(You can see the clock counting down the days until this event occurs—as well as a sizzling new excerpt and cool other extras—on the brand new web page for Abandon here.)

But if you ask me, Kate’s gig is nothing! It’s just twelve hours, including the ceremony, photos, afternoon cake-cutting reception, and evening reception.

Then afterwards Kate gets to go on a honeymoon on a yacht to relax and be a princess for the rest of her life! Check out MY schedule (there’s an interactive map! For real!) for the next fourteen weeks.

Do you see any yachts or relaxation or tiaras in there? No, you do not.

Not that I’m complaining, because it’s going to be fun (except the travel and the no yachts or tiaras). Part of the tour will include a new initiative by Scholastic to build a global community that connects teens with their favorite authors. It’s called This is Teen and will include me and authors Libba Bray and Maggie Stiefvater, both of whom also have books coming out this summer (but as far as I know, no yachts or tiaras either).

We will, however, be coming to cities near you to tell you stuff like in this video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another part of my tour will be to promote Overbite, the sequel to my adult paranormal, Insatiable. Contrary to what you might think, Overbite is not a book about a girl with dental issues. Instead, it’s about a girl battling the forces of evil while (unfortunately for her) being in love with the prince of darkness (an example of taking on more than one can chew, since she doesn’t get a yacht or a tiara either. Sorry if this is a spoiler).

I’ll be able to tell you more about Overbite (and reveal the cover, excerpts, and webpage!) closer to its pub date of July 1.

I’m seriously super grateful for all of the great advanced press there has been for Abandon . . .

. . . like this great review from Seventeen Magazine.

Favorite part from Seventeen review: Pierce is a rockstar narrator. She’s bold, gutsy, and hyperaware. She might even be too brave for her own good. We love a girl who isn’t scared to take action. Pierce might be a little reckless, but at least she’s never a damsel in distress.

And this piece by the amazing Sue Corbett in Publisher’s Weekly Children’s Bookshelf about six new spring titles and their inspiration, including Abandon) and Chris Van Allsburg’s Queen of the Falls. Chris Van Allsburg was my idol when I was an illustration major in college. I can’t believe I have a book mentioned in the same piece as his! I seriously freaked out when I saw that)!

Favorite part from the Publisher’s Weekly piece (about Abandon, not Chris): Where I got to talk about how Persephone is one of the only female characters in Greek mythology who not only doesn’t get turned into a tree, she becomes queen of the underworld.

To me, as a teenager, that was such an empowering thing. I think there’s a part of every teen (at least the ones who feel like they don’t fit in) that’s longing to meet that special someone who will not only understand them, but take them away from their crappy life. “Get me out to a palace where I can rule over dead people!” was always my mantra.

Plus, I kinda got the feeling Persephone thought Hades was hot. I always thought she ate that pomegranate on purpose.

And special thanks to Kristi from The Story Siren for reading aloud the excerpt from Abandon! She did such a great job . . . .

Especially since I personally can’t stand seeing myself on camera (notice how I don’t vlog? This is why)! Kristi is so great!

For those of you wondering what I’ve been doing with myself lately, I’ve been working very busily on many projects, including but not limited to:

a) Trying to help solve the murder on AMC’s The Killing

b) Enjoying the delightfully campy new version of Upstairs, Downstairs on Masterpiece Theater. You don’t have to have watched the previous version to understand this one. And this one is even more fun than the old one because it has the most fun-to-hate villains of all, NAZIS!

And there is also a wickedly naughty (or possibly just confused) character named Lady Persephone—pronounced Purr-seph-oh-knee, in case you didn’t know—as well as a monkey! LOVE IT!

c) Trying to enjoy The Borgias, but after what happened to poor Lucrezia I may have to give it up for Game of Thrones (but this looks like it may be just as bad for the pretty girls), and

d) Working on the sequel to Abandon (called Underworld) as well as a few short stories for some anthologies.

One of them is for the Book Wish Foundation, an organization that gives some of the world’s neediest readers the books they wish for. 100% of the proceeds from this anthology are going to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, to build libraries in Darfuri refugee camps in Chad.

Some of the authors contributing to this anthology (in stores September 2011, published by Penguin/G.P. Putnam’s Sons) include Ann M. Martin (Babysitter’s Club!), Alexander McCall Smith (No 1 Ladies Detective!) John Green (I don’t need to tell you guys what he wrote), R.L. Stine (ditto!), Joyce Carol Oates (ditto!), Cornelia Funke (ditto!), and many more!

(You know ditto means “the same thing” right? In olden times we used to call photocopies of stuff “dittos.”)

And now, just in time for Passover (and Easter!) you can do a mitzvah (a mitzvah is a good deed or unselfish act, for those of you who don’t know. You should do at least one mitzvah every day), and help contribute to the anthology by donating $20 (just TWENTY DOLLARS) and have your name (or the name of someone you love) in the book ALONG WITH THESE INCREDIBLE WRITERS, by going here.

