huge naked blue guy. Although his nakedness wasn’t at all sexy like in Beowulf. Maybe because he was blue).

The most annoying thing I found about this alternative reality was that people still play Simon and Garfunkel a lot.

I could take the Nixon stuff and the big blue naked man. But Simon and Garfunkel? Really?

Now, I did have a Paul Simon-related trauma, so maybe I’m prejudiced…in 1991, when Paul played for free in Central Park in front of 600,000 people, my friend had a panic attack on the Great Lawn, because there were so…many…people. And I couldn’t get her out of there. We were jammed in like sardines.

Eventually she just lay down in the dirt in a fetal position and cried softly while Paul sang “Diamonds on the Souls of her Shoes” until eventually the crackheads stopped yelling at us for money, and we could finally crawl through all the garbage back to the subway.

But seriously. It was a nightmare.

So I will admit I’m biased, and that whenever I hear a Paul Simon song now, I raise my fists to the air and shake them and scream, “WHY, PAUL SIMON??? WHY?????”

Paul Simon’s ex-wife, who now has her own book and one-woman show, Wishful Drinking.

So, yes, I found the music in The Watchmen…annoying.

But even more annoying, seriously, what was this?

No way would a woman go out fighting crime with her hair down! I’m a fan of The Police Women of Broward County, and this just isn’t happening! I could totally hear my mother screaming, “Pull your hair back, honey! It’s in your eyes!”

Plus, who could run in those heels? I’ll admit, it looks hot.

But her thighs are totally unprotected between her latex leotard and her boots. No.

But still, with those exceptions, I enjoyed The Watchmen, and give it two tiaras.

What I find most shocking about all of this is that Paul Simon didn’t write this Princess Leia tribute song:

Sadly, it’s not in The Watchmen. But if it had been, it would have been a whole lot better, if you ask me:

More later.

Much love,

Meg

And you know what that means!

No, not pumpkin pie! (Although it means that, too!)

It means, among other things….

The Glee cast album is out!

Finally! I thought I was going to go crazy if I didn’t get that cast version of Bust a Move.

But now I can relax.

November is also the month when controversial end-of-the-world movie blockbuster 2012 comes out!

I so want to see the White House underwater (no offense to the current residents…The White House looked totally cute on Halloween)!

And since it’s November, that means Stephen King fans are just days away from being able to get his new book, Under the Dome! The one with the creepy cover! That he swears isn’t a rip-off of The Simpsons Movie (I believe him)!

Also, November means they finally printed that article about the Betsy books in New York Magazine (of all places) that they interviewed me for so long ago!

And (sadly) November means Daylight Savings Time is back.

And it still sucks! My cat doesn’t understand that it’s not OK for her to start crying for breakfast at 7AM.

“What’s the problem? The sun is out! Get up, Meg! Feed me Whiskas Temptations now! Are these curtains supposed to be so wrinkled? Where’s Debbie Travis when you need her?”

How can something so small make so much noise?

Oh, and finally, November means it’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)!

Have you started your novel yet?

Don’t worry…it’s OK if you haven’t! No pressure.

It seems like too many people are putting pressure on themselves to write novels…and then publishing them by a certain age. This is a phenomenon author Diana Peterfreund blogged about recently.

Well said! No one expects anyone to have published a novel by the time they’ve entered college. Or ever, really.

PS How good does Diana’s new killer unicorn book, Rampant, look, by the way?

Anyway, if you like to write, do it! The whole point of NaNoWriMo is just…to…write.

Write without revising or worrying about getting your book published.

I know what you’re thinking, though:

“Meg, a novel? Really? Where do I even start?”

The answer to that is in this video:

So, whether you’re participating in NaNoWriMo or not, don’t worry—there’s more fun stuff coming out this November than I could even get to in one blog post (more is coming)….

(It goes without saying that I will be participating in NaNoWriMo. I have another deadline!)

And for those of you who DON’T want to write a novel, this November or ever, well, that’s cool:

Because we need readers, too!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Died.

And we cannot find its body.

Do you want to know what a rotting corpse smells like? A real rotting corpse?

Come to my house!

(Or better yet, don’t, unless you love the smell of death and Glade plug-ins.)

We should use the opportunity to set up our own haunted house.

But instead, we have abandoned the affected rooms, moving everything we need out of them (this includes Henrietta’s litter box, which is now in the master bathroom, and that’s a whole other story), installing Glade Plug-ins, shutting the doors, and hoping for the best.

Gross.

In other Halloween related news, yesterday in the New York Times there was a story about a ghost at an NYU residence hall (see, “The Spooky Suitemate”), “Molly,” and how some “mean girls” riled her up (which reminds me: check out this hilarious Onion piece on how some popular mean girls made the whole country cry).

At Hayden Hall, the dorm where I worked when I was at NYU (the basis for Death Dorm in the Heather Wells series), we had a much cooler ghost. He was a male.

I know because a psychic student had a long conversation with him one day. When she reported this to me (she came down to my office to ask if anyone had died in her room the year before, because when she’d woken up that morning, a ghost had been sitting on the end of her bed), I sent her immediately to Counseling Services….

Who sent her back with a clean bill of mental health.

Then the counselor she’d been assigned (whom I knew well) called me to say:

“Uh, Meg…yeah, she actually described in detail the student who committed suicide in that very room twenty years ago when I worked there…down to the tie-dyed shirt he was wearing when he hanged himself. I know this sounds insane…but I think she actually had a visitation by him. She says she comes from a family with a history of sensitivity to psychic phenomena.”

CREEPY!

The scariest part of all (besides my being so close-minded–although in my own defense when a girl comes into your office and says the words, “woke up with a boy sitting on my bed” and you work in a dorm, the words “roofies” and “rape” will always automatically be the first things that flash through your head: so I was just doing my job) was that that whole floor ALWAYS had problems, like desk drawers slamming closed (and sliding open) for no reason, chairs moving from one spot to another (without anyone touching them), and of course doors slamming (without a breeze).

Until I found out about the ghost, I was always giving them new desks…but the new desks kept having “faulty” drawers, too!

After I found out about the ghost (I apologized to the girl for sending her to Counseling and she was all, “That’s okay. It happens all the time.” And yeah, she was kinda part of the inspiration for the Mediator), I just told the residents what was going on.

So when they came down to say, “When I left for class my chair was on one side of my room, but when I came back it was outside my bathroom door,” I’d be like, “Let me tell you a story….”

Everyone was always cool about it. They even sort of liked the glamour of being the only floor with a ghost!

I’m sure the ghost of Hayden Hall is still there, punking residents to this day.

I bet he’s mad HE didn’t make the Times.

As for our own “ghost,” I’m certain someday we’ll find a little mouse skeleton.

In the meantime, I’m hoping you have a better Halloween than I am…and just remember:

Fake dead bodies are WAY BETTER than real dead bodies (of the rodent variety, obviously). So be safe!

And if someone tells you they’ve seen a ghost, don’t automatically send them to Counseling Services.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

You think things get crazy in your town for Halloween? Where I live for the week leading up to Halloween, people come from all over the world to party, elect a King and Queen (the two people who raise the most money for AIDs Help), have a huge parade, and walk around buck naked.

Here is the winning float from last year’s parade

I’m not sure when or how the naked part became so socially acceptable (and technically, the police are supposed to arrest anyone not wearing “body paint”).

But I must say it’s a little disturbing when it’s six o’clock on a Monday night and all you want to do is go downtown to grab a burger, and there are seven or eight people crowding the sidewalk in front of you wearing nothing but dog collars and feather boas.

Another float from last year’s parade

Although I completely understand that some of these people are cancer survivors who are excited to have a chance to show off their new bosoms (which reminds me, I just saw on CNN that due to a combination of factors, though still rare, tweens and teens of all ages are beginning to get diagnosed with breast cancer. So get in touch with your body!)

Reader Brooke M really knows how to carve a pumpkin.

Fortunately it’s against the law for restaurant owners to let naked people dine in their facilities. Could you imagine? I mean, my having to eat my burger where someone with no pants was just sitting?

To be completely honest, I am not sure what is going on here, but I like it.

In other news:

The Runaway page is finally up! No excerpt yet (it’s too soon)…but you can check out a pretty detailed “what it’s all about” page!

And we finally have an excerpt up for Princess Diaries #1! Can you believe we never had one?

Now ALL my books (except, for some reason, Boy Meets Girl…and we’re working on that one) except the Patricia Cabots have excerpts…but we have a neat little explanation as to how the PC books came about.

And if you’re coming to see me at the Miami Book Fair on November 14, this is where you need to go at 11:30 (it’s free):

Miami Book Fair International * Miami Dade College 
300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL 33132
Batten (Building 2, 1st Floor, Room 2106)

And don’t forget to place bids on my Significant Object!

Remember, for every dollar you bid, I will MATCH it, and all those dollars will go to buy some lady who really needs one in order to escape poverty a COW (or other animal) in some foreign country somewhere!

If you don’t think buying a lady a cow (aka microfinancing) works, just read THIS AMAZING article from Oprah.com about one woman whose life was changed forever by Heifer International…Yes: by the cow people!

For every dollar you give, I will give a dollar. If you give ten dollars, I will give ten dollars. COME ON, PEOPLE. BREAK ME.

Otherwise, you know I will just spend the money on a new dress to wear in Miami.

(Well you can’t expect me to show up in body paint, now, can you?)

More later.

Much love,

Meg

PS Oh my God, how could I forget? Friday Night Lights premieres tonight for those of us with DirecTV. Thanks to Persnickety Snark and Sarah Dessen for reminding me!

I totally have it DVR’d and will try to Twitter about it but my fingers might be too covered in Cheeto dust to operate my keyboard.

This is a fun project you might have read about where authors are sent a photo of an object and asked to write a story giving the object new meaning (in under 500 words).

Then the story and photo are posted on eBay.

The object is then auctioned off, and the winning bidder gets the object and the author’s original story.

I’m going to match whatever my winning bid is, and send the proceeds to The Heifer Project!

So if you like what I wrote about my object and its invented owner, bid on it here!

Click here for the story on the Significants Objects website.

I was psyched when I got my object. I actually got sent three or four objects, but the minute I saw this one, the story behind it hit me RIGHT AWAY. I was like, “I HATE THIS THING, and THIS IS WHY. This thing hurt a girl a LOT.”

And the whole story just came to me. That poor, poor girl.

The project has attracted some very cool authors like mystery author Laura Lippman, and Shelf Discovery author Lizzie Skurnick.

There are a bunch more stories coming soon from other talented authors (like Merrill Markoe! I love her)!

Did what happen to the girl in my story happen to me?

My lips are sealed. But they say you have to write what you know, to a certain degree.

Now let’s all buy a nice lady a cow.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Why, that’d be today!

I got the final manuscript turned in, the revisions completed, and now I’m just awaiting copy edits (a copy editor works to improve the formatting, accuracy, and style of manuscript, not the content).

So I think it’s safe to finally reveal the front cover:

I know, isn’t it great????

I wish I could give out the name of the cover model, because a lot of you keep asking about her….

But you seriously have no idea how many guys email me about her!

Who is she? Where does she live? Can I have her email? I promise I’m not a stalker.

What? Excuse me, but do you really think I’m going to fall for that?

I can only assure you that she’s totally fab, and also a complete brainiac—she’s going to Stanford!

Thus she is way out of the league of any guy writing to the author of a book cover on which she has appeared, unless he happens to be a fireman or works for Doctors Without Borders or something.

(But even if you do, don’t email me about her because I still won’t trust you with her. Look what happened with that guy and poor Annie Hathaway. And he said he worked for the Vatican!)

Here she is with adorable Cosabella, on the back:

As you can probably tell from the cover, the action gets WAY RAMPED UP in this book. I can’t tell you a lot because I don’t want to spoil it, but Stark goes CRAZY EVIL!

I can’t tell you how though. I even kept it from Scholastic: it’s not in any of the proposals I gave them. NO ONE KNEW. My editor was like: WOW!

(And I don’t get wows from her very often, because she’s been in this business for a long time. She’s the one who bought Princess Diaries 1 as a tiny baby editor, like on her first day of work when she still had an N Sync calendar on her desk.)

The dark secret that got Nikki killed?

IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND.

When I was originally researching Stark’s Dark Secret, of course I consulted a number of Computer Geeks–of whom I know many because when you write novels on laptops, you often need to have them rescued (from viruses, cats knocking them off beds, being left on top of air conditioners so they freeze to death, etc, all true BTW and why I own 8 laptops…the shame).

And so computer geeks become your best friends.

Mine are basically like Felix (from Being Nikki) and Sheldon from Big Bang Theory combined, only with less social skills.

And they were all like:

“Make the computers be hypnotizing people.”

Me: To do what?

“To take off their clothes.”

Me: Um…okay. Do you maybe have some other, less R-rated ideas that I could put in a book for teenagers? Also that make sense?

“The computers could be taking people’s money.”

Me: Um…Richard Stark is the richest man in the world. Why would he need people’s money?

“What if all the computers are connected to one vast network and are trying to take over the world and human beings have been forced to form a ragtag rebellion against them and some of the humans are actually robots and you don’t know which are robots and which are humans?”

Me: Yeah…that is the plot of The Terminator. Also The Matrix. And Battlestar Galactica.

“The real problem is that you have no imagination. It is amazing that you even have a career.”

Although because they love computer inhalant, YouTube, and the show Intervention, my Felix/Sheldons did show me this, about which I have no comment and on which you should click at your own discretion.

Fortunately, I was able to come up with an amazing secret for Stark without their help.

The bad news is, it is so amazing, I don’t know if we’ll be able to give out Advanced Reader Copies of this book, because…well, for the safety of the nation, we have to keep the explosiveness at a minimum.

I’ll be posting an excerpt closer to the pub date of May 2010, though.

If you want to join the Airhead Facebook page to discuss what Stark’s secret could be amongst yourselves, it’s right here.

And, I might as well warn you now so you don’t FREAK OUT….

This site is getting a small facelift.

So if you come here one day and it looks totally different, that’s why.

It wasn’t Stark.

Then again….

Maybe it was….

More later.

Much love,

Meg

That’s right. Me.

(And Diana Gabaldon. And Shannon Hale. And Kristin Cashore. Yeah! The theme for the show is Strong Female Characters, in case you didn’t notice.)

I know you totally want to listen to it, and you can, by going here. The show will air this Thursday (Oct 22) at 9AM Pacific/12PM Eastern.

This was a fun show to be on (I’ll be honest: not all radio shows are. Especially the ones where you have to wake up at 5AM and the host is named DJ Mad Dog and the first thing he says to you is “Hey, Meg! Welcome to the Dog House! Bark for us! Come on! Bark for the Mad Dog, Meg!”) because the VOA host, Matthew Peterson, was funny and personable. It was more like just having a conversation with a friend than being interviewed.

In fact I totally hope he edited this interview a bit because I got carried away and said some things I kind of regret…like about He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog’s reaction when he found out I was giving away all the author proceeds from Ransom My Heart to Greenpeace (reaction: “WHAT??? Are those PRE-TAX DOLLARS???”)

In other news, attention French readers:

You know how you were complaining that you didn’t have any of the half books, like Project Princess and Sweet Sixteen Princess and Princess Present?

Well, now you do!

Encore Plus D’Histoires de Princesse! Volumes 4 ½, 6 ½, and 7 ½, all bound in a lovely snow white volume. Bravo, France!

I actually didn’t know about this until a gorgeous copy of it arrived at my house (well, I mean, I’m sure someone told me about it, but I forgot).

I love that all the books in this series have been translated by the same translator, the sweet Josette Chicheportiche, whom I got to meet when I was in France for the Salon de Livres two years ago, and who does such a terrific job. Well, not that I can read French. I can speak it, a little—with what I consider a very nice accent, which I learned when I had to spend 1st grade in a little village in France because my dad got a teaching job in Grenoble!

Which might be why one Frenchwoman pointed out to me last time I was there, very politely, “Your accent is very good, but your tenses…you sound like you might be a leettle bit retarded.”

Oh well. Voice of America still thinks I write Strong Female Characters! Bien sur!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Well, now you have your big chance!

On Monday, October 19, she’ll be hosting a night of comedy to celebrate free speech (and benefit the National Coalition Against Censorship) at City Winery in New York City….

And you can be there!

(Okay, for $50. But hey…it’s for a good cause!)

Just click here for details and to reserve your ticket.

I know, fancy, right? And like I said, a good cause. Do you have any idea how many books get banned in schools every year?

And these are just the ones we hear about. An even more insidious problem are the school libraries where the problem “goes away” because the books are quietly removed…via the trash can.

How do I know about this? Because that’s where a volunteer found a set of my books after the school librarian received a complaint from a parent that a character mentioned the word “condom” in them.

The volunteer removed the books from the trash and emailed me in outrage to let me know what had happened.

The NCAC works to try to stop this—and worse—from happening! Here are just a few of their most recent projects.

I’m very sad I can’t be there for Judy’s event, but lots of cool other people will be! (Here is the complete list. Some people not on the list that I happen to know will also be there include fab authors Rachel Vail, Carolyn Mackler, and Lizzie Skurnick…yay! Go Shelf Discovery!)

(I would bring this if I were you.)

All your celebrity dreams could come true! And at the same time, you’ll be helping out an important cause, and having a night filled with laughter.

Come on, it’s Monday. What else were you going to do?

Say hi to Judy for me!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

A big box of the new Allie Finkle adventure, Glitter Girls and the Great Fake Out!

I know! I was like, didn’t Allie’s Rules for Girls, Stage Fright, just come out? How can the new one be here already?

But this is just the advanced reader copy (uncorrected proof) for Allie #5, which won’t be out until March 2010 (so far away)!

I got super excited anyway because this is the one where Allie gets a big makeover (both in the book as well as on the cover, as you can see. Allie has a whole new look, although the same model plays her).

In Glitter Girls, Allie has a choice between going to a Twirltacular (please don’t tell me you don’t know what one of these is!) and supporting her friends….

…or going to a birthday party given by her frenemy Brittany at a store called Glitterati (special thanks to Becky Lee at Blue Willow Bookshop for the inspiration for this), a special store for kids where you can dress up like a model and get your photo taken on a real runway.

Which do you think Allie chooses?

You have to read the book to find out, of course!

But I have a hard time choosing myself. Glitterati. Twirltacular. Glitterati. Twirltacular. They’re both so SPECTACULAR.

My heart breaks a little with yearning every time I think about it. I want to do both!

Anyway, I was trying to take a really hot picture of the Glitter Girls ARC for all of you, but my plans were ruined when from out of nowhere my husband’s cat Miss Slutty-McSlut-A-Lot showed up, having seen me taking photos and deciding she had to butt her way into the whole thing, ruining it.