All the money goes to helping refugees.

But you have to do it by April 30, 2011, or it goes away, just like Cinderella’s coach at midnight!

(Love this app because YOU get to be the wand and make Cinderella’s wish come true!)

Well, I have to get back to work now. When you have a book coming out—make that TWO books—and a sequel to one of them due, THERE IS NO REST.

There is only fruitless searching on the Internet for better makeup to hide the dark circles under your eyes.

(I’m pretty sure this is what Kate Middleton is doing right now, too, FYI.)

And even though I can’t stand seeing myself on video, I’m posting the video below, because Scholastic went to a lot of trouble to make it.

(If I had hair like Kate Middleton or Kristi the Story Siren, vlogging might be OK. But I do not, so for now vlogging is out).

But this video does answer some burning questions I’ve been receiving about Abandon from people who’ve read advanced copies. So there’ll be more videos coming soon.

Stay tuned!

Click here to view the embedded video.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that one thing our great country has always stood for is being there for the underdog in times of trouble (usually. Sometimes we are a little late).

That is why I am here now to defend Christina.

The Star Spangled Banner is one the hardest songs in the world to sing (besides Happy Birthday). I can back up this statement with the following fact:

Not only are the words in The Star Spangled Banner confusing (what is a rampart, anyway?) and old-timey, but it is a song that requires a vocal range most people, except dogs, Christina Aguilera, and possibly Mariah Carey, do not possess.

This is why when you were a little kid and you were auditioning for a part in the touring production of the Broadway musical of Annie, they made you stand up on stage and sing The Star Spangled Banner.

Wait. Are you telling me you didn’t audition for the touring production of the Broadway musical of Annie when you were a kid?

Well, I did. And I can tell you, they made you sing The Star Spangled Banner to see if you could hit that high note mentioning the rockets red glare without dropping an octave, because so few people can (they also made me sing Happy Birthday, in chest voice, which is impossible for most people except Lea Michele and that lady from Wicked, because it contains the same note).

(No, I did not get the part, because I could not hit that note, which Christina hit with such ease in front of so many millions of people.)

Look, my grandfather got a purple heart in World War II fighting against the Nazis (he served under General Eisenhower and was shot in France). Though I have not been shot for it (yet), I love this country and consider myself a patriot.

But because no one but a professional can sing it well, much less remember the lines, I think it might be time to consider choosing a national anthem that all of us — not just professionals — can sing without fear of messing up because it’s just too hard.

We had a lively discussion about this on Twitter, and everyone had some thought-provoking suggestions for an alternative national anthem.

My husband was in favor of The Gambler by Kenny Rogers:

You got to know when to hold ‘em
Know when to fold ‘em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealing’s done

He also strongly argued for Horse With No Name by the band America:

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain

I have no comment except to say that I happen to know for a fact when we went for a trail ride in the Tucson desert with his younger brothers on Valentine’s Day once, his horse did indeed have a name, and it was Pancho.

My favorite suggestion — because everyone knows it and it would be very rousing to sing at sporting events — was the theme song to the famous 80s movie Ghostbusters.

It would be quite simple to change the words to this song so it is about our country, as I have done here:

If there’s something strange
in your neighborhood
Who ya gonna call?

AMERICA

If there’s something weird
and it don’t look good
Who ya gonna call?

AMERICA

If ya all alone
Best pick up the phone
and call

AMERICA

Lemme tell ya something
AMERICA
makes me feel good!

Don’t get caught alone no no
Call
AMERICA

When it comes through your door
Unless you just want some more
I think you better call
AMERICA

Who ya gonna call?
AMERICA

I think you better call
AMERICA

I can’t hear you…
Who ya gonna call?
AMERICA

Louder now:
AMERICA!

Who ya gonna call?
AMERICA!

However, there are some troublesome verses about a “freaky ghost baby” that even I just can’t fix.

So I feel perhaps a more traditional selection might be in order.

A million of you, including Whoopi Goldberg on The View this morning, said it. It’s obvious:

America the Beautiful (here is Beyonce singing it at Barack Obama’s inauguration).

Why isn’t America the Beautiful our national anthem? It is a beautiful song with lovely words–not about war (or ghostbusting), but about how pretty our country is, and how we are all brothers (and sisters), and shouldn’t pick on one another.

As an added plus, everyone knows this song, and can pretty easily hit all the notes, because it is in one octave, as opposed to an octave and a half, like The Star Spangled Banner.

So, I think we’ve solved the problem. Well, that problem, anyway.

But honestly, we can only solve one problem at a time. So let’s pat ourselves on the back and move on. Yay!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

But then I deleted it because it was funny and I thought maybe it wasn’t appropriate in light of what happened this weekend in Arizona (and if you’re like my cousin Bobby, who’s all, “Why? What happened this weekend in Arizona? Wait. Did that flight attendant I met in Phoenix call you?”, I’m posting this link to the news story about it, just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about).