(Slutty has been REALLY bad lately, bringing birds and tree rats into the house through her cat door, LIVE, to play with. It’s like the movie Paranormal Activity where I live, only instead of demons, we have birds and rats popping out all over the place when we least expect it. Like, quietly eating oatmeal, watching Robin Meade on Headline News. Oh, there’s a BIRD flying around the room.)

Anyway, I was like, “GET OUT! GET OUT OF THE PICTURE!”

And she was all, “What? Is someone saying something? I can’t hear you. Don’t I look great? Look at my butt. Did you happen to see my incredible butt?”

So then I tried to put the book in her paws so at least she could be useful and look like she was reading it.

But she was like, “Stop touching me. I’m a star.”

Then she got mad that I was making her work and she walked away.

Anyway, the new cover is AMAZING.

The older book covers are getting makeovers too.

I heart them. Especially Stage Fright, because it really captures Allie’s longing to be a star (much like Slutty’s…only Allie isn’t as in love with her butt, of course).

Anyway, if you have a book review blog and you want a sneak peek at Glitter Girls (I KNOW! Glitterati! Twirltacular!), email me with your name, the link to your blog, and a snail mail address where we can ship the book, and I’ll send you a copy someday soon! (You will be notified if an ARC is coming your way. I have only limited supplies. My publisher is sending some out, too, though, so we’ll try to combine our efforts.)

Also, I just realized that I totally forgot—I never sent out copies of Stage Fright (except to teachers and librarians)!

So if you have a book review blog and you want a copy of Stage Fright (the ACTUAL book), I’ll send you one of those, too! (Please specify which book you want, Glitter Girls, Stage Fright, or both.)

In other news…some people have pointed out that Mia’s latest blog entry is ever so slightly reminiscent of the first chapter of a certain book I wrote.

All I have to say about that is, obviously when you’ve written as many books as I have, a few things are bound to come true (and may already have)! I can’t help it if Mia’s life is imitating my art.

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

Poor, poor Mia. I wonder what will happen to her (not to mention poor Allie) next.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I was putting on my eye makeup and listening to the 80s channel on XM radio (as I do every morning) when they played George Harrison’s I Got My Mind Set On You.

That’s when I realized it:

This song is totally about writing a book!

I know everyone thinks it’s about a girl.

But it isn’t at all.

I don’t know how many of you are writing novels right now, or thinking about writing a novel (perhaps next month, for NaNoWriMo).

But if you need inspiration, listen to I Got My Mind Set On You.

Because it’s about pysching yourself up to tackle your current writing project, not about winning the object of your affections, like everyone thinks.

Seriously. Check out the lyrics:

This time I know its for real
The feelings that I feel
I know if I put my mind to it
I know that I really can do it

Translation: Here George is describing the feelings he is having for the novel he is currently writing. This time, he knows he’s going to commit to this novel, and not cheat on it with some other novel about zombies that he thought up in the middle of the night while working on this current novel.

No! This novel that he’s currently writing is IT! He knows if he really puts his mind to it, he can finish this novel, and make it into the huge bestseller it’s meant to be!

Genius.

I got my mind set on you
I got my mind set on you
I got my mind set on you
I got my mind set on you

Translation: George is really going to concentrate this time. He’s got his mind SET on this current novel. He’s not going to download The Fast and the Furious package on Comcast this weekend for $9.99 and spend 48 hours lying in bed watching it with his cat on his stomach, yelling at his husband to bring him another Coke Zero.

No! He’s got his mind set on his novel. George Harrison really means it this time!

Its gonna take time
A whole lot of precious time
Its gonna take patience and time
To do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it,
To do it right child

Translation: Obviously, George knows it’s going to take time—a lot of time—to finish this novel. It’s not going to be a week. Or even ten days. It might take a month. MAYBE LONGER (perish the thought).

This means it’s going to take patience. You can’t write a novel in a day. George is probably going to have to call all his friends and be like, “Don’t ask me to lunch at the Yacht Club because I can’t go. I’m committed to this novel. I’m going to do it right this time, because I’ve found the perfect novel. Okay, maybe there aren’t zombies in it, but—”

“What? NO! No, I’m not going to go to Tuscany with you. Shut up! No! Stop it. I don’t care if the zucchini blossoms are in bloom right now and would be delicious fried and filled with cream cheese….”

But its gonna take money
A whole lotta spending money
Its gonna take plenty of money
To do it right child

This part of George’s song may seem to make no sense in the context of writing a novel, since it certainly doesn’t take any spending money to write or to publish a book.

But don’t worry, I figured it out. Clearly in this part, George’s no good friend who invited him to Tuscany to try the fried zucchini blossoms bet him that he couldn’t finish his novel in a month.

So if George is anything like me, then yes, it’s going to take money—a whole lot of spending money—to do it right, child. Because George probably went, “I’ll take that bet!”

But George will prevail, and win that bet, and get his novel in on time.

Because he’s going to do it right, child. He knows it’s just going to take patience and time. Since:

This time he knows its for real
The feelings that he feels
He knows if he puts his mind to it
He knows that he really can do it

This is a truly inspirational song for all writers. We should adopt it as our motto this year for NaNoWriMo. Or at least, I’m going to.

Bravo, George. Who knew?

More later.

Much love,

Meg

So we’ve been trying to relax by catching up on the recordings on our DVRs.

He Who Shall Not Be Named On This Blog doesn’t want me to tell you this, but in addition to long documentaries about Icelandic rock groups (no, really…sometimes they play music with rocks), HWSNBNITB loves to record romantic movies.

But He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog has another secret, besides his love for Sigur Ros and anything starring Hugh Grant:

He loves Nicholas Sparks movies.

Now, I have tried to explain to He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog that in almost every single Nicholas Spark movie, someone dies tragically at the end, which is not what I call a romance, and that this is because Nicholas Sparks’s mother died in a horseback riding accident two months after N.S.’s wedding.

Then his first baby died. Then his second son had physical problems. Then his dad died in a car accident. And then his sister died of a brain tumor.

But N.S. was able to channel all of that loss into becoming a huge bestselling author, then build a school, and he’s ALSO the track coach at the local public high school.

No. For real. I am not kidding you. In addition to writing a huge blockbuster every year or so, he is also the track coach at the local public school. It was in The New York Times. Do you work your full time job then also go build a school, then go coach the track team?

No? What’s wrong with you?

(PS–I’m kidding, I don’t do any of these things either.)

So can you really blame me for not wanting to watch Nights in Rodanthe, which was on the same night as Quarantine*???

Especially since I had already gone to Moviespoilers.com and checked to see how it ended.

Which I told HWSNBNITB.

“So?” he said. “We’re still watching it. And you’re going to love it.”

I so was not going to love this movie (if you do not want to know what happens at the end of this movie, STOP READING HERE. Because it is one of Nicholas Sparks’s best—by which I mean worst—endings ever).

“Seriously,” I said to him. “Do you know that Richard Gere gets—”

“DO NOT TELL ME,” he said.

“—completely killed by—”

“I will hold you tenderly in my arms while you cry,” HWSNBITB said.

On MY DVR (yes. We have His and Her DVRs. That is how we’ve stayed married 16 years), I’d recorded the new Rambo, and HWSNBITB had not held me tenderly in his arms as Rambo blew everyone (very satisfyingly) to bits, but had in fact fallen asleep as we’d watched it.

John Rambo is tamed by this missionary, much like the Incredible Hulk was tamed by Liv Tyler.

“Fine,” I said, very grudgingly because these are the kinds of sacrifices you make in a marriage.

And so I was forced to watch Nights in Rodanthe, in which poor Richard Gere, plays a doctor who accidentally kills someone (but feels guilty about it. He should try building a school, then coaching track).

And Diane Lane plays a woman whose husband has left her. We are supposed to think it’s because he’s an ass, but really it’s because she’s lost her self-esteem, cut her hair into an unflattering style (which I couldn’t help noticing looks a lot line mine. Thanks, Nicholas Sparks!) and stopped making boxes out of drift wood.

One of the driftwood boxes Diane Lane made, which were actually made by this guy in real life.

At one point Richard Gere and Diane Lane drunkenly throw the contents of a woman’s pantry into a garbage can. Obviously, there was nothing to do after that but make wild passionate love.

Then Richard Gere is killed in a South American mudslide.

The end.

“See,” I said to He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog. “I told you so.”

“But Diane Lane learned a valuable lesson,” HWSNBNITB said.

“About what?” I asked.

“To make boxes out of drift wood and not to wear her hair so short.”

Nights in Rodanthe

One Tiara

Rambo 4

Three Well Deserved Tiaras!!!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

*PS Later, I watched Quarantine, and it has an even worse ending than Nights in Rodanthe. Just FYI.

I was fortunate enough to be able to read a review copy of this book a long time ago, and couldn’t wait to be able to talk about it with you.

And now here it is!

Finally!

Publishers Weekly says Ash “should establish Malinda Lo as a gifted storyteller,” while Kirkus calls it “exquisite and pristine,” with “beautiful language, magically wrought.”

School Library Journal says “fans of romance, fantasy, and strong female protagonists will embrace this fine debut novel.”

I said when I blurbed it that Ash was “A rich and darkly moving tale I couldn’t put down. Malinda Lo is an exciting and welcome new voice in YA.”

But weirdly, now that the time has come for me to finally be able to talk about Ash, I find myself at a loss for words. Those of you who have read it will know what I mean. It’s just such a beautifully written book…like I said, so dark and complicated, you don’t really know what to say about it (or at least, I don’t).

So I was really happy to stumble upon Bookslut’s review of Ash, because it put into words what I find myself unable to.

So I’m reprinting some of what the review said (without Bookslut’s permission–naughty me! You can read the entire review here) with my comments. I stole the pictures from other websites all on my own. Go me!

From Bookslut:

Malinda Lo deserves a lot of credit for taking on Cinderella in her new book, Ash. Lo does not discard all of the tropes — fairy is here and so is romance — but Ash is a mature retelling of a classic and one that startles as much by its subtlety as it does with its hint of passion.

Young Aisling or “Ash” struggles mightily with the loss of her mother early in the story and is very nearly broken with incapacitating grief. Her father’s subsequent remarriage is a shock, as is his rapid illness and the dishonor (due to poorly managed finances) revealed by his death.

From a happy childhood in the country, Ash finds herself transported to a city home with a stepmother who feels duped by her husband’s lack of wealth and two stepsisters who lumber under the weight of finding necessary lucrative marriages.

Drawn repeatedly to her mother’s grave and the happy memories she represents, Ash finds herself walking the borderlands with faerie, a place she was taught to respect by a family friend and now hopes will show her the way to her lost parents.

While she is not suicidal in the conventional sense, Ash does want to end her miserable life and sees an escape into faerie as the way to accomplish that. She meets Sidhean who offers to take her away but not yet — he is waiting for something from her and she must be patient until he is satisfied, so she can leave her pain behind.

(Note from Meg: Instead of a fairy godmother, this story has a fairy godfather. He is called Sidhean and I have no idea how you pronounce that. But he is super sexy.)

This being a Cinderella retelling, there is of course a prince, a ball and a masquerade.

(Note from Meg: The prince is super sexy, too. He has a scar across his face. I love that!)

The step sisters are preening ninnies–

(Note from Meg: Actually I disagree with this, I found that one of the stepsisters turned out to be kind of nice, at least in the version I read, but maybe that changed prior to publication. Or possibly I am just an idiot.)

–the stepmother an uncompromising harridan, and magic makes a romantic moment possible.

But this is also Lo’s version of Cinderella, and so there is a heavy bargain made for that magic and Sidhean is no sweet-faced fairy godmother.

(Note from Meg: Heh. This is a major understatement. Sexy!)

The struggle here is with grief and finding a reason to live. While love can certainly light a spark, it cannot save you, not when you are filled with this much despair.

This is what the typical Cinderella stories miss — that it was a tale full of sorrow and not about being noticed in a pretty gown. How do you go on when everyone and everything you ever loved is taken from you? Is it reasonable to expect Ash to be excited about a prince she has never even exchanged a word with? Her stepsister Ana sees him as a financial solution to her woes (money and prestige will fix everything).

This would be the Gossip Girls solution to life in the 21st century. But Ash must find a way to simply bear living without her family and it is that pain which makes faerie — even with the harsh price paid to gain entrance there – so appealing.

Happily ever after is so much more complicated than the princess stories would have us believe. Lo knows this, and she makes sure that her readers know it as well.

Ash is a very subtle tale of grief and longing that requires a quiet read; it is not about hot passion so much as a cool appraisal of life’s tragedies and decisions to survive. There is a happily ever after here, but it is found in Ash’s decision to live and love and find happiness. That she makes unconventional choices will just endear her even more to her readers and elevates Ash high above the standard fare.

Read this one as the leaves fall and the weather changes; it is a perfect autumn tale that will haunt you long after the last page is turned.

I couldn’t have put it better myself (which is why I re-posted it here).

There’s a twist to Ash that it isn’t revealed here. I’ll leave it to you readers to discover it as you read, because it’s much better if you don’t know.

Enjoy.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

If you haven’t read the Betsy books yet…what are you waiting for? The Betsy-Tacy Books by Maud Hart Lovelace have been beloved by girls and women since they were first published in the 1940s. Fans of the series include New York Times bestselling authors Laura Lippman, Anna Quindlen, Judy Blume and Nora Ephron.

(Check out Meg Ryan hand-selling the Betsy books to Tom Hanks’s niece next time you watch “You’ve Got Mail”!)

Now the high school Betsy-Tacy books (Heaven to Betsy and Betsy In Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior and Betsy and Joe, and
Betsy and the Great World and Betsy’s Wedding) which follow Betsy and her Crowd through 4 years of high school, on to a year of travel in Europe and to her marriage to (Name Deleted As It Is A Spoiler), have been reissued with original cover illustrations by Vera Neville and forewords by Laura Lippman, Meg Cabot and Anna Quindlen!

(This one is obviously the best because the foreword is by me)

When HarperCollins asked me if I’d like to participate in this project (for which I might add I am not getting paid a cent. This is a labor of love), I said, “Only if I can have dibs on my favorite books, Betsy Was A Junior and Betsy and Joe.”

And they said, “Okay.”

(Actually, it was more like, “…um, okay, weirdo.”)

Then I called my friend Beth, who loves the books too, and yelled, “Guess what I get to do????”

And she was like, “LUCKY!!!! Those are the ones with the romantic love triangle and all the fighting and kissing!!!!”

Of course they are. I’m not stupid.

Then Beth wanted to know, “Will you please send me free copies of the books????”

And I was all, “Maybe…if you do everything I say.”

(But I did. Also, I sent her a Betsy mug and some notecards that I got in the Betsy-Tacy Gift Shop.)

So now you too can participate in the serious dishyness that is Deep Valley High School, circa 1910 (I swear to you, it’s exactly like Princess Diaries, just no tiaras or text messaging).

GO FOR IT.

Only I warn you: You will be hooked.

And then you too will want a mug.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

A lot of people think being a writer is just sitting around writing books, then jetting off to sign those books for fans, and then getting served freshly sliced mangoes poolside and going to parties.

(I know I’m partly to blame for this misconception.)

But lot of it is also hard work like this:

And that’s only a small fraction of the books I signed in Alabama, pre-luncheon!

(It was fun while I was signing though, because I was kept entertained the whole time by the hilarious Books-A-Million Ladies about the scandalous doings of the Real Housewives. That crazy Kelly)!

Of course, I also got to hang out with Peter Lerangis, one of The 39 Clues authors (and no, he wouldn’t give me any of the clues).

The weird thing about my trip to Alabama though (besides the fact that when I walked into the hotel they were showing MY FACE on the welcome monitor behind the reception desk) was that in the gift shop they were selling T-shirts that said this:

Prayer…it’s not just for dinner anymore.

When I saw this T-shirt I freaked out.

And not just because my parents used to make us say grace before dinner every night.

But because right before I left for the airport to go to Birmingham, I got an email that totally had me praying.

That’s because my friend Michele told me that something terrible had happened to a good friend of hers: Her little daughter had been hit by a car and suffered a traumatic head injury, and was in the hospital in a coma.

I know, right? Oh my God!

When something like this happens, even to someone you don’t know well, you just feel so upset. There’s really nothing you can do to help…except, whether you’re a believer or not, pray.

Or, as I started to think of it, pass the luck.

I don’t know about luck. Sometimes when people say to me, “Oh, you’re so lucky!” I think, Really? I thought it was my hard work and maybe some talent that got me where I am. As sharp-shooters like to say, “Luck is 95% preparation, and 5% opportunity.”

This is true. If you’ve worked hard, hopefully you’ll be prepared when the opportunity presents itself to shine (or shoot a hostage-taker in the head).

On the other hand, some people get cancer, and other people with the exact same genetic background and lifestyle don’t. What’s up with that? It has to be luck, right?

So let’s say I am lucky. If that’s true, then how come I can’t, by thinking hard enough, shoot some of that luck toward someone else, even someone far away, someone I don’t know, who needs it more than me?

This should totally be possible.

Luck is a funny thing. Sometimes you have it, and sometimes you don’t. I think we can all agree that if luck exists, lately, I’ve been a pretty lucky person.

It wasn’t always this way, though! I had a patch of bad luck that lasted a loooong time. I won’t go into the details, because it will only depress you (and me).

But it wasn’t good.

When I heard about Michele’s friend—the 24 hours after I left for Birmingham were going to be critical in the little girl’s recovery. She would either start getting better, or get very much worse—the first thing I thought was, “If only we could pass our luck to someone else when they need it.”

All I was doing during the time this little girl was going to need all the luck in the world was going to Birmingham. What did I need my good luck for (if I even had good luck)?

So I closed my eyes and started praying to pass the good luck I’d been having for so long onto her.

I know what you’re wondering:

Did it work?

Well…the good news is: she didn’t get worse.

And I don’t want to sound like a whiner, but my bad luck started RIGHT AWAY! I got pegged as the Beauty Products Bomber by Key West airport security on my way out (even though they know me there because I go through that airport like once a week)!

All of my bags were summarily searched (as was I)! And I mean, SEARCHED.

(And they didn’t screw the tops to my bottles back on, so they leaked all over inside my bags. Yes. Everything I owned was covered in Cetaphil Facial Cleanser.)

And when I got to the next airport for my connecting flight, they made me go through security AGAIN, pegged me as the Beauty Products Bomber AGAIN, and made me so late, I was the last one on board!

And I had to sit by a stinky guy (excuse me, but it is the year 2009. There is such a thing as deodorant now).