Then I flew into an existential crisis, asking myself why we’re all here and what life means and when will it be OK to laugh again? Maybe never.

Oh, yes. It was bad.

It got especially bad since my husband chose this past weekend to go out of town to do guy things with his guy friends, and my houseguests went home, leaving me alone with nothing but a lot of peppermint bark ice cream and some gluten-free fried chicken.

Yes. I know.

Then during my crisis I chose to watch a bunch of TV shows and movies my husband would never have watched with me, including the new MTV show I Used To Be Fat, which the title alone should explain.

Here is a spoiler:

Exercise – Chicken McNuggets = Lose 90 pounds.

Gabriella on I Used To Be Fat. She was elected Homecoming Queen BEFORE her weight loss, FYI. LOVE HER.

Then as I was wallowing around in despair, shoveling ice cream down my throat, I noticed the movie Eclipse was on. I couldn’t understand parts of it–like why so many of the boys in it weren’t wearing shirts during snowstorms–because it had been so long since I saw New Moon (and really, was this detail ever properly explained in any of the movies?) but many of you generously explained it to me over Twitter (thanks for that, I get it now: Werewolves are literally very hot).

This movie, like I Used To Be Fat, did not solve the problem of my existential despair, but it did solve the problem of what “team” I am on, Team Edward or Team Jacob, since many of you have asked, but I honestly could never decide, just like in fourth grade when everyone wanted to know who my BFF was.

I didn’t know! I liked everyone! Why did I have to choose one person?

Name-calling ensued. The BFF level of hostility in the fourth grade was at an all time high! I never did choose a BFF, a fact which led to my continuing status as a social outcast, but I didn’t care, and I still don’t.

I don’t like it when people play favorites. Why can’t we appreciate one another’s unique differences without having to say one person’s unique differences make him or her better than another person’s? This is why reality shows like American Idol upset me so much that I can’t watch them.

I have stuck by that motto . . . except for one person whose unique qualities were so obviously superior to everyone else’s, I had no choice but to declare him my BFF and then marry him. That quality is:

He makes me sandwiches. And they are very very good.

It wasn’t until the sandwich making scene in the kitchen in Eclipse that I realized one person’s unique differences were vastly superior to everyone else’s in the story.

I don’t see why it’s even a contest. He offers to make people sandwiches. No one else in this series does that. Plus, he’s a cop. AND he has a badass mustache. How could you NOT be:

Unofficial motto: “Bella! You’re grounded!”

And I am not alone, as we apparently even have a Facebook group.

But honestly, even knowing I have a new badass team to be a member of did not entirely cure my existential despair.

Then I watched the documentary about the life of Joan Rivers A Piece of Work.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And slowly, my angst began to go away. I even felt OK about writing this post!

Why? Because as Joan so eloquently sums it up, the only way we can get through the tragedies that life continuously hurls at us is to laugh. It’s like that scene in A Wrinkle in Time when the children go to visit the Happy Medium, and they see the planet that’s being consumed in darkness. The darkness is evil: soon, it’s going to swallow the planet completely.

But wait . . . into the darkness a bright star hurls itself! The star is swallowed up . . . but the darkness dissipates, just a little.

That’s what laughter does . . . what comedians like Joan, and humor writers, and cartoonists, and bloggers, and all the other people who try so hard to make us laugh and entertain us are really doing: fighting the evil, making the darkness dissipate — just for a little while — so the rest of us can make sense of it and deal with it.

Nobody really acknowledges them for it (the Oscar never goes to a funny movie or to a comedian, and they’ll never give the Nobel Prize for Literature to a funny blogger). But it’s true.

So no matter how horrible things might get–and they can get very, very awful–the best way to combat evil is NOT with violence, or to succumb to despair (or my chosen reaction, existential angst, ice cream, and gluten-free fried chicken).

It’s to carry on laughing, and doing whatever it is that you do that’s going to leave this planet a slightly happier place than you found it. That’s the only way we’re going to defeat the darkness.

Well, that and peppermint bark ice cream, obviously.

And in the meantime, let’s just keep our fingers crossed that Us Weekly isn’t lying to us this week.

Come on! We ask so little of celebrities. Just get together already, you two!

And join me for the Mediator discussion because I really AM going to be all over it like a spider monkey.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

So here are some ideas for you (for gifts. If you, like me, had a book due last week, all I can say is, welcome to the club and may God have mercy on your soul):

1) Eleni’s cookies. Yeah, you can make cookies. But not like these. Can you make cookies shaped like the entire cast of the Nutcracker, or Santa on the Beach? I highly doubt it.

2) A Polaroid camera. This one is smaller than the older ones you might be used to, but you can still use it for those “art projects” you may not necessarily care to put on your computer or cell phone, because what if the photos get “stolen,” and then leaked all over the Internet? You wouldn’t want your mom seeing them, would you?

I said “art projects.” You people have dirty minds.

3) Rosebush, Michele Jaffe’s new YA, a romantic suspense (also the Meg Cabot Book club’s new Book of the Month) is out now, and would look perfect peeking out of anyone’s stocking. We’ll be reading and discussing this book for the month of December here, so get a copy while it’s hot. Yeah, while everyone else is Ho Ho Ho-ing, we’ll be trying to figure out who left poor Jane for dead beneath a rosebush at what was supposed to be a super fun unchaperoned Memorial Day party at the Jersey Shore.

Kirkus calls it “Cleverly written with a finger on the pulse of the target audience—a winner.” We just like hot boys and girls who kickass.

4) A gift certificate to a bookstore!

Look, I know you think this is cheating. You’re all, “But where is the thought? The warmth? The consideration that is supposed to go into a gift to a loved one?” To this I say “Seriously?”

You’re reading an author’s blog, so you like books. Which means most of your friends/family probably do too.

And even if they don’t, if you get them a gift certificate to a bookstore, they’re going to find something there they like, like magazines or candles or Burt’s Bees emergency skin repair kit or whatever. So just do it. They’ll love it way better than that weird thing you got them last year

And if you give them a gift certificate, they don’t have to spend it right away. They can hold onto it until, cough, Abandon comes out at the end of April (yeah, I just said that so I could put the new Abandon cover on here because it got tweaked and I want to show it off. You can see her hair now, and I think it’s pretty. If you click on that link back there, you can see the whole thing).

5) Of course, if you’re super broke, there are tons of opportunities to win stuff you can give to people. You can win copies of the new Mediator re-issue coming out in February if you join its Facebook page.

Already a fan of the series on Facebook? Then you’ve automatically been entered to win, so don’t worry! The rest of you have until the book’s release to go its Facebook page and “like” The Mediator.

We’re also looking for help coming up with “discussion group” questions for The Mediator re-issue (of Books One and Two). Winning questions will be published in a store brochure that will be used for book club discussions! Go here to submit entries! (This means you already have to have read the books.)

But you don’t have to read the books I’m giving away here to win them! Just click and enter! I’m giving away copies of Holiday Princess and Princess Present to ten lucky winners!

6) I don’t know about your family, but in mine there was always one person who wanted one thing and one thing only for Christmas:

Velvet pants.

Unfortunately this person was not female, but my youngest brother (to those of you who read my books Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls, this might sound familiar).

That caused some controversy from time to time, as it was not very socially acceptable for boys to dress in velvet pants in the eighties in Southern Indiana at any time except Halloween, especially at school, where boys named Karl regularly roamed the hallways, chewing tobacco and looking for boys wearing velvet pants to pound in the face.

It would be lovely if we lived in a world where all men and boys, not just pirates, could wear velvet pants freely if they wished to.

But in many communities, velvet pants on boys are still just not acceptable, even though this lady has written a great book that helps explains about her own son’s struggles to fit in in a world where velvet and maybe a little glitter can really help to lift a little boy’s spirits.

Hopefully someday more people will understand!

In the meantime, if you know a boy who’d love a pair of velvet pants for Christmas or Hanukkah, I’d like to take this opportunity to urge you to just give them to him (my parents did. Well, they couldn’t find actual velvet pants in his size, but they were cords, and he LOVED them)!

’Tis the season! Give!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Or at least I dressed as one for Halloween. I was a good witch, casting spells for peace and hope for everyone.

(Unfortunately, even though I’m descended from a real-life witch—as everyone who has read the story of where I got the inspiration for my book Jinx knows—my spells never work. But there’s always a first time)!

According to the news, more Halloween costumes were sold this year than any year in recorded history. I guess people were really feeling the need to escape from their every day lives for a little while . . .

. . . even this little guy!

My favorite part of this Halloween, however, was all the signs. Everyone seemed to be carrying a sign! Like this dog, who was responding to all the haters who show up every year at the Key West Halloween parade with big signs that say things like GOD HATES AMERICA, GOD HATES DIVORCE, GOD HATES SINNERS, GOD HATES YOU:

Hilarious.

It’s kind of fun to protest protesters. At Comic Con this year, when the haters showed up, anti-haters got very creative with their signs in response:

Too funny! The haters were squashed by the humorists, and went home. Ha!

The day before Halloween, there was a big rally in Washington DC, which my mom said she was going to (and she may actually have gone, but she may have stayed home instead and watched it on TV). I’m not really sure what she ended up doing, but there were a lot of signs at this rally, any one of which could have been hers (or the author RL Stine’s, who was also there). It was kind of hard to tell for sure, but it doesn’t matter, because the signs were all so funny:

(Via Buzzfeed’s 100 Best Signs at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.)

I only got to watch the rally on TV, but I ended up being a little inspired by Jon Stewart’s message about how we are living in very hard times, but not end times. It’s often difficult to remember this when most of us have terrible things happening, if not to ourselves, then to people we know and love.