And then when I got to my hotel room, the previous occupant had apparently been a baby with the poopiest diapers on the planet. He had pooped up the place really good, leaving behind the odor of baby diarrhea and Luvs Scented Disposables, a fragrance with a piquant flavor that really lingers.

And the windows of the room were bolted shut, apparently to keep people from jumping, which of course was my first inclination when the smell hit me.

That was why I was in the gift shop, trying to buy a scented candle (the cool girl in the gift shop, understanding the problem instantly, recommended Paddywax, Blood Orange), and I saw the Prayer T-shirt, and I realized, “Oh my God. My prayers to pass on my good luck must be working….”

Of course, I also got a new room. I mean, I’m not an idiot.

But my bad luck continued. When I got home, I discovered that, among other things, my cat needed a bath, for reasons you don’t want to know.

I think it’s safe to say my good luck has been passed successfully.

And I don’t mind. I can live without my good luck for a little while.

Though I’m not sure how long Henrietta can.

And maybe these things would have happened anyway, and had nothing to do with me passing my “luck” onto someone else.

But wouldn’t it be cool if there was such a thing as luck, and those of us who are having good luck streaks could pass our luck to others who are down on theirs, the way those of us with money can help those less fortunate?

What if we all concentrated on passing our luck to kids who need it more than we do? Then we wouldn’t need this guy:

Jizo, Japanese Good Luck Guardian of Children

Although I suppose he’s nice to have around anyway.

I just hope I can get my good luck back eventually. Because Henrietta really isn’t too happy right now.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I knew the cover for the new book in the YA series by Robert B. Parker looked a little familiar.

I just couldn’t figure out where I’d seen it before.

Then I was like, Oh yeah….

That’s where!

Well, they’re a little similar.

And no, you can’t find that Jenny Carroll book anymore, she’s the pen name I used to use when I wrote for Simon Pulse (that was my dead cat’s name) and she’s out of print! You can find that book with a different cover, under Meg Cabot:

(I know, I like the original cover better, too. Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone.)

Anyway, I love RBP. I’ve been to so many of his signings, but he never knew I was there because I was too shy to go up and talk to him to myself. I worship the ground he walks on. But I have like seven of his books signed…I made my friends go up for me. I like to call him The Bear!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

…then coming home to get a flu shot that has caused my arm to inflate like a piñata; all the work I have to catch up on; unpacking and reading all your wonderful cards and letters…

And now repacking because I have to leave on Sunday for a Totally Important Business Trip in Alabama.

Plus my cat, who won’t shut up.

But here are some things I’ve been reading* and some things I’ve been watching. You know, in between gigantic loads of laundry:

How could I miss Kathy Griffin’s new book, Official Book Club Selection (even though I know all these people who are scandalized because she got a $2 million dollar advance for it)?

Kathy’s problems are way bigger than mine—her husband tried to gamble away her money, and her brother was a pedophile. That makes me feel better about myself. Here is my $32.00, Kathy.

Next, I’m going to read this:

David Cross doesn’t make me feel better about my problems the way Kathy Griffin does, but he is dating Amber Tamblyn, which is dishy because he’s like twice her age.

Plus, he’s the guy who played the Never Nude in Arrested Development, and also various characters on Mr. Show, including Ronnie from the musical version of Cops, Fuzz.

So, for those reasons alone, I will read anything he ever writes.

Oh, I also bought this book:

Because the trailer for it cracks me up (but DO NOT CLICK ON IT, because the song will be stuck in your head all day).

You clicked on it, didn’t you? I warned you.

Oh, I also bought a book by Mindy Kaling (you know, Kelly from The Office). She co-wrote a play called Matt and Ben, about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and how they wrote Good Will Hunting. Then she starred in it. I wish I had seen it.

AWESOME.

Anyway, there are a bunch more books I’m going to read if any of my three planes to or from Alabama break down, especially Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol, so I’ll know what everyone is talking about. I hate being out of the loop.

I’m especially sad about the latter because Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, took down his letter about how closely Amazon was guarding their copies of The Lost Symbol….

…which sucks as I was inspired to work on improving the letter for him. Even though it’s too late now, since the book is already out, I want to share it with you.

Mr. Bezos–also, Mr. D. Brown–you don’t have to thank me! I did this completely for free and out of love for Mr. Brown’s priceless work–due in stores September 15, completely coincidentally the same day as a certain other book known as Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girl’s #4 Stage Fright was due in stores!

So when you’re in there buying the adventures of the dashing Professor Robert Langdon, you might just want to wander over to the children’s section and pick up this other fantastic work!

Amazon Da Vinci Code Security Letter (as improved by Meg Cabot):

Dear Da Vinci Code Fans,

The Da Vinci Code sold 80 Million copies in 51 languages. Now, after five years of work, Dan Brown is unveiling his new novel, The Lost Symbol.

The contents of this book remain such a deep secret that Amazon is keeping their stockpile under 24-guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry….

…as well as Cerberus, the multi-headed hell hound, guarding the people who are guarding the entry.

Not to mention the Hydra of Lernaean, a serpent-like chthonic water beast whose poisonous breath was so virulent even her tracks were deadly, guarding Cerebus.

Amazon is confident that with the stockpile under 24-hour guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry, as well as Cerberus and the Hydra of Lernaean guarding the people who have the keys, copies of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol will not get out before the release date, thus keeping Robert Langdon’s latest intrepid adventure unspoiled for you, the reading public.

But just in case someone does slip past Amazon’s chain link fence, locks, Cerberus, and the Hydra, Amazon is prepared to hunt down anyone who steals copies of The Lost Symbol using trained chupacabras.

Yes, chupacabras, the legendary cryptoid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas and to drink the blood of livestock, will track down anyone who steals copies of The Lost Symbol (or posts a PDF of it online) before the release date, find them, puncture their jugular vein, and drain them of their life’s blood.

In this way, no one will survive to spoil handsome yet intellectual Robert Langdon’s next exciting tale.

You can depend on us, America!

Sincerely,

J.B.

Did you like that? I think it had a certain flair that the original letter lacked.

Anyway, I’m always happy to do what I can to help.

I just wish Amazon had come to me, a professional writer, first!

I hope all of you are watching Glee, which kind of flagged towards the middle but then got really good, and that you also saw the premiere of House (I wish that show were always set in a mental institution).

Just whatever you do, do NOT watch the horrible movie I saw on the way back from Brazil, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Really, Hollywood? Why don’t you just throw up on me next time and get it over with.

Personally, I recommend instead you see the Showtime documentary Battle of the High School Musical, Guys ‘n Divas.

Because it’s like Glee, only for REAL. Set in Southern Indiana near where I grew up (but my school had nowhere near as much money for arts as the schools in this documentary! At least not when I was there), it shows three different high school drama/arts departments struggling to put on their school musical, from auditions to opening night.

How much do I love the story of one student who began praise dancing (after slamming another boy’s head into concrete and hospitalizing him for two months)? Docudrama gold, baby.

And what about Floyd Central High School, where they put on a show called “Zombie Prom,” and where one of the male leads almost had to quit when….

Well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. But it has to do with a 14 foot python.

Seriously, people. It’s Indiana. You can’t make this stuff up. (My drama director used to throw her Bic lighter at us when we got a line wrong. I swear.)

Oh, and before I forget, don’t miss Appaloosa, starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson.

I know what you’re thinking: Ed Harris? Seriously?

But stop right there. Viggo Mortenson was VERY VERY NAKED (FULL FRONTAL!!!) in Eastern Promises, a movie that scored VERY VERY HIGH on the Best Movie Ever Approval Rating (Romance, Action, Hot Guys With Guns, and Viggo Mortenson Full Frontal Naked. In fact I would give Eastern Promises three HUGE tiaras).

Sadly, only Renee Zellweger is naked in Appaloosa…and it’s through a telescope from super far away, in this pivotal scene. You don’t really see anything:

For which I suppose we should be thankful. Because, you know. It’s Renee Zellweger, who claims she can’t gain weight for Bridget Jones 3 because it’s “too hard” on her body.

Really, Renee? I could gain 30 pounds in three minutes with a bag of Oreos, some Ding Dongs, and a twelve pack of Coke.

However, Appaloosa was still an excellent, excellent movie, scoring very high on the approval rating!

This movie was based on the bestselling Western by Robert B. Parker who writes the Spenser series, one of my favorite mystery series of all time.

Watching Appaloosa, I remembered why I had liked the book so much: Viggo Mortenson and Ed Harris are super hot (although older) gunslingers for justice.

Also, they’re funny (but not slapstick. This wasn’t Lethal Weapon, which is good, but a totally different style of movie). They’re violent, but with good reason, and the romance was deliciously complicated.

All in all, I give Appaloosa three tiaras. I’m going to be buying the sequels to the book of Appaloosa, Resolution and Brimstone, and I’ll be reading them someday, along with all the other books I’m totally going to be reading someday.

If they got made into movies, I’d watch them someday too.

When my friend Beth called me to ask, “Wasn’t Appaloosa good?” I only had one thing to say about this film: “I would like to be in a Viggo Mortenson and Ed Harris sandwich.”

The end.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

*I swear I’m totally going to read these books when I have time.

Big love to all the Julianas, Giulianas, Juliannas, and Giuliannas, Marinas and Ana Carolinas, the Luisas, Luizas, Ana Luisas and Maria Luisas, the Andressas and Alessandras, the Isabels and the Marianas, the Helenas and Rafaelas and Raquels, and everyone in between!

(Not to mention a big shout out to all the Thaises, Tamarises, and the one and only Talita)!

Also the TiTis, the ViVis, the Viis, and the Cats!

You were all wonderful and I can’t wait to see you again someday.

And for all of you who want to be writers, I can’t want to read YOUR books when they get published (and translated into English, because hard as I try I don’t think I’ll learn to read Portuguese anytime soon).

Thanks to Capricho Magazine for the totally fun signing (and for inviting me to their offices for brunch, where I got to see the amazing Clothing Closet)!

And of course thanks to my wonderful Brazilian publisher, GalaRecord, who sponsored this fantastic tour. It was hard work for all of us, but I had the best time!

The last book signings in Curitiba, Sao Paulo, and especially Salvador, were just wild. Words cannot describe.

Booksigning in Sao Paulo (He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog calls this one “The Cage.”)

Signing in Sao Paulo

Doing a phone interview at the airport….Can you hear me now?

Click here to watch a newscast covering the signing in Curitiba. Even though it’s in Brazilian Portuguese, you totally get the gist. It was amazing!

Want to see photos of yourselves at the signings? Come to my publisher’s Meg Cabot Flickr page! I’m sure you’ll find yourself in no time.

Salvador wins for highest decibel screaming I’ve ever heard anywhere (click here for what it sounded like as I was coming through with mall security–you can’t see me because I’m actually swallowed up in Men in Black).

Behind the scenes at the signing in Salvador:

Mall security dispatched to fetch me and Guillerme and Carol (publicists from my publisher) from car and take us to elevator.

Reflective moment: This is what it must be like for the Jonas Brothers every single day.

Suddenly remember: Pens! All my pens have run out of ink! Did anyone get new pens???

(It’s OK: Wonderful Vera remembered the purple Stabilo markers. Big kisses to Vera!)

Thanks so much for all the thoughtful notes, letters, and gifts with which you showered me. Below is just a small sampling of some of the gifts:

There were far too many for me to pack into my suitcase or read before I left, so I’m having them sent home separately. I can’t wait to read them all!

Now I’m home where instead of joyful greetings I got a lot of angry hissing and growls from Henrietta, who was upset with me for being away so long.

I am Queen Henrietta, and I am so angry with you right now. Why did you go away? No, there is no excuse.

She has been supervising the reconstruction of He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog’s office in our absence.

Apparently, she hated us and the office redesign so much, she took to disappearing inside a hole in the wall for days at a time, refusing to come out except for Whiskas Temptations.

One of Henrietta’s many “foot stools,” which she needs to get onto the bed now because of her kitty arthritis, and on which also go her bizarre plastic caps full of water, which she demands I refill constantly..

When steps were taken to cover the hole to prevent her from going in there and being hurt, permanently lost, or sealed in, she sat next to the hole and cried forlornly as if her heart were breaking.

What’s inside that wall, anyway? The entrance to Narnia?

When I got home, she disappeared under the bed, growling and hissing at me to express her disapproval of my behavior.

Then after I ignored her for a while, she came out from under the bed pretending like nothing had happened, and hasn’t left my side since.

Where is my foot stool, my water caps full of water, and my servant to keep them filled?

I’m not sure how any of us are going to get back to normal after this.

But I’m going to have to, because I have lots of stuff to write about!

Tchau for now. And obrigada, from my heart!

More later.

Much love.

Meg

Really, though, words cannot describe. Except to say: WOW.

And thank you!

(Obrigada!)

But first, it’s been pointed out that my post on Clarice Lispector has disappeared!

I can’t believe that, especially because the other night at the official Bienal party, Clarice’s son Paulo introduced himself (and his lovely wife) to me, because he heard I was a fan of his mother’s work!

It was so amazing! Really, I was speechless upon meeting a relative of someone so inspirational to me. I wanted to bow down like Mike Meyers on Saturday Night Live and do the “I’m not worthy” thing (but I restrained myself…barely. And only because my Spanx were so tight and denied all movement).

It was such an honor!

So I’ve made sure to add the post again below. I don’t know WHY it disappeared. Half the things I post/Twitter disappear on a regular basis though (sometimes this is a good thing. In this case, not) for mysterious reasons.

Really, I blame it on Rio. HA HA HA!

Secondly: My Internet connection here is very sketchy because I have a MacBook Air and I forgot my Ethernet adaptor so a lot of the time I can’t find a wifi connection.

But I’ve been TRYING to keep up with the news/your emails/etc!

And all I have to say is, oh my God, I go away for five minutes, and Patrick Swayze dies?

NOOOOO! Patrick, we love you. Nobody ever put you in the corner! Sob!

Then Kanye goes crazy (again)?

Kanye has apologized on his blog for what he did to Taylor Swift at the VMAs (I CAN’T BELIEVE I MISSED THIS. Also, Pink on the trapeze, and Lady GaGa).

But should we forgive him, Taylor fans? I will always have a soft spot for Kanye for letting Zach G make a video of one of his songs (Come on, you know you love chainsaws and clogging, especially when combined.)

Still…dissing our little Taylor? That was a jackass moment (even the President agrees).

So, anyway…back to Rio and the Bienal:

What can I say, people? First of all, check out where I ate breakfast every morning:

Yes, that is the pool where I was served slices of mangoes on a silver tray with my eggs and bacon. How will I ever go back to normal?

Answer: I will not. (Yes, that is Jesus floating over my pool. Actually, Christ the Redeemer from Corcovado, the mountain above!)

And one morning when we were eating our mangoes and drinking our coconut water (!!!) this live band began to sing John Mayer songs in soft Portuguese (John Mayer is SO MUCH BETTER in Portuguese! Really, he should consider taking it up) for a wedding upstairs on the terrace, and we all got a free concert. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?

It all happened at the Copacabana, the hottest spot north of Havana.

I didn’t spend all my time at the hotel, though. I went to Sugar Loaf! In a cable car! Thousands of feet in the air! And many other cultural spots, such as the National Library!

And I saw monkeys (and not at the zoo. Just sitting around, with their tiny monkey babies on their backs)! So sweet! And possibly infected with hideous viruses that will kill us all! Don’t touch them! No really!

I also hung out with Bernard Cornwell and Arthur Phillips (you might know them for being totally famous smart authors who wrote “The Sharpe Books” and “Prague”) for dinner and samba (FOR REAL) and stuff ALMOST EVERY NIGHT!!!!

And since we all we couldn’t fit into one car, our publisher hired this party bus to take us around. I KID YOU NOT.

So I was in this totally awesome Rio party bus with these amazing authors, just going around to places like the US consulate’s house for cocktails, and the Rio Scenariom, for samba:

It was insane. But I can’t tell you more because my motto is: What happens on the party bus stays on the party bus.

So, the Bienal. Amazing! So many sweet, affectionate readers, who waited so long (some all day) and came from so far away!

Brazilians love to read, and what’s more, they love to read anything, from huge super intellectual tomes to comic books. Plus, they love AUTHORS!

I did two packed presentations, two signings (one for five hours!)!

And still, sadly, there were people who came that I never got to meet!

I’m so sorry to anyone I missed and especially to anyone security and I mowed down on our way to the signing booth.

Authors are treated like rock stars in Brazil! It’s a little like being Xuxa…

…who, in case you don’t know, is a huge children’s television star here, and who was in the booth next to me for one signing. You should have heard the screaming.

(Sometimes in my head I still think I hear the screaming. Like Vietnam.)

Thank you to everyone who came! You were all such princesses!

Thanks too to everyone who gave me such lovely notes—I’m STILL reading them all—and gifts. Just a few of the wonderful things I received were this handmade “Game of Meg”…

…and pink Havaianas, teddy bears, bracelets, necklaces, and of course, this amazing cake, which two wonderful girls made themselves and carried ALL DAY, and which by the end of my signing I was still gazing at longingly (even though I was quite tired)…and so was everyone else who worked so hard to make my signings happen! My publisher here is INCREDIBLE (and so are all the people who organized and worked for the Bienal!)

It was so nice!

(This is how I look at the end of a 12 hour work day. Note the dazed expression, due to proximity of cake.)

A special thanks to Brazilian author Talitha, who showed me how it’s done!

Talitha showing me how to make “heart fingers” to the readers down below. All these photos courtesy of the Bienal’s Twitter page, including this one:

Seriously, can we just talk about my hair? I got it professionally curled and styled two hours before this photo was taken, but conference hall air HATES my hair. I’m mortified.

And no matter how much I primp, nothing works. This one ended up on the Bienal Twitter page, too!

But now I’m off to the second part of my tour, Curitiba, Sao Paolo, and Salvador! I had the best time at the Bienal, and in Rio—everyone was so kind, and so welcoming! I will seriously miss you all.

But Curitiba is going to be a blast, too! See you tonight from
7:30 PM-10:30PM

Sign session at the
Livrarias Curitiba
ParkShopping Barigui 

Rua 
Professor Pedro Viriato 

Parigot de Souza n°. 600 – Mossunguê

Tchau! I love you!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Missing Post about Clarice Lispector

All About Brazil!

Thanks so much for the love, everyone who wrote me with tips on what to wear during my book tour in Brazil over the next two weeks! I think I’m going to be fine.

But if not I’ll know who to blame! (Ha, just kidding.)

Anyway, now that I’ve got the clothing down, I’ve realized I still need to learn Portuguese.