But like Jon said, things have to get better, if only because we all work so hard to get things done every day, and we do it together, despite our different signs.

And now it’s November, which means we’ll all be working together on . . . National Novel Writing Month!

I’ll be participating in NaNoWriMo (writing a novel—55,000 words—in one month)! What about you?

All you need is an idea and a little bit of a time. I know time is something everyone needs more of, but you can write anywhere. Scott Turow wrote his first book on the train to and from work every day. I wrote many of my first books—including The Princess Diaries—at work in the mornings before the students woke up (I worked in a dorm at NYU) and came downstairs to bug me about their lost keys, clogged toilets, rodent problems, etc.

I’ll be working on the sequel to Insatiable (I work best under pressure. Lots of pressure). So join me (and the members of the Meg Cabot Fiction Club). We’ll be posting our writing lows and highs here). If you’re not up to writing a book, write a short story (or even just an email, or a sign)! Anything and everything counts.

One of my favorite writing teachers used to say, “Even a grocery list is writing. Just make it the best, most interesting grocery list you can.”

Whatever you choose to do, know that I’m here, trying to cast spells in your support (also trying not to eat all the leftover Halloween candy).

Remember, we’re all in this together!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

The first thing that happened to me here was that I tried to make my hair really big because everything is big in Texas. Except, it turns out, hair. No one but me wears big hair in Texas anymore, especially in Austin. This ended up not going so well in any case.

I need to learn to take photos of myself without having to stand in front of a mirror.

Anyway, I got my hair to calm down long enough to go to lunch with the cool lady bloggers from Forever Young Adult. That was super fun.

We talked about a lot of book-related stuff, but mostly our hopes and dreams. One of my dreams is that one day we will live in a world where big hair is acceptable again. I hate flat irons, and big hair is just more fun. Like big butts! Sir Mix-A-Lot is a very wise man, and says it very well in his song on this topic.

After lunch I went on the news LIVE!

That was fun, too. I got to meet a veterinarian (I wanted to be a vet as a kid by my SATs were too low. You need to know math to be a vet. James Herriot never mentioned this. Who knew?) and also artist/songwriter Terry Allen, who will also be at the Festival, in the green room. Green rooms are one of the best places to interesting people, outside of airports and of course bathrooms.

Then we had to drive really fast to San Antonio for my signing, because we were already late. Hideous Austin traffic made us even later!

But my fantastic readers waited, and it was so nice of them!

I got to meet tons of really fantastic women of all ages.

Hopefully I’ll meet even more of you at today’s events at the Capital.

**Texas Book Festival**

3:30 PM – 4:15 PM
Presentation/Talk, Q&A session
Sanctuary of the First United Methodist Church
1201 Lavaca St.
Austin, TX

Go here for more details on this event!

This event is free open to the public!

After the presentation, I’ll be signing at the Children’s Book Signing Tent on Colorado St. between 12th and 13th St. from 4:15 PM – 5:15 PM.

8:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Austin Bat Cave and Texas Book Festival Present “Zombies vs. Unicorns Event”

This event is a Zombie vs. Unicorn “smackdown” and will feature audience participation and multiple authors, including myself, Holly Black, Justine Larbalestier, and many more. For more info, go here.

There will be a book signing after the session is done. This event is also free open to the public!

Then in New York, NY on Tuesday, October 19 at 6:00 p.m., meet me at the Scandinavia House, The Volvo Room, 58 Park Avenue at 38th Street:

Trends in Children’s Book Publishing 2010
Sponsored by the Authors Guild Foundation

Moderator:
Rachel Vail, Author
Panelists:
Meg Cabot, Author
Lisa Holton, Founder, CEO, Fourth Story Media
Neal Porter, Editor, Founder, Neal Porter Books
Rosemary Stimola, Literary Agent, President, Stimola Literary Studio

Free! Doors open at 5:30 p.m. However, space is limited. RSVP here!

Hope to see you soon! In the meantime, keep your hair big, and your heart open!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I think sometimes with all the kooks trying to get attention by doing crazy things, like burning books, it’s easy to lose focus on what really happened today. That’s why it’s important to keep THAT in the news, not the opinions of people who just get shown on TV because they’re so laughably ignorant.

So I am posting this again because there might be new readers who missed it the first time, and also because, well, people died, and that’s worth remembering:

Nine years ago today I got woken up in my Greenwich Village apartment by a phone call from my friend Jen. I was still asleep when the first plane hit. 9/11/2001 was one of those rare days where sloth was rewarded. I know several people who are still alive today because they were late to work that morning, or stopped to get coffee to help them feel a little less groggy.

“Look out your window,” Jen said.

That is when I saw the smoke.

I called my husband’s office first thing. I couldn’t see his building from our apartment, but I could see the building ACROSS from his, which was the Trade Center, and black smoke was billowing out of it.