So I’m hoping people won’t hold that against me. I know “Obrigado” means thank you. I’m still working on the rest, with the help of this amazing(ly boring, but helpful) video:

So I’ve got the basics (kind of).

The two top questions Brazilian interviewers keep asking me (in English, thankfully) are:

#1, What books have you read by Brazilian writers, and

#2, Do you know any Brazilians?

Weirdly, I don’t usually remember the nationality of the authors I read. I can’t remember ever going around saying, “I just read this great book! It’s by a Canadian.”

But I do recall reading a book of short stories (Family Ties) by an amazing author called Clarice Lispector who was Brazilian. I wonder if she’s required reading in Brazilian schools?

Anyway, I liked her because:

a) Her writing struck me as humorous and sarcastic and yet moving.

b) Many of her short stories seem at first glance to be about…nothing. A woman putting her mother on the train after a visit. A girl who wants shoes without wooden heels so boys won’t notice her click-clacking as she walks to school. But the stories are actually about a lot. Much of it only women can understand, I think:

c) Clarice was Jewish and extremely glamorous. She once lit herself on fire after falling asleep while smoking.

OK, maybe this last part wasn’t exactly glamorous, but it adds to her mystique.

If you want to know more about Clarice, read one of her books (my friend Michael swears by “The Hour of the Star”), obviously, or the new biography about her called Why This World, by Benjamin Moser, which is in stores now. Here’s a review of it:

What the legendary soccer player Pelé is to sport in Brazil, the author "Clarice" is to that country's literary culture. Stunningly brilliant, beautiful and enigmatic, the daughter of Russian-Jewish émigrés achieved instant celebrity at the age of 23 with the publication of her debut novel Near to the Wild Heart. From that auspicious beginning in 1943, she emerged during the post-war decades as one of Latin America's greatest modernist writers and ambassadors of Brazilian culture and avant-garde thought. But, with only a few of her works available in translation, Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) has remained unknown to most English readers until now. Benjamin Moser's Why This World makes up for this long drought by offering a detailed and dramatic biography of Lispector's incredible life and times. Based on new interviews with family and friends, recovered manuscripts, and other fresh sources, Moser crafts a moving and tangible portrait of the famously inscrutable Clarice. --Lauren Nemroff

Edited to add later: I have been promised an English copy of “The Hour of the Star” is waiting for me in Sao Paolo! I hope this is true!

As to the second question, “Do you know anyone from Brazil?” I do, I know thousands of readers who’ve emailed me, maybe even tens of thousands!

But if you mean personally, I do know a young Brazilian woman who moved to the US knowing next-to-no English, but was nevertheless determined to make a life for herself, and after marrying a friend of mine opened her own restaurant in New York City which became a sort of neighborhood hangout for a lot of celebrities (including some who’ve been in the tabloids recently and whom I’ve mentioned on this blog)!

I think this kind of chutzpah is typically Brazilian. Nothing can stop a Brazilian!

Anyway, our friend’s restaurant is where He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog and I used to go almost every Tuesday night until closing. Afterwards, we’d all hit the town.

That’s how we started calling Tuesday nights Danger Night, because we’d usually be out until 4AM (this wasn’t good, since some us had to work the next day).

So, that’s the story of my favorite Brazilian author and my friend from Brazil.

I think Clarice Lispector would have appreciated Danger Night immensely.

See you in Rio!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

WHY I HAVEN’T WRITTEN IN SO LONG: Because I have been in Rio de Janeiro!

WHAT’S GOING ON HERE: You seriously wouldn’t believe it I told you. Do you know what time people eat dinner here? 10PM. Yes, 10PM. EVERY NIGHT. The car comes to pick us up at 9 for dinner.

A (very) BRIEF SUMMARY: I’m at the XIV Rio de Janeiro International Book Fair (Bienal do Livro)!

First of all, thanks so much to all the girls who advised me on what to wear! You were completely right, and because of you I have almost TOO many perfect outfits (my suitcase weighs 79 pounds)!

The weather here is totally beautiful. I already put in my requisite pool time and had a caipirinha (or two).

As for the book fair, I haven’t seen Bono yet but I heard a rumor he’s arriving to the fair via helicopter any minute (all the really cool Cariocas–that’s Rio natives–go everywhere via helicopter, to avoid the traffic).

EDITED LATER TO ADD: I have been informed that even more people take helicopters in Sao Paolo. So, Rio is not the helicopter capital of Brazil. My bad.

I haven’t been in a helicopter yet, but I got driven to a fancy restaurant in someone’s bullet-proof car! SO FANCY!

(I was just kidding about Bono, but he did come to the book fair one year, and via helicopter.)

Random photo of Christ the Redeemer, which is totally destroyed in the new movie 2012, out this fall

So far, I have been to Ipanema, Copacabana, and Bahia (sp?), and they were all GORGEOUS.

I would totally move here except a) I still no fallah Portuguese (except for “obrigada,” which means “Thank you”), and b) I would have to have a place looking out on the beach, and that would cost about nine million R$ (the financial unit here).

I really don’t know what to say about the Bienal do Livros! It is completely insane, and only gets more insane and crowded every day. They expect 650,000 people! They have to transport the authors on a golf cart (sometimes guarded by big security men if fans are screaming too loudly for autographs) from place to place because the fair is so big!

Of course my readers are completely sweet and kind. I don’t think I’ve been kissed so much, or given so many gifts! Here’s just one early example:



(I think that screen shot of me with my eyes closed is particularly attractive)

I have many more examples to come!

The best part about Rio right now is that every single person I’ve seen is holding….

…a book!

It’s freaking fantastic!

Also fantastic is that apparently this blog got nominated for Best Author Blog in honor of Book Bloggers Appreciation Week!

You guys are so sweet. Thank you so much! Thank you too to Amy for holding an event that must be so time consuming and is obviously such a labor of love for her.

You can check out all the nominees (and discover some awesome book blogs) here! This is where you vote ….

…but because all the blogs are united in their love for and encouragement of reading, all of them are already winners, in my opinion.

And here’s an interview ever that I did with The Examiner just before I left for Brazil (you can get a sense of how crazed I’ve been lately)! I love The Examiner!

I can’t wait to keep you updated on everything else that’s going on, but I seriously don’t have a minute to myself here. All I can say is I LOVE YOU ALL.

And now I’m off to go see some monkeys.

(No, I’m not kidding. I told you that you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. And seriously, the monkeys, are just a tiny part of it).

LOVE YOU

More later.

Much love,

Meg

PS Edited to add: I SAW THREE MONKEYS! IN THE WILD! NOT IN A ZOO! ONE WAS A SWEET BABY MONKEY ON ITS MOTHER’S BACK!

And this was in the middle of the city. Well, sort of.

PICTURES TO COME!

But if not I’ll know who to blame! (Ha, just kidding.)

Anyway, now that I’ve got the clothing down, I’ve realized I still need to learn Portuguese.

Fortunately there’s YouTube, and this amazing(ly boring, but helpful) video:

So I’ve got the basics (kind of).

The two top questions Brazilian interviewers keep asking me (in English, thankfully) are:

#1. What books have you read by Brazilian writers, and

#2. Do you know any Brazilians?

Weirdly, I don’t usually remember the nationality of the authors I read. Do you? I can’t remember ever going around saying, “I just read this great book! It’s by a Canadian.”

But I do recall reading a book of short stories (Family Ties) by an author called Clarice Lispector who was Brazilian (she died in 1977).

I wonder if she’s required reading in Brazilian schools?

Anyway, I liked her because:

a) Her writing seemed pretty sarcastic (the story about the world’s tiniest woman? And the other one, about the chicken?) and yet moving.

Here is Clarice, left, looking fancy at a party.

b) Many of her short stories seem at first glance to be about…nothing. A woman putting her tiresome mother on the train after a visit. A teenaged girl who wants to be invisible, so her wooden heeled shoes, which click-clack as she makes her way to school, drawing the notice of teenaged boys, will not do.

But the stories are actually about a lot.

Here is Clarice looking fancy at the beach.

c) Clarice was Jewish and extremely fancy and glamorous.

And it cannot go unsaid that she once lit herself on fire after falling asleep while smoking, which only adds to her exotic mystique.

Quote from Clarice: “I am so mysterious that even I don’t understand myself.”

And of course, she has the same name as the other Clarice, the one from Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling, who catches the worst serial killer of all time.

Coincidence? I think not.

If you want to know more about the original Clarice, read one of her books (my friend Michael swears by “The Hour of the Star”), obviously, or the new biography about her called Why This World, by Benjamin Moser, which is in stores now. Here’s a review of it:

What the legendary soccer player Pelé is to sport in Brazil, the author “Clarice” is to that country’s literary culture. Stunningly brilliant, beautiful and enigmatic, the daughter of Russian-Jewish émigrés achieved instant celebrity at the age of 23 with the publication of her debut novel Near to the Wild Heart. From that auspicious beginning in 1943, she emerged during the post-war decades as one of Latin America’s greatest modernist writers and ambassadors of Brazilian culture and avant-garde thought. But, with only a few of her works available in translation, Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) has remained unknown to most English readers until now. Benjamin Moser’s Why This World makes up for this long drought by offering a detailed and dramatic biography of Lispector’s incredible life and times. Based on new interviews with family and friends, recovered manuscripts, and other fresh sources, Moser crafts a moving and tangible portrait of the famously inscrutable Clarice. –Lauren Nemroff

(Confidential to college students taking creative writing workshops: If you’re required to bring in a short story by a “favorite writer” to share with the rest of the class, my favorites were always “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor; “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad; and, if you want to freak the class the heck out but impress the instructor, anything by Clarice Lispector. Go for it.)

As to the second question, “Do you know anyone from Brazil?” I do! I know thousands of readers who’ve emailed me, maybe even tens of thousands!

But if you mean personally, I do know a young Brazilian woman who moved to the US knowing next to no English, but was nevertheless determined to make a life for herself, and opened her own restaurant in New York City which became a sort of neighborhood hangout for a lot of celebrities (including some who’ve been in the tabloids recently and whom I’ve mentioned on this blog)!

I think this kind of chutzpah is typically Brazilian. Nothing can stop a Brazilian!

Anyway, our friend’s restaurant is where He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog and I used to go almost every Tuesday night until closing (full disclosure: she married a friend of ours). Afterwards, we’d all hit the town.

That’s how we started calling Tuesday nights Danger Night, because we’d usually be out until 4AM (this wasn’t good, since some us had to work the next day).

So, that’s the story of my favorite Brazilian author and my friend from Brazil.

I think Clarice Lispector would have appreciated Danger Night immensely.

See you in Rio!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I’m leaving for my trip to Brazil for the Rio Book Fair and my book signings in Sao Paulo, Curitiba, and Salvador, and I just realized:

I have NO idea what to bring to wear in Brazil. NO IDEA. And I leave, like, NOW!

I need your help! Can any of you email me with some tips and photos?

One thing I’m pretty sure I need to bring is pants, so I can avoid looking like Leann Rimes in this photo:

Poor Leann! I know she is going through a divorce, so she has an excuse. But really, this look is not for me.

I had a terrible nightmare that I went to Brazil and although I remembered my pants, they were pink Juicy Couture sweat pants (which I don’t even own), and then in my dream, I accidentally wet them.

I know! It was so traumatic. But wait! It gets worse.

And then on the Brazilian news, they were all, “Today at the Book Festival, Meg Cabot wet her pants.”

And they showed pictures of it!

So you can see why I’m concerned about this.

When you email me with suggestions of what to bring to wear, can you include links to hot places to shop in the cities I’m going to (but not places that sell pink Juicy Couture sweat pants)?

Come on, I know my readers love to shop. So hook me up! I’ll be eternally grateful.

I’m not going to have much time to shop, but I hope I’ll have some!

And as much as I love Tori Spelling, she looks very unhappy in this photo, so I’m not sure this a look I want to emulate either:

So it’s up to you girls to HELP me!

Also, do you need a coat at night in Brazil? Is the air conditioning so cold that you need a sweater inside? Are girls in Brazil wearing maxi dresses or is that completely over (it’s still all the rage here in Key West)? Except for the girls who go out wearing…well, something like this:

Only without the booties (a lot of them skip the top, too…and the pants. It’s a party town).

The point is, I have to go to cocktails at the American consulate’s house (for real! I KNOW! I have to get dressed up for THAT), and opening ceremonies and breakfasts with the press and of course signings with YOU all!

So I need to bring some fancy clothes, not clothes like the photos above (Tori not included)!

Any suggestions, ladies?

And for any men reading this blog going, “Oh my God. Do women really talk about things like this?”…YES WE DO! We do this so that we never make the mistake of wearing something like this:

You see? Lily Allen obviously has no friends, because if she did, they would never have allowed her to go out in this top. That’s what sisterhood is all about. Am I right?

So help me, oh wise Brazilian girls! Show me the Brazilian love, because I just read here that YOU ARE THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!

I’m so excited to be going to the happiest place on earth!

Here’s the schedule one more time of where I’ll be. I really hope I’ll see some of you! I can’t wait! Even if I do show up somehow without pants….

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Which is not exactly how I would describe having a laparoscopic oophorectomy, but it’s my mom, so I go with it.

Me: “Um…Okay. Yeah?”

Mom: “Well, my doctor has to do the same thing, only out of my vagina.”

!!!!!!

Okay, first of all, what?

And second of all, WHAT?

So it turns out my mom is trying to explain she is having some lady problems, which end up with her having to get her lady parts extracted.

Only not through her vagina, it turns out. They have to extract her lady parts the hard way, through her abdomen.

Because, she explains, her vagina is quite petite.

Because what you really want to have with your mom is a conversation about how petite her vagina is. And how surprised she was to learn that, having given birth to your ten pound brother.

“But,” she goes on to say, “my vagina really is quite petite.”

“Oh,” you say. “Okay.”

Then you have to spend the whole rest of the day thinking about your mom’s petite vagina, even though YOU DON’T WANT TO.

And you really want to call your brother, and go, “Mom said she has a petite vagina.”

But you don’t, because this is a burden you feel you should carry alone, and spare your brother, who is having his own problems (not to mention your other brother, who has even bigger problems).

No, you have to bear the burden of Your Mom’s Petite Vagina ALONE.

For which you feel you should win the big sister of the year award.

BUT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE BIG SISTER OF THE YEAR AWARD.

Then Mom ends up spending a few nights in the hospital, which she thoroughly enjoys because she gets her own room with her own painkiller dispenser and TV with a remote control.

“I got to watch MSNBC and Nightline!” she says, all happily. “And the nurses came in and brought me whatever I wanted!”

Me (quite jealous, because when I had my “ovary removed through my bellybutton,” I didn’t get any of that good stuff, except some old dry crackers which the nurse told me not to eat because she said I’d barf them up on the way home, one hour after my surgery. Plus I was never told my vagina was petite): “It sounds like a spa.”

Her: “Oh, it was.”

Of course then they analyzed the tissue they got out of her and found out that Mom had stage one uterine cancer. The cancer was quite petite, smaller the size of a pencil eraser.

But still, you’re worried. The skin cancer that killed your father started out small, too. What if your mom dies?

Now suddenly you realize you’ll miss hearing about the delicacy and petiteness of your mom’s vagina, even though it is an immense burden.

Naturally, Mom was concerned about how getting radiation therapy was going to interfere with her busy crafting and Huffington Post reading schedule (and her summer vacation in Maine).

“I don’t have time for cancer!” she declared.

Mom so didn’t have time for cancer that when the former head of Johns Hopkins told her she didn’t have to have chemo or radiation after checking her out because her cancer hadn’t spread anywhere beyond her lady parts, which had been removed (but she still has to be vigilant about having CAT scans to insure the cancer hasn’t come back), she immediately left for her boyfriend’s house in Maine on vacation, and hasn’t looked back.

Uterine (also known as endometrial) cancer generally effects post-menopausal women, but it may also occur around the time that menopause begins. Click here for the symptoms.

If you’re like me, you just read about those symptoms and you’re thinking, I SO HAVE THIS!

Don’t panic. You probably don’t have it. You probably have something else, like a UTI, or an ovarian cyst, or some other cancer.

But if you do have uterine cancer, the good news is, this type of cancer is usually found quite early and is highly treatable. Your doctor will be able to tell you for sure.

Studies show that while most cases of uterine cancer aren’t preventable, you can cut your risk of getting the disease in half by taking oral contraceptives (the Pill), getting regular exercise, and maintaining a healthy weight.

My mom’s completely changed her diet to the Anticancer Lifestyle. We’re all reading Dr. David Servan-Schrieber’s amazing book about his brush with brain cancer (twice), and incorporating anticancer foods into our diet.

I have already lost five pounds on the Anticancer Lifestyle, just from switching from gluten-free white rice flour bread to gluten-free flax seed bread, and from eating fruit with every meal.

Everyone has more energy and feels much better now.

Who knew so much good could come from something so petite?

More later.

Much love,

Meg

When I was a kid I was obsessed with the book The Fantastic Voyage (a novelization by Isaac Asimov that was based on the movie of the same name), in which a group of scientists shrink down to microbe size to go inside a diplomat’s brain to perform life saving surgery on him.

Along the way they are attacked by white blood cells and nearly die several times. (Raquel Welch plays one of the scientists, as I later learned when I watched the movie on Channel 4 on Sci-Fi Sunday).

I particularly loved that there was a lady scientist in the book, and that she was as smart and brave as the boy scientists.

I seriously must have checked this book out of the library a hundred and thirty times. I wrote at least five book reports on it. I wrote fan fiction based on this book. I fantasized I was the lady scientist. I loved it when Raquel Welch got white blood cells stuck to the outside of her wet suit (on her BOOBS!) and they were strangling her, and the male scientists had to pick them off.

Fortunately, no one, not the librarians, my parents, my teachers, no one ever said, “Hey. Don’t you think you’ve read this novelization of a movie enough times, Cabot? How about moving on to some Nathaniel Hawthorne now?”

That’s why I get so mad when I hear people saying kids should be encouraged “not to read so much junk.”

Why are people always making kids hate to read by forcing them to read things they don’t want to read, or aren’t ready to read yet? Who cares if I read The Fantastic Voyage a hundred and thirty times?

Did I go on to read other books that I loved even more?

Yes.

I actually did read To Kill A Mockingbird on my own (because my mom gave it to me one day when the library was closed and I couldn’t check out The Fantastic Voyage again). And I really liked it.

But guess what? I still hated The Scarlet Letter (and yes, Wuthering Heights too) with a passion (and still do today) because I was “required” to read them in school.

Am I a contributing member of society now in spite of the fact that I read “junk” as a kid and did not enjoy the required reading in my school?

I think so.

Even though you put new covers on these books, I still hate them.

I don’t think there should be mandatory reading lists in school. I cannot think of a single book I enjoyed that I was required to read in school….

…with the exceptions of books I had read before they were assigned to me in school, like To Kill A Mockingbird, and Catcher in the Rye, which were then ruined by someone going on and on about all the “symbolism” in them, and what the authors really meant, which, as an author myself, I can tell you–THE PEOPLE WRITING ABOUT THESE BOOKS DO NOT KNOW. Seriously. THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE AUTHOR REALLY MEANT AT ALL, AND ARE MORE THAN LIKELY WRONG. THIS IS WHY THESE AUTHORS ARE IN HIDING.

And oh my God, guess what? I don’t care! I enjoyed the stories! Why can’t you let me?

But I still remember and love all the books I discovered on my own, or that librarians or my parents or friends or teachers recommended to me.

I think the classics should be made available for kids to discover on their own during quiet time for reading.

But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reading “junk” if that’s what the kid needs to be doing, for whatever reason.

What I do think is guaranteed:

That reading is lot less fun when

a) people are haranguing you about your “poor” reading choices.

b) it’s something someone is making you read because it’s “good for you.”

c) someone is going on and on about Arthur Dimmesdale and what Nathaniel Hawthorne really meant by naming him that.

Oh my God! Give me The Fantastic Voyage now before I shoot myself!

Blech!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Edited to add later:

PS How did I miss this thoughtful essay at the end of The NY Times book review section about how they are assigning point values to different books students read?

“Hamlet” is worth only 7 points, but the Harry Potter books are worth in the 30s.

I’m not saying the Harry Potters aren’t “worth” more than Hamlet, but how can you assign number values to books?

(Please note I am not even looking to see if my books are on the list and if so what they are worth, because I don’t want to know. It will just depress me more!)

Please, educators! REVAMP THIS SYSTEM!!!! Let kids read whatever they want, without point systems or stupid color coded cards (anyone remember SRAs? UGH)!

And don’t say if you do this, they won’t read at all. If you make reading time and books that interest them available to them, they will read.

PPS And from someone who loved them as a kids…comic books and graphic novels should count as reading, too.

(Full disclosure: I saw it with one of my gay husbands: my hair stylist.)

(Fuller disclosure: I have many gay husbands.)

(Fullest disclosure: I have so many gay husbands who are in the beauty, home, and design industry, I’ve been thinking lately that I need to start a gay army to give the world a makeover. I seriously get chills just thinking about it.)

The most important thing you need to know about The Proposal is that Ryan Reynolds is naked in it. Obviously I could tell you the plot and stuff, but who cares once you know that?

(I love Ryan Reynolds for more than his looks though. He is so hilarious in Just Friends with Anna Faris. I have to watch this movie every time it comes on TV, it’s that funny.)

Anyway, there is a long scene in The Proposal where Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock are both running around naked but don’t mean to be naked in the same room and then they are and then they scream and bump into each other. NAKED!

Good for them! There’s no need to be shy about your body when you are a professional actor or actress. Your body is your tool and part of your craft. You need to share your talents with the world. Especially if you are Ryan Reynolds.

I looked for a picture of Ryan naked in The Proposal but I couldn’t find one so here is one of him chopping wood in Amityville Horror courtesy of Wooden Spears.

Here is another one of him chained up in one of the Blade movies (I actually saw this movie and enjoyed it very much, especially this scene, also courtesy of Wooden Spears):

As far as chick-flicks go, The Proposal was surprisingly good. It didn’t have any scatalogical humor, which automatically puts it ahead of Two Weeks Notice and Sex In The City, The Movie.

Why do Hollywood producers think I want to see Sandra Bullock or Charlotte having diarrhea? Because I do not.

Here is a picture of Sandra in The Proposal trying to feed a dog to an eagle. Don’t ask. Seriously.

The best part of The Proposal (to me) was when Sandra Bullock was taken by force to see the town’s “sexy” male stripper who was so NOT sexy, and she sits there with a look on her face that I completely recognized as the same look I get on my face whenever I am asked to play “party games” at a bridal or baby shower.

Thank you for this picture, Just Jared. The look on her face in that picture says it all. She’s like, “Who am I going to kill first? Betty White? Yes. I think so.” Later, she drinks shots to try to forget.

But no amount of liquor will make you forget that.

I enjoyed The Proposal and not just because of the nakedness…which did not, by the way, lead to sexy times. The romance in this movie was entirely based on two people hating each other but then realizing that in fact they actually loved each other…and hating that they realized this. This reminded me of me and He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog. Only we are not that hot, sadly.

I’m going to give The Proposal three tiaras just for that, wholly aside from Ryan being naked, and because Sandra Bullock is older than me and she had the guts to be naked in this movie. That takes some ovaries. I truly do love her.

Plus no woman has diarrhea in The Proposal. I want to reward Hollywood for this. It’s a small step in the right direction, but it’s a step.

We won’t talk about the giving-the-dog-to-the-eagle thing, because it turned out all right.

PS If Ryan Reynolds and ScarJo have a baby, will its beauty create a black hole from which only Nicolas Cage can save us? I think so.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Rejection:

Check out my essay on my personal experiences being rejected (to quote Kim Zolciak of The Real Housewives of Atlanta: “Let your haters be your motivators!”) on Seventeen.com!

When Things Sell Out Before You Even Have A Chance To Get Them:

Like this bag. I will always mourn the fact that I never got this Marc Jacobs Duffy:

Or what about my signings in Brazil?

The tour is finalized, and most of the signings (including the book fair) are requiring that you get passes in advance!

Check here for info in Portuguese and get in touch with the stores and book fair people (not me or any of the people listed on my site! We cannot help you. It’s the stores and the Rio do Bienal you have to be in touch with)!

Also check here for an updated schedule in English.

The Word LOL:

No, I don’t hate laughing out loud! And I love Lolcats.

I just hate the word LOL.

And don’t worry if you’ve ever written to me and put LOL in the message. I don’t hate people who use the word LOL. I’m just sick of the expression. Some people just use it way too freely. Examples:

OMG, I just threw up popcorn out of my nose at the movies, LOL!
OMG, my boyfriend just broke up with me, and I can’t stop crying, LOL!
OMG, my mom ran over our fourteen-year-old dog, Fluffy, LOL!

Seriously! Serial LOLers have ruined LOL for the rest of us, and now the only recourse is to quit LOLing. LOL must be retired to a place of glory in the annals of conversation forever, never to be used again, like “fresh” and “groovy.”

Goodbye LOL. It was nice to know you.

(Also due for retirement: ROTFLMAO. Coming soon: Pwned)

People Posting Inappropriate Photos Of Their Kids On Facebook:

People with kids: I do not want to see your toddler “making wee” for the first time on the big girl potty on your Facebook page.

I hardly ever go to Facebook anymore because I have been so scarred from being forced to look at things like this.

Parents: If any more of you do this, I will be forced to submit you to STFUP Parents. I’m sorry, but you brought it upon yourselves.

Now go to the Naughty Corner and think about what you’ve done (and how your kid will feel in ten years when she realizes that all of her parents’ friends, including Meg Cabot, have seen her naked…if Facebook still exists by then, which I pray to Baby Jesus it will not).

That Story About the “Plus Size” Model in Glamour

I don’t know why they are calling this girl, who is a Size 12, a “Plus Size Model.”

But everyone is talking about how Glamour has a “Plus Size” Model in their magazine.

“Plus Size?” Since when is Size 12 is a Plus Size? I thought Size 12 was AVERAGE. Also, NOT FAT. As you might recall from this:

Also, since the publication of Size 12 Is Not Fat, Size 14 is now the average size of women in this country.

So the media just needs to calm down with the “Plus Size” thing. That model is NOT Plus Size. When I saw her, I went, “Oh, cute, she has a muffin top, just like me!” And my BMI is totally normal. So screw you, media.

And Glamour, (and Marie Claire, and Seventeen, and Shape, and Self), I hope you realize from the positive reaction to this photo that you need to have more women who look like this in your magazines. AS WELL AS women who are actually Plus Sized (I nominate Ruby, from my new favorite show)!

Because even though the fashion industry claims to love the size 0s because “the clothes look better on them,” and they think they are showing us “at our best,” some of us will never be a size 0 or 2 or 4 no matter how much we exercise or eat right. It is physically impossible.

So why don’t you show us how the clothes would look on ladies who reflect how we REALLY ARE? ‘Kay? ‘Kay!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

GREEN! Why does he have to be green? Apparently from the gamma rays, whatever they are.

But the other night I was flicking around the channels on my TV and suddenly I was watching Ed Norton, working in a Brazilian soda factory (because that would so happen).

And since I’m going on a book tour to Brazil, I’m trying to educate myself about Brazil.

So of course I started watching it, even though I had no idea what it was.

It turned out it was The Incredible Hulk. Noooooo!

Only it wasn’t that stupid! It was actually kind of good.

I even called my friend Beth (we always alert each other to good books/movies) and was like, “Um, I’m watching The Incredible Hulk with Ed Norton, and it’s kind of good.”

And she was like, “You’re drunk,” and I was like, “I wish. But it has a romance and everything.”

And so she taped it, even though she didn’t believe me, and she called me the next day, and was like, “OH MY GOD! I thought you were drunk, but it was GOOD!”

And OK, there was this big fight scene at the end that went on way too long in which the Hulk and another Hulk fight each other with chains (and for reasons neither Beth nor I can understand, Robert Downey Jr’s character from Iron Man appears for a split second at the end, but not in his Iron Man costume. Why? I still don’t know).

But the romance between Ed Norton and Liv Tyler (YES! Liv Tyler plays Ed Norton’s love interest) was really sweet. Multiple times, when Ed Norton is the Hulk, only Liv Tyler can calm him down, Beauty and the Beast style.

And he (as the big, scary Hulk) saves her from certain death.

They even tried to have sex once and he started to turn into the Hulk (because when his heart rate goes up, he turns into the Hulk…not just when he gets angry), and he was like, “We can’t do this,” and she was all, “No, it’s OK!”

And I was like, “YEAH, IT’S OK. I WANT TO SEE THE HULK HAVE SEX WITH LIV TYLER!”

Maybe in the sequel….

Surprising even myself, I have to give The Incredible Hulk starring Ed Norton and Liv Tyler two tiaras. It would have gotten three if they’d have had sex while he was the Hulk.

But then maybe it would have had problems with the ratings board.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

She’s old enough for school supplies!

So I accidentally went to the online Disney Store and accidentally bought her this:

Which opens up to look like this:

But how much would you have loved that when you were five? Come on, you would have died for that.

(It comes in a Tinkerbell version, too, which I sent to her sister so she wouldn’t feel left out).

I’m also loving:

These shoes from Kate Spade:

Okay, maybe they aren’t that practical but who cares! They’re so princessy.

I’m also loving:

Mercy Corps!

A few weeks ago I read such a touching story in the NY Times about women fighting against being oppressed in their native country by the very people who should have been helping them that I picked up the phone and made a donation to their organization on the spot (the spot being my breakfast table).

You can help, too, just by making this book your book club pick of the month:

“A country can’t grow and be stable if half the population is marginalized.”

What a powerful message! Half the Sky is a book devoted to women in the developing world…because if you want to fight poverty and extremism, you need to educate and empower women!

What better book for you book club? Click here to find out how you can get a moderator’s kit, register your book club, and host your own fundraiser in your community now! (You can also just buy the book for yourself.)

But I’m not all about the serious stuff. I’m also loving:

Pamela Redmond Satran’s How Not To Act Old!

This book was so much fun I sent a copy to my mom for her birthday (who loved it) last week. It’s not really a guide on how to act 25—it’s a series of short satirical pieces that make fun of twenty-somethings AND fifty-somethings (and over).

And it’s absolutely hilarious.

Finally, I’m also loving:

Gorgeous by Rachel Vail which I finally got around to reading, and which was just a heavenly delight.

Rachel’s heroine wishes she could be pretty (in fact, she sells her cell phone to the devil in exchange for being pretty).

And you know what? She gets to be pretty!

Sure, she makes some dumb mistakes (like we all do), but nothing bad happens to her (well…some bad things do happen to her, or there wouldn’t be a book…duh).

But she’s really snarky and believable and I just loved her (and I really loved the boy she’s crushing on) and the way the story is resolved.

But I especially loved that she just wanted to be pretty, without being shallow. Who doesn’t want to be pretty? I mean, it seems like it would just make life easier, you know?

(I wish I could look like my author photo every day, but THAT’S not going to happen, unless a mega talented makeup artist, hairstylist, and photographer started following me around all day every day.)

But anyway, back to Rachel Vail: I love that she just gets it.

(And I’m not just saying this because Rachel and I recently went on the Deadline Diet together. In fact, I’m actually a little mad at Rachel because she beat me to the finish line and already handed her new book in. So, my saying her book is good is HUGELY nice of me, considering the fact that I actually hate her a little right now.)

And now I have to stop loving other stuff so much and get back to work loving the book I’m working on (which I really do love. Well, sometimes).

More later.

Much love,

Meg

So you still have time to enjoy a few more summer reads….

I remember a few years ago when I was trying to get The Mediator series published, all I got were rejections. That’s because the publishers were like, “No one wants to read about heroines who are in love with dead boys.”

Ha!

Well, now heroines have moved on not just from loving dead boys but to loving boys who are also wolves sometimes, to loving boys who might actually live…

…under the sea?

Seriously. Be sure check out Sea Change by Aimee Friedman.

(Isn’t this cover gorgeous? I love it. I would like to spray paint it on my bedroom wall, but He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog Won’t Let Me).

16-year-old Miranda Merchant is great at science…and not so great with boys. After major drama with her boyfriend and (now ex) best friend, she’s happy to spend the summer on small, mysterious Selkie Island, helping her mother sort out her late grandmother’s estate.

There, Miranda finds new friends and an island with a mysterious, mystical history, presenting her with facts her logical, scientific mind can’t make sense of. She also meets Leo, who challenges everything she thought she knew about boys, friendship…and reality.

Is Leo hiding something? Or is he something that she never could have imagined?

Bloggers love this book, and so do librarians (so you know it’s got to be good, because librarians are around books all day).

Critics love it too:

“Friedman deftly demonstrates the positives of moving forward and not clinging to the past; she also presents a sister dynamic that many girls-particularly younger sisters-will recognize.” – Publishers Weekly

“Friedman has transformed the traditional YA novel about moving and growing up and away into an authentic, real-life exploration of adaptation and acceptance… a delightful, funny, insightful journey.” – Booklist

This would be a perfect book to read by the pool. Or by the lake. Or at the beach….

…while you can still go to the beach!

Just look out for hot mermen.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

The latest edition of Seventeen Magazine (the September issue, on shelves now) has the winning entry in the 2009 Fiction Contest, which I helped judge! Congratulations are in order to Kerry Reardon.

ALL the entries I read were fantastic. You all made it very hard to choose a winner. Great job, everyone!

Grab a copy of the September issue to read Kerry’s entry!

If you’re thinking of being a freelance writer (like Kerry probably is now!)—and even if you’re not—you should be paying attention to all the stuff going on with the new government subsidized health insurance plan!

Especially since you’ll probably end up being self-employed and having to pay for your own insurance someday (and trust me…it’s not cheap).

There are some people who are protesting the government’s offering subsidized health insurance to US citizens–because, they say, it would put private insurance companies out of business…which is baloney, because libraries haven’t put bookstores out of business, have they?

And public schools haven’t put private schools out of business (as we know from Gossip Girl)! And the US post office certainly hasn’t put Fed Ex out of business.

I wish someone would ask those protesters what they think we should do about the 47 million Americans in this country who have no insurance at all, or about the underinsured, who can’t afford dental care or their co-pays…

…and who have started to depend on charities like Remote Area Medical, who are supposed to be doing work in places like the Amazon, but instead are having to work in the US! Video clip from 60 Minutes here and totally worth watching.

Finally, I just opened my September Teen Vogue and saw Paris Hilton’s ad for her new fragrance, Siren.

I still haven’t stopped marveling at it’s sheer brilliance and glory, and knew I had to share it with you!

You really have to see one of her ads up close (check out the individual gold fins) to get its full impact:

Honestly, I don’t know what to say. Except:

Congratulations, Paris. You win. YOU WIN AT EVERYTHING!

Sometimes I just wonder if Paris ever thinks to herself that she should just…pull back a little?

But I’m so glad she doesn’t. Because if people pulled back, we wouldn’t have some of my favorite things in the world, like Drew Barrymore’s Annie Leibovitz Beauty and the Beast photo shoot (circa 2005)!

I love it!

Thank you, Vogue (and Annie and Drew) for those shots.

And thank you, Paris. For brightening this and every single day!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Of course I couldn’t NOT watch it, because of its brilliant combination of romance, ballet, and teens arguing with their parents that they JUST WANT TO FOLLOW THEIR DREAMS, MOM.

Plus it has The Way You Make Me Feel, my favorite Michael Jackson song, in the final dance number.

In case you don’t know, Center Stage is about kids attending the American Ballet Academy. They live, eat, and sleep at the school, hoping at the end to get into the American Ballet Company. It’s basically the original So You Think You Think You Can Dance.

Center Stage is exactly how I always dreamed ballet school would be, back when I wanted to go to ballet school (after I read Ballet Shoes, one of the Best Books Of All Time).

But I would be remiss in not mentioning that my dream of wanting to be a ballerina actually started when someone gave me a record called Tina the Ballerina (the Best Record Of All Time, sadly unavailable/out of print now).

The plot of Tina the Ballerina is basically the plot from which Center Stage, Flashdance, Fame, and every movie about a Girl With a Dream of Making It Big On Stage is based, boiled down to its essence:

Tina is a little French girl who “loves to dance.” Tina freaking dances ALL THE TIME.

On the day the big ballet company comes to town, Tina goes to see it (of course). She sits in the audience, her heart pounding with anticipation. She is finally going to see REAL ballet dancers, including France’s premiere prima ballerina!

Things on stage get going with the back-up ballerinas. The chorus sings this classic we all remember (no. I am kidding. No one remembers this song):

“See the dance they do
All the little ballerinas
See the dance they do
Round and round upon their toes!”

But then the music stops! The conductor comes out and says:

“Attention everyone: I wish to announce that the star ballerina cannot dance tonight and so the ballet cannot continue.”

Gasp! What do you think happens?

YES! YOU GUESSED IT!

Tina pops up out of her seat and cries, “Wait! Wait, sir! I will dance in her place!”