What was happening? I wondered. Jen didn’t know. No one knew.

Was he all right? I knew he worked on a really high floor, and it looked as if whatever had happened to that tower across from his, it had to be happening right in front of his office window.

I couldn’t get through to him. I couldn’t make any outgoing calls from my phone that day. For some reason, people could call me, but I couldn’t call anyone else.

It turned out this was due to the massive volume of calls going on in my part of the city that day.

But I didn’t know that then.

Sirens started up. It was the engine from the firehouse across the street from my apartment building. It was a very small firehouse. All the guys used to sit outside it on folding chairs on nice days, joshing with the neighbors who were walking their dogs, and with my doormen. The old ladies on my street always brought them cookies.

9/11/01 was a very, very nice day. The sky was a very pure blue and it was warm outside.

Now all the firemen from the station across from my apartment building were rushing out to the fire downtown.

Every last one of them would be dead in an hour. But none of us knew that then.

I turned on New York 1, the local news channel for New York City. Pat Kiernan, my favorite newscaster, was saying that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

Weird, I thought. Was the pilot drunk? How could someone not see a building that big, and run into it with a plane?

It was right then that Luz, my housekeeper, showed up. I’d forgotten it was Tuesday, the day she comes to clean. When she saw what
I was watching, she looked worried.

“I just dropped my son off at his college,” she said. “It’s right next to the World Trade Center.”

“My husband works across the street from the World Trade Center,” I said.

“Is he all right?” Luz wanted to know. “What’s happening down there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t reach him.”

Luz tried to call her son on his cell phone. She, too, could not get through.

We didn’t know that our cell servers used towers that were located on top of the World Trade Center, and they all had stopped working.

We both stood there staring at the TV, not really knowing what to do. It was as we were watching that something weird happened on the TV, right before our eyes: the OTHER tower—the one that hadn’t been hit—suddenly exploded.

I thought maybe one of the helicopters that was filming the disaster had gotten too close.

But Luz said, “No. A plane hit it. I saw it. That was a plane.”

I hadn’t seen a plane. I said, “No. No, how could that be? There can’t be TWO drunk pilots.”

“You don’t understand,” Luz said. “They’re doing this on purpose.”

“No,” I said. “Of course they aren’t. Who would do that?”

That’s when Pat Kiernan, on the TV, said, “Oh, my God.”

It’s weird to hear a newscaster say, “Oh, my God.” Especially Pat. He is always very professional.

Also, Pat’s voice cracked when he said it. Like he was about to cry.

But newscasters don’t cry.

“Another plane has hit the World Trade Center,” Pat said. “It looks as if another plane—a commercial jet—has hit the World Trade Center. And we are getting reports that a plane has just hit the Pentagon.”

That’s when I grabbed Luz. And Luz grabbed me. And we both started to cry. We sat on the couch in my living room, hugging each other, and crying as we watched what was happening on TV…which was what was happening a dozen blocks from where we sat, where both the people we loved were.

We could see things flying out of the burning buildings. Pat said that those things were people.

That’s when my phone rang. I grabbed it, but it wasn’t my husband. It was his mother. Where was he? she wanted to know. Was he all right?

I said I didn’t know. I said I was trying to keep the line clear, in case he called. She said she understood but to call her as soon as I heard anything, and hung up.

Then the phone rang again. It was my husband’s sister-in-law. Then it rang again. It was MY mother.

The phone rang all morning. It was never my husband. It was always family or friends, wondering if he was all right.

“I don’t know,” I kept telling them. “I don’t know–”

Luz went up to the roof of my building to see if she could see anything more from there than what they were showing on New York 1. While she was gone, I went into my bedroom to get dressed (I was still wearing my pajamas).

All I could think, as I looked into my closet, trying to figure out what to wear, was that my husband was probably dead. I didn’t see how anybody could be down in that part of Manhattan and still be alive. All I could see were things falling—and people jumping—out of those buildings. Anyone on the streets down below would have to be killed by all of that.

I remember exactly what I put on that day: olive green capris and a black T-shirt, with my black Steve Madden slides. I remember thinking, “This will be my Identifying My Dead Husband’s Body outfit. I will never, ever wear it again after this day.”

I knew this because when I worked at the dorm at NYU, we had quite a few students kill themselves, in various ways. Every time a body was discovered, it was so horrible. All the people involved in the discovery could never wear the same clothes we wore that day again, because of the memory.

Luz came back down from the roof, very excited. No, she hadn’t seen if the buildings in which my husband and her son were in were all right. But she’d seen thousands—THOUSANDS—of people coming down 4th Avenue, the busy street I lived off of at the time. 4th Avenue is always crazy crowded with honking cars, buses, taxis, bike messengers, you name it.

Not today. Today all the cars and buses were gone, and the entire avenue was crowded with people.

“Walking,” Luz said. “They’re WALKING DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET.”

I ran to look out the window. Luz was right. Instead of the constant stream of cars I’d gotten used to seeing outside our living room, I saw wall to wall people. They had taken over the street. They were coming from the Battery, where the Trade Center is located, shoulder to shoulder, ten deep in the middle of the road, like a parade or a rally. There were tens of thousands of them.

There were men in business suits, and some in khakis. There were women in skirts and dresses, walking barefoot or in shredded pantyhose, holding their shoes because their high heels hurt too much and they hadn’t had time to grab their commuter running shoes. I saw the ladies who worked in the manicure shop across the street from my building running outside with the flip flops they put on their customers’ feet when they’ve had a pedicure (the flip flops the staff always make sure they get back before you leave).

But today, the staff was giving the flip flops to the women who were barefoot. They were giving away the flip flops.

That’s when I got REALLY freaked out.

The manicurists weren’t the only ones trying to help. The men who worked in the deli on the corner were running outside with bottles of water to give to the hot, thirsty marchers. New York City deli owners, GIVING water away. Usually they charged $2.

It was like the world had turned upside down.

“They have to be in there,” Luz said, about her son and my husband, pointing to the crowd. “They’re walking with them, and that’s what’s taking so long.”

Then Luz ran downstairs to see if anyone in the crowd was coming from the same college her son went to, anyone who might have seen him.

I was afraid to leave my apartment, though, because I thought my husband might try to call. Not knowing what else to do, I logged onto the computer. My email was still working, even if the phones weren’t. I emailed my husband: WHERE ARE YOU?

No reply.

A friend from Indiana had emailed to ask if there was anything she could do. At the time, the only thing I could think of was, “Give blood.”

My friend, and everyone she knew, gave blood that day. So many people gave blood that there were lines around the corner to give it.

And after a month, a lot of that surplus blood had to be destroyed, because they didn’t have room to store it all.

And there turned out to be no use for it, anyway. There were few survivors to give blood to.

My friend Jen, the one who’d woken me up, e’d me from her job at NYU. Fred (out of respect for this person’s desire for anonymity, I have changed his name here), one of Jen’s employees, and also a volunteer EMT, had jumped on his bike and headed downtown to see if there was anything he could do to help.

Jen herself was organizing a massive effort to set up shelter for students who didn’t live on campus, since the subway and trains had stopped running, and the kids who commuted to school would have no way of getting home tonight. Jen was trying to arrange for cots to be set up in the gym for them.

She ended up sleeping on cots right alongside them that night, and for the next three nights after that.

Another co-worker from NYU, my friend Jack, who used to train the RAs (he would ask me to “interrupt” his training with a fake administrative temper tantrum—“Why are you in this room? You never reserved it!”—and then he and I would “fight” about it, and then after I left he would ask the RAs what would have been a better way to handle the situation . . . and by the way, did any of them remember what I was wearing? After they’d all tell him, he’d have me come back into the room, and point out that every single of them was wrong about what I’d had on. This was to show how unreliable witness testimony can be) did manage to reach his spouse, who worked in the Trade Center, that day.

His wife had just walked eighty floors to reach the ground safely, only to realize the guys in her IT department were still up there, backing up data for the company (oh, you sweet, hapless IT guys). Once she reached the ground, and saw how bad things really were, she tried calling them to tell them to forget backing up and just COME DOWN, but couldn’t get hold of them.

So she went back up to MAKE THEM come down, because who doesn’t love their IT guys?

“Why did you go back up?” Jack asked her, when he finally reached her. By that time she, along with the IT guys, had become trapped in the fire and smoke.

“It seemed like the right thing to do,” she said. Of course it did. She was married to Jack. Jack would have done the same thing. She told Jack to say good bye to their twins toddlers for her. That was the last he ever heard from her.

I can never think of this, or of Jack’s happy, cheerful greeting every time I saw him, or the stunned looks on the RAs faces when they realized we’d pulled one over on them, without wanting to cry.

Another friend, a pilot who had access to air traffic control radar, e’d me to say all the planes in the U.S. were being grounded—that what had happened had been the result of highjackings. That it was a commercial jet that had hit the Pentagon, where my friend’s father-in-law worked (they eventually found him, safe and sound. He’d been stuck in traffic on his way to the Pentagon when the plane hit).

But another friend–a girl I’d worked with when I’d been a receptionist in my husband’s office, a girl whom I’d helped pick out a wedding dress, and who, since the big day, had quit her job to raise the four kids she’d had–wasn’t so lucky. She never saw her husband, who worked at the Trade Center, again after he left for work that day.

Then, behind me, I heard Pat Kiernan on the TV say, “Oh, my God,” again.

And this time he really WAS crying. Because one of the towers was collapsing.