(Because you would so do this, right?)

The conductor is like, “You? But you are only a leetle gurl!”

And before anyone can stop her, Tina races onto the stage, and she begins…to dance!

And then the thrilling chorus starts!

“Round and round and round she goes,
dancing dancing on her toes,
Tina the Ballerina,
the Belle of Gay Paree!

Twirling twirling in a spin,
whirling whirling like the wind,
Tina the ballerina,
the Belle of Gay Paree!”

Oh my God! If you’re seven, and you hear this—you are in leetle gurl ECSTASY when this happens! Because Tina freaking KNOCKS THAT BALLET out! She dances like Jodie in Center Stage! Or the dancing body double for Jennifer Beals in Flashdance! TINA THE BALLERINA IS OFF THE CHAIN. She saves the ballet for the whole town! Because Tina believes. Tina believes she can do it.

And so she can.

Tina goes on to become the BEST BALLET DANCER IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Last known copy of this album known to man and sadly, I do not own it.

Yes, Tina is a prostitot. But to a seven year old, she is the PRETTIEST THING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN!

There is another record floating around which looks like this and which claims to be the same Tina the Ballerina, but it is not as good because this Tina is some kind of “parental approved, non-sexed up Tina with no makeup or boobs.”

In other words, this is the Fail Tina.

Because of Tina and that song (which by the way, I played over and over again until I drove my parents suicidal), I took ballet three days a week for seven years….

…until I turned fourteen, realized the prima ballerina was never going to get sick and so I was never going to get to take her place (especially since, to be totally honest, I’m no Tina–I’m a horrible dancer, and I don’t love doing it, either), and besides the toe shoes were making all my toenails fall off, which Tina never mentioned.

So I quit to pursue things I liked better, such as writing and boys.

But I’m glad we have Center Stage to rock those toe shoes for Tina and leetle gurls everywhere!

I give Center Stage two and a half tiaras, except I can’t make halves, so it’s going to look like three:

Here is the trailer to Fame, the next generation, coming to theaters in Fall 2009. I will be first in line to see it. All thanks to Tina!



More later.

Much love,

Meg

(One them is coming out the exact same day as Dan Brown’s new book! I tried to get you advanced reader copies of his new book, but he was like, “Sorry, Meg. Even I don’t have any of those.”)

Here’s the FIRST EVER sneak peek look at what you can expect from Allie in Stage Fright, along with an EXCLUSIVE link to an excerpt of the first chapter!

Allie desperately wants the lead in the school play (the part of the princess…natch), but the competition is fierce. What’s going to happen if she DOESN’T get the part? What’s Allie going to DO? What would YOU do?

Author’s note: This actually happened to me!

Since I only have a few advanced reader copies of Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls #4, Stage Fright, and it’s getting close to BACK TO SCHOOL TIME, I’m going to offer them only to librarians and teachers, since librarians and teachers are the ones out there on the front lines in the battle against illiteracy in America!

Remember, advanced reader copies are sneak peek uncorrected proofs. They have not yet been copy edited for spelling errors, etc. But I promise I’m an excellent speller and there are very few mess ups in these ARCs.

I’ll have a contest to make a limited amount of final copies available to EVERYONE after Sept. 15 when Stage Fright hits stores!

Updated 8/14: Librarians and teachers, thank you so much to all of you who entered to win a copy of this book! We’ve had so many entries that we’re a bit snowed under at the moment, so the contest is now over while we process them. Email notifications will be sent out soon to those of you who will be receiving copies. Thanks again for all your hard work, and stay tuned for the next contest, coming soon!

And don’t forget, the last of my manga titles, Hunter’s Moon, Avalon High, Coronation comes out in two weeks…September 1!

Much like Dan Brown, there are no advanced reader copies of the above book, so it’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you (and him) how it’s going to turn out!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Book bloggers are giving away signed copies in their excitement over it.

Even YA librarians can’t wait to get their hands on a copy.

And lucky me…I’ve already read it!

Take a look at this gorgeous cover!

I have to admit, I’m a reluctant reader. And I’ve only gotten pickier lately.

But Psych Major Syndrome lured me in with its smart writing and by the fact that the heroine is in college. I loved that she has to mentor a problem teen who is always dissing her, and has a quirky roommate, frenemies, and a boyfriend who won’t sleep with her.

And the boyfriend has a roommate. Note the emphasis.

Plus the fact that she’s a psych major means, naturally, that she’s always analyzing herself and everybody else for neuroses.

Plus the book deals with sexual issues in a manner that gets the heroine, as a teen mentor, in trouble from time to time, and should get this book banned in a few schools for sure. YAY For Alicia Thompson!

Did I leave out the fact that the boyfriend’s roommate is often around….

…shirtless?

From Publishers Weekly:

Psychology major Leigh Nolan wants to devote her life to analyzing people, but in her first year at a small, highly liberal college, she has her hands full trying to decipher the meaning behind her own idiosyncrasies. Why is she so reluctant to buy a parking sticker when the tickets she has accumulated will cost far more than a decal? Why can’t she pinpoint a happy moment that she’s experienced? Why hasn’t she had sex with the boy she’s been dating for over a year? In a romantic comedy that at the same time deals frankly with sexual issues, first-time author Thompson pokes fun at academia as she explores Leigh’s muddled feelings about her boyfriend and his good-looking roommate, Nathan. Ironies abound in this novel, and the supporting cast of offbeat characters—Leigh’s unconventional parents (“My mom teaches shamanistic dance at the local Y, and my dad takes a weeklong vow of silence every year. Their view of ‘normal’ is a little skewed”); her arty roommate, Ami; and Rebekah, the smart-alecky, all-too-worldly middle schooler Leigh mentors—add depth. Ages 12–up. (Aug.)

This was one scorching hot read that once I got into, I couldn’t put down, because I was all, “Are she and the roommate’s boyfriend going to DO IT? Because that’s going to be messy and wrong, so very, very wrong, and yet so very, very right….”

Yeah. You want to read this book.

Here is the author’s blog and here’s an interesting interview with the author over at Ypulse.

Recommended for reading while in a hammock, at the beach, in the tub, on a plane, or just about anywhere.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

And second of all, Angelina Jolie is in it. No offense against Angelina, but I am Team Aniston.

But then my friend Beth called, and she was like, “You have to watch Beowulf. He’s naked for almost the entire movie. It’s hilarious.”

(Note BMOAT Approval Matrix standard #4 from previous blog entry.)

Me: “But I read it in school, and it was so boring, and Angelina Jolie is in it, and I am ethically opposed to stealing husbands from Jennifer Aniston and is it such a good idea to adopt so many orphans from outside of the US when there are so many foster kids here in America who need to be adopted (which is how I got one of my brothers, so, you know)? I mean, Angelina was good in Wanted, I actually liked that movie, but—”

Beth: “HE IS JUMPING AROUND COMPLETELY NAKED AND IT IS FREAKING AWESOME.”

Me: “Fine.” Slams down phone.

So I finally watched on Beowulf:

And ohmygod, that movie is so freaking good.

First of all, Angelina is barely in it.

Second of all, Beowulf is either naked or next to naked for the entire film, and Beth was right, it’s fantastic.

Plus, he’s totally hilarious, which I don’t remember from the poem.

So, if you get the chance, watch Beowulf, starring some guy, and Angelina Jolie, and some other people.

It’s nothing like what you remember from school.

Or actually, it sort of is, but you won’t hate it.

Two tiaras for Beowulf!

It is not the BMOAT, but it’s worth watching.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Brenda Knight, associate publisher of Cleis Press’s Viva Editions, thinks she knows why the paranormal has become so dominant (in romance):

“In the age of social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Craigslist, there’s less fantasy. It’s increasingly easy to find and be found,” she says. “However, you can’t hook up with your demon-lover of choice via Twitter.”

I don’t think this is the only reason why paranormal is so popular* (I wrote The Mediator series way before Facebook was ever invented), but this is exactly why I hardly ever visit my Facebook page (I know…I suck).

It’s true I have a Facebook page, but I didn’t want to get one. It’s not that I don’t love all you guys….

It’s just that to me, as a writer, one of the most important parts of the writing process is sitting there going, “I wonder whatever happened to….

…that hot guy I randomly made out with in my dorm room that one time all those years ago…?”

And then fantasizing about what happened to him. That’s when the magic starts happening!

And with Facebook, you can totally just put his name in, and he pops up.

But for many of us writers, this sticks a pin in the delicate balloon of the creative process, and totally destroys it.

Because then you can’t sit there and use your imagination to make up an amazing story** about how that guy is now a totally hot Marine who regularly saves the lives of the men and women in the rest of his unit by taking on the most dangerous missions because he’s still all wounded (and a little suicidal) from the way you rejected him that time you blew him off to go see the Indigo Girls in concert instead of having coffee with him in the dorm snackateria.

All he can think about is you and how you chose the Indigo Girls over making out with him again.

And he still carries this crumpled up picture of you in the pocket of his bullet-proof vest, which he gazes at every night in the glow of the anti aircraft fire.

He dreams of the day he hears you’re single again, so he can come back to the US to find you….

…where he’ll stride into the dorm snackateria (where your ten year college dorm reunion is taking place) in full fatigues (still all dusty from the desert) in front of everyone and just grab you and sweep you off your feet, Officer and a Gentleman style, and carry you away to make wild passionate love to you in the castle he inherited because he’s also secretly a billionaire prince….

But no. Instead, you go on Facebook, look him up, and see that in real life, he’s married with four kids, works as a dentist in Pasadena, and enjoys playing Bunco on the weekend.

UGH!

This is why Facebook sucks. Now you can’t write that novel about the hot Marine billionaire prince because all you can think about is dentists who play Bunco.

And all you can do to get that image out of your head is watch Intervention for 36 hours.

Or write some book about vampires or succubi or whatever, because you CAN’T look THEM up on Facebook.

I rest my case.

*While I think Brenda’s assessment is partly right, I also think the rise in popularity of paranormal romance has to do with vampires’ limitless wealth. This genre resurges in popularity whenever there’s a recession. Who wouldn’t want a rich immortal boyfriend who is totally smitten with you when there are no jobs to be had?

Although if we have learned anything from the Real Housewives, it is that it is better to have a job oneself than to be dependent on Counts or Big Poppas for one’s income. Even undead counts and big poppas!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

**I totally admit this story is not amazing, but work with me.

I just want you to know that I’ve seen most of the movies you suggested and yes, you’re right: they’re all very good, and definitely BMOAT contenders.

But right now I have to write about the movies Knowing and The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The other night our friend Bob was visiting from NYC and we decided to watch a movie on pay-per-view. But we couldn’t agree what movie to watch.

Bob and I wanted to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still starring Mr. Keanu Reeves.

Scene from The Day The Earth Stood Still, in which Manhattan is threatened with being blown up. Manhattan blows up in three of the 5 movies I have seen lately. Why so much Manhattan hate, writers? Is it because all the editors live there?

But He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog wanted us all to go out to his men’s den (aka the pool house where Ryan from The OC is going to live someday when I am Kelly Rowan) and listen to The Grateful Dead.

Bob and I looked at each other and said, “Okay, how about if we watch Knowing starring Mr. Nicholas Cage?”

So HWSNOBNITB said OK.

This is the miracle of Nicolas Cage: Men who would rather be in their men’s den listening to The Grateful Dead will agree to watch him in anything. Even Ghost Rider!

Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck, a BMOAT. ‘Bring me the big knife!’

And that is why I love Nicolas Cage and hope he goes on making movies FOREVER.

But then last night when no one was home I watched The Day The Earth Stood Still by myself.

Here a few things you need to know for your future survival on this planet, according to Knowing and The Day the Earth Stood Still:

1. If aliens come down to Earth, it’s going to be all about the children. Either the children are going to save us all from destruction, or all of us except a few of the children are going to be killed.

Notice Manhattan blowing up in this poster. Editors, you are all now dead. Don’t look at me! I didn’t have anything to do with it!

2. It’s much more entertaining to watch the earth get destroyed than it is to watch it get saved! So if you have a choice, watch Knowing. WAY more special effects, and the story is much scarier. Plus, like I said, Nicolas Cage.

3. The earth never does stand still in The Day the Earth Stood Still so it’s sort of false advertising. It would SUPER COOL if it did. Like, probably tectonic plates would break off and splash into the ocean and buildings would fall down and stuff!

But this never occurs in TDTESS, so don’t get your hopes up like I did. If you want to see stuff like that, watch Knowing.

(Or wait for the movie 2012!)

4. Nakedness: You do sort of get to see Keanu Reeves naked but I don’t think it was really him. I smell a body double. Nicolas Cage takes a shower but you don’t see anything. There aren’t really any romances in either of these movies so don’t expect anything there, ladies.

Best Movie Of All Time Approval Matrix Score:
Knowing:
Two tiaras

Day the Earth Stood Still:
One tiara for the beginning, which was good. Tiaras deducted for getting progressively less good

Basically, if I were going to spare the earth from destruction, it wouldn’t be because of the children. It would be because of this:

The above might actually be a BMOAT. I give it four tiaras!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I’m basically looking for The Best Movie of All Time. I’ve seen a lot of really good ones (who can forget Why Me? The Leola Mae Harmon Story starring Armand Assante and Glynnis O’Connor as a brave plastic surgeon and nurse who fight to give a patient—who happens to be the nurse—lips made out of skin grafts from her naughty bits after her face is destroyed in a hit-and-run drunk driving accident? Why won’t they release this on DVD, or at least show it on Lifetime?)

But I don’t think I’ve seen The Best Movie of All Time.

The Internet can be a cruel place. Many people go on here to snark with unnecessary harshness.

But how many of us use the Internet to celebrate the things we love? Like movies that helped us escape, for a few hours, our own problems?

Picture of the real life Leola Mae Harman. Are your lips made out of skin from your naughty bits? Did your husband leave you because of this? Are you in love with your plastic surgeon? Is he Armand Assante? Then your problems probably aren’t as big as Leola Mae’s.

So I’ve decided to start cataloging those movies here (when I get a chance in between telling you about great books and other important things that might make me you happy).

I’ll be giving the movies I’ve enjoyed tiaras (like thumbs up) based on the Best Movie of All Time Approval Matrix.

Movies I’ve enjoyed must contain at least three of the following in order to qualify for Best Movie of All Time consideration:

1. Female characters
2. Romance
3. Humor
4. Nudity (always welcome, but not required)
5. Hot guys or at least funny guys or at least guys with guns
6. Action
7. Aliens/natural disasters/musical numbers
8. Animals being rescued
9. Life saving surgery
10. Amazing soundtrack/costumes

Stay tuned for the first candidate for Best Movie of all Time, coming soon.

And out of tribute for one of the Best Movies of All Time (BMOAT), Why Me?, also known as the Vagina Transplant Movie, sadly hardly ever shown anymore, I give you this:

Glynnis O’Connor (who played Leola Mae Harman in Why Me?) jumping over John Travolta as The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (another contender for BMOAT) on her horse (keep watching…it’s right after the scene where John Travolta is dancing in his bubble. Both scenes are amazing, for obvious reasons):

More later.

Much love,

Meg

How did you spend Meg Cabot Day? The preferred way to spend it is floating in a body of water, reading books.

But really you can spend it any way you want. That’s the beauty of Meg Cabot Day!

I spent mine getting my hair done, along with a mani-pedi and a super relaxing massage. You can’t spend all your time writing novels and trying to keep tabs on which Real Housewives cast member choked which (although thank God my salon has wi-fi).

Anyway, just in time for Meg Cabot Day, here’s an interview I did with Teen Scene Mag.com, as well as a fun article from Publisher’s Weekly about my trip to the Betsy-Tacy conference….

…including never before seen pictures!

Like the one of me and Jenna and Katelyn, the completely adorable girls who made me this official Minnesota moose plaque:

They told me they made it while they were watching the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice. Which of course makes it extra special to me.

Close up of the Minnesota moose plaque.

Close up of Wet Mr. Darcy.



Watching the A&E version of P&P is a great way to spend Meg Cabot Day. I sort of wonder if you were making a Minnesota moose plaque while watching Pride and Prejudice on Meg Cabot Day, and you fell through a time portal, would you end up at Pemberley, having an affair with Mr. Darcy?

Or would you end up in a Meg Cabot book?

Oh, never mind. I guess I’m thinking about something else.

Thanks, Jenna and Katelyn. I’ll treasure it always!

And happy Meg Cabot Day to you all!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

“Meg Cabot didn’t tell me about any good books to read on her blog this week!”

Because I’m totally coming to bat for you with And Then Everything Unraveled by Jennifer Sturman, which you’re going to love….

…even though the cover sort of makes you wonder, what is this book about, exactly? Why is this girl wandering down the middle of the street? Will she be hit by a bus if she doesn’t start looking where she’s going?

The answer is no, and trust me, I’m not the only one who liked this book. All these bloggers and booksellers say it’s good, too. And so does Publishers Weekly. Check it out:

And Then Everything Unraveled Jennifer Sturman. Scholastic/Point, $16.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-545-08722-3

Sixteen-year-old Cordelia (Delia) Truesdale is forced into the role of private detective when her genius mother, founder of the Internet company TrueTech, disappears on a research trip somewhere between South America and Antarctica. Delia is sent, against her will, from her home in Silicon Valley to Manhattan to live with her dramatic and charming Aunt Charley (“It would be a while before I realized that just about everything Charley did turned out all right,” Delia says). Meanwhile, her uptight Aunt Patience has been left in control of Delia’s schooling and social schedule. Despite having her life turned upside down, Delia remains logical, stubborn and focused on proving that her mother is still alive. Delia contacts both a psychic and a private detective as she attempts to solve the mystery and determine the culprit, who could be anyone: her mother’s trusted assistant, Thad; oil company executives; or her crush’s father. Mystery novelist Sturman’s (The Hunt) YA debut treats readers to intrigue and taut dialogue, and while Delia does get some answers, the “to be continued” ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel. Ages 12–up. (July)

Basically And Then Everything Unraveled has got it all: humor, mystery, romance….

So don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

Oh, and wear plenty of sunscreen.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I know, I know, who doesn’t?

At least, all my writer friends do. We’ve been burning up the Internet, going:

“How many words do you have left? What chapter are you on? Do you think I can get away with a fifty page flashback? What about a two hundred page flashback? Should I just make the whole book a flashback? Do vampires poop? Will you write my sex scene for me? Do vampires wear underwear? If they don’t poop, then why do they wear underwear? Isn’t underwear to protect your clothes from…you know? I need a name for my fictional hair styling salon. What do you mean, Wrapsody is a bad name for a hair styling salon? My cat sat on my computer and I lost three pages!” etc.

Yeah. Writers are weird.

Rachel Vail and I have even come up with our new, patented Deadline Diet™. I can’t tell you what’s in it because it’s extremely unhealthy and I don’t want to encourage any of you to follow our lead (hint: ice cream for breakfast is involved).

I haven’t left my house in so long I don’t know what air feels like on my skin anymore.

I watched the movie Stepbrothers and I cried because it seemed like such a moving triumph of the human spirit.

I watched this Taylor Swift video and I cried because it seemed like such a moving triumph of the human spirit.

I watched this video of the wedding party making their big joyous entrance to the church and I cried because it seemed like such a moving triumph of the human spirit.

I woke my husband’s cat Gem up to give her breakfast and she meowed three times in confusion and I cried because it seemed like such a moving triumph of the human spirit.

I can’t stop watching the trailer for District 9 because I want to see the movie so badly! I hope it will be a moving triumph of the human spirit.

Oh, yeah, and at lunch when I take breaks from writing, I’ve been watching recorded episodes of Sixteen and Pregnant (including “Life After Labor” with Dr. Drew. I love him so much. Did you see him talk about how hard breast feeding is? WOW. I mean I knew because friends have told me, but I didn’t KNOW).

I’m sure there are some people who will see this show and come away just going, “Babeeez! So cute!!!”

That’s why I think this is such an important show for parents and educators to watch and then discuss with their tweens/teens!

Since eight out of ten baby daddies never marry the mothers of their children, it needs to be pointed out that Sixteen and Pregnant is kind of an unrealistic portrayal of teen pregnancy….

…especially since five out of the six dads on this show have stuck with the mothers of their kid…at least for now! One of the baby daddies got dumped before the baby was ever born.

And I suspect that a couple of the baby daddies on this show stuck around because of fan pressure after the show aired.

What I thought the show did a good job of portraying was: These are kids having kids and the reason they had kids was because they did not use birth control. At. All (it didn’t fail. They just didn’t use it, period).

And the kids themselves sat there on “Life After Labor” and were like, “Yeah. Please don’t be like us. Use birth control.” And, “We could never go to our parents about things like birth control. It won’t be like that with our kid.”

So I thought it was a really good series for parents and their kids (and teachers) to discuss, since it could lead to some valuable sex ed talks at the dinner table or riding home from soccer practice or in class or whatever.

Here is an example of how my fantasy sex talk with my imaginary kids (whom someone will foolishly leave me in their will, since I’m never having kids) will go (PS this talk will occur right before I stick all the kids in boarding school until they’re 18):

Mom, while driving to soccer practice: “Who wants to go on the pill? Not that you’re having sex now, or are even thinking about it, and of course if you were, you’d use a condom too because the pill doesn’t protect you from STD’s. But maybe you just want to clear up your skin, have less cramps, decrease your chances of developing ovarian cysts and fibroids, and lower your risk of getting endometrial and ovarian cancer by as much as seventy percent*! Shall we schedule an appointment with Dr. Hall?”

Girls: “OMG Mom you’re embarrassing us!”

Mom: “You know, they have a new pill now that helps with PMS. I really think you could all use it, because there’s some real mood swings going on in this house during certain times of the month, let me tell you.”

Girls: “Mo-om! Seriously. What do you know? You don’t even know how to drive. Why are you behind the wheel anyway?”

Mom: “That’s it. We’re all going on Yaz! Someone call Dr. Hall. I don’t know how to use my new iPhone, either.”

Thank you. No applause please.

(* Statistically proven benefits of the pill. It’s true, I’m biased. I’m one of the people who’ve enjoyed all these benefits since I was teenager…just like Serena van der Woodsen! She and I have so much in common. Well, actually, now that I think about it, that’s the only thing we have in common. Ooh, except that I love shopping. And Chuck! Oh, wait, that’s Blair….)

Okay, but not joking at all, some of those kids on “Sixteen and Pregnant” really are examples of moving triumphs of the human spirit (watch “Life After Labor” to see how much some of them have had to grow up just in the short time since the series ended). I can’t tell you how much I cry every time I see the Tyler and Catelynn episode, where they give their baby up for adoption. Seriously, Juno has nothing on that episode.

OK, have to get back to work. DEADLINES are calling.

Someday I will have a Life After Labor, but what’s going to come out will be a book.

Which is good because I won’t have to change any diapers or worry about it getting pregnant.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

We’re going to talk about YA Mother-Daughter reads!

I’ve told you my mom used to call the school and tell them I was “sick” whenever there was going to be an Audrey Hepburn or Leslie Caron movie playing on Channel 4.

Well! This was in the days before video recorders and DVDs!

One of my favorite mother-daughter reads is actually Daddy Long Legs (hey! It’s a Puffin Classic!), which was made into a movie starring Leslie Caron. My mom and I used to stay home and watch it together. SO GOOD!

If you haven’t watched/read it, you MUST! It’s epistolary, much like my “Boy” books. You could even say it inspired them. Thanks, Mom!

And Dads, I actually remember bringing home some books from the library and my dad stealing them. Like The Man Without a Face (the book is WAY better than the Mel Gibson movie), and one of the YA books in “Shelf Discoveries”–Robert Cormier’s “I Am The Cheese.”

This book is not about cheese. The kid in the book is on his own. It’s super scary.

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD BOOK! I suggest President Obama read “I Am The Cheese” with Malia next…NOT “Twilight,” which I heard a rumor he was thinking about reading with her now that they were done with the Harry Potter series. I really hope for Malia’s sake he reconsiders this. There’s nothing more embarrassing than reading a romance novel with your DAD.

This reminds me of this guy I knew who wore socks with sandals and had daughters and no TV and who would make make them read teen romances like “Twilight” and “Flowers in the Attic” with him as part of “family time.” EW! I felt so SORRY for those girls.

Please, Mr. Obama! Don’t be that guy!

I met some great mothers and daughters who were enjoying some bonding time like the kind my mom and I had playing hooky from school while I was at the Betsy-Tacy convention this past week, where I gave the closing speech:

Check it out: You can see me, and part of the convention, covered on the local news!

I signed tons of books, and got to meet so many fantastic readers, and even some of the characters from the books.

Me with Aunt Ruth!

I even got to go to Betsy’s house:

(Really, it’s the author, Maud Hart Lovelace’s real life house, lovingly restored by the Betsy-Tacy Society, with donations!)

They restored Tacy’s house, across the street, as well!

It was such a thrill to be able to walk in the footsteps of such beloved characters (and a real life author)!

And all of the convention organizers and attendees were so nice to me, and gave me such lovely gifts. And I bought tons of Betsy swag at the gift shoppe! It was so great! I can’t thank them enough…or wait to go again next time!

And I had a great time going on KARE-11 (you can watch it here if you missed it) and visiting with Corbin, one of my favorite newscasters of all time!

Plus, I got to get airbrushed with makeup for going on high-def. If you’ve never done this, you HAVE to. It was so fun, and it lasted all day with NO TOUCH-UPS. It was RAD! I want to buy my own airbrush machine. I LOVE KARE-11!

OK, I have to go brush up on my YA classics now (such a hardship). I just love thinking about Louis Duncan’s GIFT OF MAGIC, and THE CAT ATE MY GYM SUIT by Paula Danziger, and THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND, and Richard Peck’s GHOSTS I HAVE BEEN, and THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE…GAH!

(Hint: Don’t read this one with your dad either. HOT romance!)

So many great books! I can’t wait until my nieces are old enough to read!

See you on NPR!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Maybe you thought I wouldn’t make it here after being stranded by Delta Airlines in Atlanta (or Hotlanta, as I like to call it, after the book series).

But Delta pulled through with flying—ha, get it, flying?—colors. Even my bag arrived on time (albeit on another flight)!

(Don’t you hate it when you get really mad about something and then people are totally nice to you and you can’t be mad at them anymore? UGH!)

Now I’m in Mankato. Those of you who grew up watching Melissa Gilbert on Little House on the Prairie (those of you who didn’t, pay attention, this is important: it involves a hot guy) know that this is where Laura used to go to get store bought dresses. Also where she finally got Almanzo to notice she wasn’t “Half-Pint” anymore.

Important! Huge romantic plot development!

“Little House” was totally my favorite TV show way into high school, something my best friend and I kept a dark “dork” secret from everyone else we knew, along with the fact that we had “Jane Eyre” paper dolls and complete crushes on Sam Neill from the movie My Brilliant Career.

In high school we could never understand why Judy Davis chose writing instead of him. I still don’t, frankly..

Anyway, I’m in Mankato, after speaking and signing at the Red Balloon in St. Paul today, where I met many fantastic Minnesotans (and some people from out of state), including Bridgette and Brittany, who arrived in these amazing handmade Airhead and Being Nikki Tees (UK version):

Bridgette and Brittany rule.

And guess what? Mankato is also the birth place of Maud Hart Lovelace, and the place where she set the fictional home of her heroine Betsy Ray! She called it Deep Valley.

Maud’s books are the ones I’ll be talking about at the Alltel Convention Center tomorrow for the Betsy-Tacy Convention….

…whose organizers have completely spoiled me by putting me up in the nicest hotel room! There is a serious danger I may never be able to stay in a normal hotel room again. Thanks, Forget-Me-Nots!

If you’re in the Mankato area, stop by tomorrow:

Monday, July 20th

11 AM – 12PM

Alltel Convention Center

1 Civic Center Plaza

Mankato, MN

(I’ll actually be signing from 10-10:30 and 12-12:30, speaking from 11-12.)

And now, for those of you who recognized my “Little House,” Betsy, and “My Brilliant Career” references–and even those who didn’t–something you’re guaranteed to love:

Out on Tuesday, July 21, for the first time ever, Lizzie Skurnick’s collection of essays (including one I wrote about why I’ve always loved Judy Blume!) Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading.

You can browse inside the book here, join the facebook page for Shelf Discovery here, or visit the original column Lizzie writes for Jezebel, “Fine Lines” (which is how I discovered her) here.

I don’t think there’s a section on Betsy in the book (I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing yet, since I just got my copy!), but there’s just about every other heroine you ever loved as a kid….

…plus entries by Jennifer Weiner, Laura Lippman, Cecily von Zeigesar, and more!

I was really freaking out over writing my essay on Judy Blume. I was like, “What if Judy reads this?” It’s one thing to give a speech on Maud Hart Lovelace here in Mankato…I don’t have to worry if she doesn’t like it…Maud’s no longer with us!

(Although at one point when I was packing to come here, I was like, “Oh, I better pack my Betsy books so Maud can sign them…” That’s how “current” her books feel, even though they’re set at the turn of the century! If Maud–and Betsy–were alive, they’d totally be texting, Twittering, and blogging! And Betsy would be in BIG trouble for blogging about something totally inappropriate.)

I don’t even remember what I wrote about Judy, and in my usual fashion, I can’t find the original essay now, since I have so many files called JUDY.DOC.

So you’ll have to get a copy and tell me! I’m pretty sure Judy will like it. (It’s kind of like writing about the Queen though.)

Okay, I’m going to be my typical dork self and read some Betsy and go to bed now. See you tomorrow!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

(I felt so sorry for the troop leader, I wanted to offer him a Vicodin. But then I was like, “Oh, no, if he’s out of it, then who will protect the rest of us from them?”)

And now my bag is lost. And I am losing battery power on my laptop as I write this. And there are no more plugs. And I have a bunch of stuff due, like, now. And there are five small (seeming unrelated to one another) children screaming next to me.

Where I’m trying to get is Minneapolis in time for my signings there tomorrow and Monday.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I’ll be speaking and signing books from 2PM-4PM at

Red Balloon Children’s Bookstore
891 Grand Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55105
Tel: 651-224-8320

I know it’s a children’s bookstore, but don’t worry if you’re not a kid…we’re all kids at heart! Don’t lie and pretend you didn’t go to Harry Potter this weekend (and loved every minute of it, especially all the snogging.)

(I promise the children at Red Balloon are better behaved than the ones around me right now.)

And yes, bringing books from home for me to sign is fine.

But it’s always polite to buy a book from the store while you’re there so the bookseller hosting the signing makes a little $ in these hard times. Surely you know someone having a birthday or have a little early Christmas shopping to do.

And on Monday I’ll be speaking and signing from 11AM-Noon at

Alltel Convention Center
1 Civic Center Plaza
Mankato, MN 56001

The focus of my speech on Monday will be writing, myself (of course), the Princess Diaries books, and the Betsy-Tacy books (I’ve written the foreword to the new HarperCollins edition to Betsy Was a Junior and Betsy and Joe, my favorite books in the series).

I’m excited to be involved in the reissues of these classics, along with two of my favorite writers, Anna Quindlen and Laura Lippman (sadly, these reissues won’t be out until the Fall, though, so you won’t be able to buy the reissue with my forward there).

This is all dependent on if I GET to Minnesota. In the meantime, I’m being thwarted by Delta Airlines. Yes! I’m talking to YOU, Delta Airlines!

(Also, no, kid, you CANNOT have some of my almonds that I bought with my $7 meal voucher. Get away from me.)

Apparently, Delta schedules their flights, and accepts payment for them.

But they don’t actually SEND THE JETS TO PICK PEOPLE UP until they feel like it.

Never mind that because of this I completely missed my connecting flight (and was told my bag is going to arrive in Minnesota at one time and I am going to arrive in Minnesota at another time, but these will not be the same time.)

(Now the kids are fighting over their Gameboys and pulling each other’s hair. Keeping it classy here at Gate E10 at the Atlanta Airport.)

Oh, and that Delta’s sending that original plane so late was an “act of God” so not to expect a reimbursement on the difference in the cost of the seats since I paid for first class (because I’m fancy), but my seat on the new flight is coach.

(Now one of the kids is smearing pizza on the wall. I am not even kidding.)

You know what an “act of God” is? Daniel Craig.

Sending the plane you bought a ticket for three hours late is not an act of of God (especially when other planes for your destination were leaving during that time but no one would let you get on one).

(The woman sitting next to me just said, “If those kids don’t quit their fussin’, I’m gonna smack’em myself. Like we don’t have enough problems with our plane being late and our bags lost and these here seven dollar vouchers. Like you can buy a meal for seven dollars!”)

Amen, sister.

On the plus side, I’ll soon be fitting into those skinny jeans I bought last summer, but which have been giving me a little muffin top lately.

I suggest Ruby from the Style Network try flying Delta Airlines for the next stage of her diet plan.

See you tomorrow, Minnesota (hopefully)!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

So if you live in the Washington DC area, drop everything else you’ve got planned (Harry can wait…when else will you get an opportunity like this?) and go to the signing. You can click here to see which of your favorite women’s fiction, romance, paranormal/fantasy, YA, etc. authors will be there, just waiting to personally sign some books for you!

Even better, all the proceeds raised at this event will go to literacy.

So this is totally a worthy cause (you have to buy books at the signing. You can’t bring your own from home, because the point of the signing is to raise money for charity)!

How awesome is that? Basically every top women’s fiction writer in the industry will be at this signing….

…except those of us who are too busy working on our new books to go (I’m also heading out to Minnesota for a book signing this weekend, and for a different conference).

And if you don’t know what that conference is, well, then click here!

I love Betsy! (And, along with Anna Quindlen and mystery writer Laura Lippman, I’ve written the foreword to some new editions of her books coming out this Fall….)

Anyway, if you’re an author attending RWA this year, here’s my list of Author Do’s and Don’t’s for tonight’s Literacy Signing. Please, please, please, authors….don’t act like weirdos at RWA this year: Leave your spirit guides at home.

I have one addition to the Do’s and Don’ts List for Authors:

If you, your author friends, your agent, or your editor plan on saying some not very nice things about another author, DON’T do it in front of people like limo drivers, bartenders, waitresses, and hotel maids.

It’s a small world, and EVERYONE LOVES GOSSIP. Not just reading it on the Internet (although believe me, I get forwarded that stuff about me, too). Just because they’re in a uniform doesn’t mean they don’t have ears.

And sometimes, they’re fans of the author you’re putting down, or their kid is.

Those limo drivers, bartenders, waitresses, and hotel maids WILL tell the author what you said about them when they meet her later on…I know this from experience.

And yes, it did hurt my feelings a little, especially since I didn’t even know you.

So think before you speak, ladies. Let’s all try to act like princesses. It’s not just nice…it’s professional!

Okay, well, I gotta go now! Harry is waiting!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

But don’t worry. At least you haven’t missed the latest episode of Read Our Lips. It’s still up, and it’s definitely the best and most useful segment yet: What to do if one of your guy friends asks you out!

Today I got dragged to Publix grocery store by the “guy friend” I ended up marrying (danger, girls! This can end up happening if you date friends)!

He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog loves Publix and goes there at least once a week (though to be fair, he goes to the smaller, independent, family-run grocery in our neighborhood at least once a day).

My favorite thing about Publix (besides everything) is their cake decorating department. They have a huge “cake bible” where you can stand while your husband is doing the horrible boring shopping. There you can pick out the cake you want for your next birthday party.

Seriously, it’s actually someone’s job to sit around and come up with different themed cakes to put into the cake bible at Publix. Think about this. What an awesome job! I’d like that job.

This isn’t actually as special now that there are shows like “Ace of Cakes.” But keep in mind this is just a chain grocery stores’ bakery department. It’s not a specialty shop. They really do claim they can make these cakes. I’ve never tried any (I’ve got a wheat intolerance thing going on so I couldn’t have any anyway) but I want to order one just to see if they could actually make them, because I’ll be honest: I have my doubts.

Here are some of my favorites:

This is the Disney Friend Signature Fairy Cake:

So you can throw up in multiple colors after eating it!

This is the Disney Princess Light Up cake:

It includes a “light” that goes under the skirt of the princess of your choice. Make sure you don’t eat the light (or the plastic skirt)!

Obviously, the Disney Princess Square Castle Super Sized Signature Cake is my favorite:

Someone better get me this cake someday (gluten-free, of course). Obviously, there are lot of pieces you could choke on if you were five or whatever. But I’m not, so who cares? And the best part is, afterwards, you’ll have Princess Ariel, Jasmine, Belle, Aurora, Snow White, and Cinderella figurines to treasure.

Or you could get a cake featuring Amy Adams from the movie “Enchanted.”

I wonder if Amy has ever gotten this cake herself. It would be weird to get a cake of yourself. Although you can do THAT at Publix, too, probably.

This cake is just called “Princess.”

It’s a boring cake. But on the plus side, you could wear the tiara after you’re done eating it, if you don’t mind having frosting in your hair.

This cake is called “Princess Pull-apart,” which is an interesting concept when you think about what happened to Marie Antoinette.

When I was a kid, I always wanted a cake like this:

It’s kind of gross though when you think about the fact that you’re eating a lady’s bottom half.

This is just called Bear Cake Basic:

This cake totally scares me. Can you imagine giving this to some kid? I’d start screaming if someone presented me with this cake and I was like 5 or whatever. This cake and clowns are both completely scary, and yet people persist in having both at kids’ parties.

If your friends got you this, I would advise finding new friends immediately:

Not funny at all. And what’s with the people not wearing clothes? PsYcHo.

And I seriously don’t think it’s OK to eat the symbol on which your savior was crucified:

I don’t even know what to say about this:

This is the kind of cake your dad would get you because he’s overcompensating out of guilt for never having been involved in your party before and one year your mom was like, “Let HIM take some responsibility and be in charge for once in his life!” and the people at Publix would convince him this was the hottest selling cake (but really it’s just the most expensive).

And he’d unveil it at your birthday party, and you’d feel so sorry for him for being so clueless as to think Spiderman is still cool you’d be like, “No, Dad, I love it. It’s really neat.”

But secretly you’d be embarrassed (but there’d be one kid at your party who never got a big cake who’d be like, “That’s the coolest cake EVER!” and then you’d feel a little better about it).

Okay, that cake above was sad. But this cake totally cheered me up!

I totally want a dinosaur cake with lava coming out of it.

This cake makes me even happier:

Soon they’ll have a Twilight cake but for now we have to settle for Johnny Depp:

But seriously, if I were going to have one of these cakes, it would have to be this one:

Yes! Now THAT is a cake!

(Ha, I’m kidding, I just can’t believe they have a monster truck cake).

Okay, I have to go now. For some reason I’m getting kind of hungry….

More later.

Much love,

Meg

When else has this ever happened, that two young actresses (or whatever those ladies are) were both on the children’s bestseller list at the same time?

(Besides Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, of course, who don’t count because they’re related.)

*And okay, I put “written” in quotes because there are rumors going around that both Lauren and Miley had help from professional writers in creating their novels. But this is pretty obvious, and they’ve both admitted as much. Here’s a clip of Lauren talking about it during Chelsea Handler’s very funny interview of her.

Anyway, I’m writing this with burnt hands. I did follow my own advice (on Twitter) and avoided playing with fireworks this weekend.

But then I went snorkeling and all my sunscreen washed off and I’m burnt in the weirdest places, like my knuckles and the backs of my knees (seriously, people at CVS were totally making fun of me while I was there buying Lanocaine earlier).

And while I was snorkeling, completely minding my own business, a three foot barracuda decided to swim up to me, and be all “Oh, HAI!”

Only I wasn’t scared at all because I thought it was a tarpon, so I was just all, “Oh, hello. Have you seen Nemo?”

Barracuda

Tarpon

Nemo

After the sunburn (and barracuda incident), I was completely incapacitated and had to lie in bed all day watching old episodes of “Intervention” and “Dance Your Ass Off,” which I think is “The New Biggest Loser” but I don’t know for sure because so far I’m the only person I know who watches it. I mean, I can’t dance at all, and the contestants on that show have major health problems, and yet some of them can do cartwheels and the splits.

It’s very inspiring. I’m totally going to stop eating so many M&Ms and even swim some laps as soon as the burning stops.

And yes, I did see “10 Things I Hate About You,” and I liked it. But “NYC Prep,” not so much. I’m trying to get into it, but there seems to be one boy so far on the whole show, and all those girls are into him, but he seems like the kind of guy who would find arm hair nasty, so I don’t know if this show is worth my precious TV time.

Which reminds me I meant to comment on this comment recently left on the Read Our Lips vlog Michele and I did on shaving vs. waxing:

Viewer Comment:

I started shaving in 4th grade (legs AND arms, weird as it sounds). I’ve had guys tell me they wished all girls shaved their arms, too, because ANY body hair on a girl is nasty.

I realize this is just a comment left on YouTube. And if your arm hair bothers YOU, by God, go ahead and shave it.

But something about this statement really bothers me. What is it, exactly…?

Oh, yeah, maybe it’s the fact that any guy who suggests that body hair on a girl is “nasty” is a useless tool. If a guy I was dating told me he thought body hair on a girl was nasty, I’d be all, “Really? Well, see this body here? You’re never gonna see it again. Good bye.”

I mean, seriously. If we stop breeding with these type of guys, they’ll go away. Spencer Pratt? Brody Jenner? They’ll disappear. We can do it, ladies, if we stick together and just stop rewarding them for their stupid behavior.

I guess I have to mention Michael Jackson’s funeral. I know it would have been tasteless for there to have been an open coffin two weeks after his death, but I’m still bummed about not getting to see him in the drum major uniform with the white glove that we were promised by the NY Post.

And of course, Brooke! Oh, Brooke. You are so awesome.

But the best part was when Janet hugged her niece Paris at the end, after Paris made her first and only “public statement” about her dad. I was totally:
“It’s Janet…Aunt Janet if you’re nasty!”

You really did get the feeling that if anyone tries to mess with those kids, they’ll have to go through Janet first. I hope that’s true. Janet is fierce. I think Janet is a barracuda. In a good way.

Okay, so I just have to say I was all excited because the CW is doing the Vampire Diaries as a TV series, and I got way into those books in the 90s (I won’t even mention my decades-long girl crush on Lois Duncan).

And so I went to LJ Smith’s website to see what she’s been up to lately, and then I saw her author photo:

That’s it. LJ Smith is brilliant, and that’s all there is to say.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

4th of July is one of my favorite holidays because it involves eating delicious grilled foods, explosions, and water sports (depending on where you live, of course).

In fact it was a year ago this 4th of July that I was snorkeling and my snorkeling partner purposefully woke up a sleeping nurse shark right in front of me (it swam away without attacking us, fortunately).

So I decided to write that experience into the opening scene of Being Nikki.

So who knows what will happen during my water sport adventures this July 4th ? Maybe it’ll end up in Runaway (cover art coming soon!).

From last year’s Being Nikki cover shoot.

Anyway, just to let you know, lots of stuff is happening this July! I have two book signings in Minnesota!

And July is Meg Cabot Month at Teen Scene Magazine. They’ll be giving TONS of my books away all month. So if you didn’t score a book in my contest last week (and you should have heard by now if you had), this is your big chance!

The schedule goes like this:

July 3-Airhead Contest
July 6-Being Nikki
July 8-Queen Of Babble
July 10-Queen of Babble in the Big City
July 13-Queen of Babble Gets Hitched
July15-Victoria and the Rogue
July 17-Nicola and the Viscount
July 20-Size 12 is Not Fat
July 22-Size 14 is Not Fat Either
July 24-Big Boned
July 27-Pants on Fire
July 29-Meg Cabot Interview

So be sure to drop by Teenscenemag.com to check it out!

Also every Friday this July, Girl’s Life Magazine is giving away 5 signed Allie Finkle books! Log on to girlslife.com, look for Give Away of the Day, and click Enter Now. Check the “Winners List” each Friday. Enter as many times as you want!

Not the most recent GL cover. I couldn’t find that one!

And don’t forget, July 31 was declared Meg Cabot Day in Bloomington, Indiana. We celebrate it by floating in the pool, reading, and refusing to help with any housework.

I’ve been getting a lot of mail recently, so I thought I’d answer some of your letters before I took off for the holidays!

So here goes:

Q: What’s the deal with you writing all these books for tweens and nothing for us adult readers?

A: I know! I got a little distracted by all the sparkle lip gloss those fourth graders are wearing. But there’ll be a new book for adult readers coming out next summer (more info coming soon…I don’t want to give away too much because the new book is such a departure for me. And I’m pretty far into a new installment of the Heather Wells mystery series, too, so look for updates on that as well)!

Q: Why are you so obsessed with Michael Jackson’s funeral arrangements?

A: Because if he is in an open casket in his drum major uniform wearing a single white glove, as reported by the NY Post, I will find it such an amazing coincidence…because my grandmother was dressed exactly the same way at her funeral last week.

Q: Hi Meg, I was wondering when “Being Nikki” will be available for sale in e-book form.

A: Soon! I don’t know the exact date, but I can assure you, it’s going to be any minute now. My publisher has a whole new deal worked out with Kindle.

Q: Meg, when will your next book be out?

A: In September I’ll have TWO books out! Stage Fright, the next Allie Finkle book:

And Hunter’s Moon, the third and final book in my manga series (and my last manga ever):

Q: Dear Meg, I want to be a writer, but my parents don’t believe in my dream. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it without their support. What should I do?

A: You’re probably not going to make it without their support—their FINANCIAL support—unless you start planning now for your future career, keeping in mind that only a small percentage of writers make enough money from their writing alone to support themselves.

So you shouldn’t be so hurt by the fact that your parents aren’t over the moon with your dream of being a writer. Your parents want you to be happy…and self-supporting!

So stop talking about your dream, and start making it a reality by focusing on getting an education that will allow you to get a great “day job” so you can support yourself until you make it big in publishing. Learn to type. Learn to teach. Learn to stick needles in cats. Learn SOMETHING that helps people so someone will want to hire you, in case the novel you wrote your senior year doesn’t get published right away (or bought for very much money).

Although some authors do make large advances on their first books, most only make advances in the mid-to-low five figures. After taxes and your agent’s cut, there’s very little left to live on. Keep in mind, most authors spend their first advance marketing their own books (putting up a website, etc), because publishers don’t tend to spend a lot marketing new authors.

So try to be more understanding of Mom and Dad. Instead of focusing on your dream of being a writer when you talk to them, focus on what you’re going to do to support yourself until that dream comes true (getting a good day job, with benefits like lots of vacation time, which you can spend writing).

THAT is what’s going to make Mom and Dad (and ultimately, you) happy…and also what’s going to keep you fiscally stable until you’re making the big bucks from your writing.

Q: What do I do about friends who aren’t supportive of my wanting to be a writer?

A: There could be lots of reasons why your friends aren’t supportive of your writing dream. Maybe they’re jealous because they always wanted to write, too, but were too lazy and so never did. Maybe they’re freaked out because you used to like to hang out with them, and now all you want to do is write.

It’s fun to have people to hang out with, so if your friends just aren’t the type to understand something like the fact that you write, just don’t talk about the writing thing with them. Not everybody is going to get it.

This applies to family, as well. Keeping a cherished dream to yourself is OK if you don’t want people to make fun of it. That’s just being self-protective.

In the meantime, remember: Be your own cheerleader! You don’t need the support of your parents, or anyone else, to achieve your dreams. As long as you believe in yourself, you’re going to be fine.

Here’s a video from this year’s Book Expo America where I talk about my own road to becoming a published author. Sadly, I should have worn a lot more make up. Live and learn. AND you can’t see my accompanying Power Point.

But you can see Julie Andrews, which is better.

Good luck, and keep writing! If I can do it, so can you.

Have a great 4th of July!
More later.

Much love,

Meg

PS More writing tips for those of you looking for them!

However, as you can see, I’m back.

Internet, you’ve won. I can’t quit you.

But this doesn’t mean I like you as much as I used to. You’re like that boyfriend who cats around behind my back, then lies and says you’re “just friends” with that other girl, even though all my friends TOTALLY saw you making out with her behind the Orange Julius at the mall.

But you’re such a good kisser I don’t care. Dang you, Internet!

I mean, Ed McMahon passing away wasn’t much of a stretch, and Farah Fawcett, while really sad (I love her. Extremities is seriously one of my favorite movies ever), wasn’t unexpected.

But poor Michael Jackson!

While it’s true Michael’s personal life seemed a bit odd, that doesn’t negate the fact that he was extremely talented, brought a lot of joy to people, and was an inspiration to many. My younger brothers played with a Michael Jackson (and O.J….let’s be honest…) doll as little kids, had all of Michael Jackson’s albums, and one of them even read Michael Jackson’s biography….

…which was kind of amazing, because neither of them were big readers growing up.

Michael Jackson was hugely influential in my house, as I imagine he was in many homes. I would still have my tape of Bad except that one of my brothers left it on the carport roof when we were sun tanning and it melted. I am not naming names, except that it was MATT.

Anyway, just as we were coming to terms with the loss of Michael…we lost the Oxiclean guy. I realize it is not nearly the same, but we were all fond of the Oxiclean guy. What is up with that?

And then the thing with the governor of South Carolina (who, okay, isn’t dead, but those emails. Santa Maria)! And then Billy Bob Thornton’s daughter’s baby! Not to mention, you know, the elections in Iran….

And don’t even get me started on those crazy housewives.

Honestly, at a certain point, it all got to be a little too much news, even for me. And I love news.

And I know there’s that little button where you can disconnect from the Internet.

But then you turn on the TV and it’s there! Or you go to the store and it’s there, right by the cash register! Or you open your mailbox, and it’s there!

You. Cannot. Escape (although I did hear there’s an island where there is no news or Internet. However, moving there seems cost prohibitive).

So that’s why there are books: You can grab one and go to the pool or the beach and just chill for a while. So rejuvenating! I did it, and I felt much better. For about five minutes.

Speaking of which, the Summer Outfit/Free book contest is over, and entries are being processed. Winners will be notified by email. We got SO MANY entries, from all over the world! I wish EVERYONE could have won, but we only have so many books. Still, I can’t wait to share the photos with you.

Few of you, however, were able to hold a candle to Adithi’s summer outfit:

YAY! Okay, she admits, this isn’t a casual summer look. But it’s still great!

While we’re sorting through your entries, you can watch the latest episode of Read Our Lips, and find out how to make the first move on a guy. We use King Arthur action figures to illustrate our point! It’s not to be missed (especially because it’s a record three minutes long!).

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Why do we (okay, I) care about these people? Why do I care about Bethenny and Jill Zarin and Susan Boyle and her cat Pebbles and Jon and Kate and their divorce?

Because watching them battle with their problems takes us, just for a little while, away from our own problems. Duh!

We all have problems, right? Maybe our problems aren’t as serious as Danielle’s (former “prostitution whore”) or Theresa’s (allowing her children to leave the house in matching elastic floral headbands).

But many of us have problems that are way more serious. In which case, thank goodness we have Danielle and Theresa.

Because it’s very soothing to leave our problems behind for a little while in order to watch a skinny little Italian lady flip a table over in a nice restaurant while screaming obscenities. You could almost even call it cathartic. Face it, who hasn’t wanted to flip a table over from time to time?

This is why shows like the Real Housewives andThe Closer (so good! I actually had to give my old cat Jenny intravenous fluids, too. Except one time I forgot and left the needle in for like an hour and the whole bag went in and Jenny swelled up like a little watermelon and was walking around like a basketball with legs. But she was fine! Really) and Weeds and Nurse Jackie are so great.

Just like a great book, these shows take us on a little vacation away from our own lives and problems.

And the better and more engrossing the book or show, the more thoroughly we forget our own problems, just for that little while.

Of course, in the case of reality shows, it’s a fine line…Jon and Kate are not exactly going through their problems for our entertainment.

However, if they stopped filming now, that would spoil the day so many of us are looking forward to: Mady’s eventual graduation from Yale law school, when she’ll turn around and sue both Jon and Kate for exploitation (of course as a responsible sibling, she’ll split the bounty with those of her brothers and sisters who haven’t yet become drug addicts and appeared on Intervention).

Anyway, one of the many problems I have that I’m trying to avoid is that I have way too many copies of my own books. I even had to start renting an office space to store them all in (on the bright side, now there’s room for the scanner for when we want to show you fun foreign covers).

So in order to make some space, we’ve decided to donate a bunch of them to the International Book Project (where hopefully some will make their way to Pakistan, where the Taliban just blew up another girls’ school. Do you think the Taliban know everyone thinks of them as the new Nazis? Or maybe they’d think that was a compliment?) and a few other literacy projects.

We also want to give some to you, because I know YOU have problems, too (you write to me all the time, telling me about them. I DO read my mail, even if I don’t always have time to write back), and I want to make sure you have a little something to help you escape from them for a little while.

But! Because you most likely aren’t being menaced by the Taliban, we’re going to make you work for your free copies a little.

Don’t worry though, it’s going to be fun work!

If you’d like a free book (the books we’re giving away—while supplies last—are: US paperback copies of Jinx; UK and US copies of Airhead; UK and US copies of Being Nikki, as well as paperback copies of Queen of Babble Gets Hitched) just do the following:

Sorry! As of 6/27, this contest is over! Winners will be notified in the next ten days.

Contest ends when we run out of books.

If you don’t want your photo posted on this blog if you win, please specify. This won’t exclude you from winning a book.

This idea is based on Teen Vogue’s Girl of the Week, where they pick a snap of a girl (there’s actually also a boy of the week) and then ask what she’s wearing and what her inspiration for it was. Sort of like this:

“Oh, hi, yeah, that’s me, Meg. I’m sitting at the airport with my cat. I’m wearing an old pair of leggings I found in my sock drawer, a sleeveless dress I just bought on sale from Anthropologie, and a long blazer because it can get cold on airplanes. I have on my favorite comfy flats, and those are my reading glasses (the novel is by Dennis Lehane) and my 100% polyester Stella McCartney bag. My inspiration for this outfit was style and yet comfort because I knew traveling with my cat was going to be difficult.”

Or this:

“Oh, right, see here I’m in another sundress from Anthropologie and I’m putting on Band-Aids because it’s not really a good idea to go on a long walk in brand new Havianas.”

Or this:

Here’s my neighbor Emily who is NYC for the summer attending a program at NYU:

Emily is in Converse; A Big Sweater; A Top; Cut Offs; and she has her hands in Rob Pattinson’s hair. Emily and Rob have been very close ever since she found out he’s filming a movie right around the corner from where she’s staying in NYC. As you can see, Rob really likes her back, although it turns out he’s much larger than any of us knew. What a surprise! Sometimes he puts her in his shirt pocket and they go out to lunch.

You see how easy it is? Fashion is fun!

Now you try! Have fun with it! Do a good enough job, and you can win a book!

Don’t forget to follow the rules (above) though!

(This should be obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway: While Emily’s photo, above, is all right, because SHE is in it, please do NOT send pictures of models, celebrities, or photos from other sites, and try to pass them off as YOU. This isn’t fun, and will disqualify you from the contest. The fun of this contest is seeing what kind of creative outfits and poses YOU can come up with. IT IS NOT A BEAUTY CONTEST. It’s about having fun with fashion while putting together outfits from YOUR closet. CREATIVITY, not beauty or name-brand designers, IS WHAT COUNTS.)

Okay, now go raid your closets!

More later.

Much love,

Meg