I watched, not believing my eyes. Since having moved to New York City in 1989, I had become accustomed to using the Twin Towers as my own personal compass point for the direction South, since they’re on the southern tip of the island, and visible from dozens of blocks away. Wherever you were in the maze of streets that made up the Village, all you had to do to orient yourself was find the Twin Towers, and you knew which direction to go in. If you ever watched closely during the movie “When Harry Met Sally,” you can see the towers beneath the Washington Square arch in the scene where Sally drops Harry off when they first arrive in New York.

I have seen that view thousands of times since arriving in the city myself, since I worked at NYU, which is on Washington Square.

And now one of those towers was coming down.

I don’t remember anything else about that moment except that, as I watched the TV in horror, the front door to my apartment opened, and, assuming it was Luz back from the street, I turned to tell her, “It’s falling down! It’s FALLING DOWN!”

Only it wasn’t Luz. It was my husband.

He said, “What’s falling down? Why are you crying?”

Because he had no idea. HE HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON.

Because my husband, being my husband, had picked up his briefcase after the first plane hit and said, “Let’s go,” to everyone in his department, took the elevators downstairs, and insisted everyone start walking for our apartment, because it was the closest place to where they were that seemed unlikely to be hit by an airplane (he told me later he’d worried they were going to try for the Stock Exchange, or the federal buildings you always see on Law and Order, and so had made everyone take the long way home around those buildings, which is why it took so long).

They had to dodge the bodies of the people who jumped from the burning towers because they couldn’t stand the heat anymore. They saw the desk chairs and PCs that had been blown out of the offices so high above littering the street like tickertape from a parade. They saw the second plane hit while they were on the street, and ducked into a cell phone store until the rubble from the explosion settled. A piece of plane, nearly twenty feet long, flew past them, and landed harmlessly in a parking lot, just missing Trinity Church, one of the oldest churches in this country.

And they kept walking.

I don’t know what people normally do when someone they love, who they were convinced was dead, suddenly walks through the door. All I know is how I reacted: I flung my arms around him. And then I started yelling, “WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL ME?”

“I tried, I couldn’t get through,” he said. “What’s falling down?”

Because they had no idea. All they knew was that the city was under attack (which they had surmised by all the airplanes).

So my husband and his colleagues gathered in our living room—hot, thirsty, but alive, and the ones who lived in New Jersey wondering how (and if) they were going to get home (eventually, that night, they caught special emergency ferries…and when they arrived on the Jersey side, they were hosed down by people in Haz-Mat suits, in case they were carrying “chemicals” on their clothes. At that time, there was some belief the planes might have been carrying nuclear weapons or something. They were each given a single paper towel with which to dry off).

Luz, not wanting to go home until she’d heard from her son, who was supposed to meet her after class in my building, cleaned. I told her not to, but she said it helped keep her mind off what was happening.

So she vacuumed, while eleven people sat in my two room apartment and watched the Twin Towers fall.

It wasn’t long after the second tower came down that our friends David and Susan from Indiana, who lived in a beautiful condo in the shadow of the Twin Towers with their two children, showed up at our door, their kids and half the employees from their office (which was in our neighborhood) behind them.

They had been some of the people shown on the news escaping from the massive dust cloud that erupted when the towers fell. They’d abandoned their daughter’s stroller and run for it, while shop owners tossed water on their backs as they passed by, to keep their clothes from catching on fire.

In their typical way, however, they had stopped on their way to our place to pick up some bagels.

For all they knew, their apartment was burning down, or being buried under ten feet of rubble. But they’d stopped for bagels, because they’d been worried people might be hungry. Or maybe people just do things in times like that to try to be normal. I don’t know. They didn’t forget the cream cheese, either.

I took the kids into my bedroom, where there was a second TV, because I didn’t think they should see what everyone was watching in the living room—which was footage of what they had just escaped from.

I set up my Playstation for Jake, who was seven or so at the time, to use, while Shai, just turning 4, and I did a puzzle on my floor. Both kids were worried about Mr. Fluff, their pet rabbit, whom they’d been forced to leave behind in their apartment, because there’d been no time to get him (their parents had run from work and grabbed both kids from school).

“Do you think he’s all right?” Jake wanted to know.

At the time, I didn’t see how anything south of Canal Street could be alive, but I told Jake I was sure Mr. Fluff was fine.

This was when Shai and I had the following conversation:

“Are planes going to fly into THIS building?” Shai wanted to know. She was crying as she looked out the windows of my thirteenth floor apartment.

Me: “No. No planes are going to fly into this building.”

Shai (still crying): “How do you know?”

Me: “Because all the planes are grounded. No more planes are allowed in the air.”

Shai: “Ever?”

Me: “No. Just until the bad guys who did this get caught.”

Shai: “Who’s going to catch the bad guys?”

Me: “The police will catch them.”

Shai: “No, they won’t. All the police are dead. I saw them going into the building that just fell down.”

Me (trying not to cry): “Shai. Not all the police are dead.”

Shai (crying harder): “Yes, they ARE. I SAW THEM.”

Me (showing Shai a picture from my family photo album of a policeman in his uniform): “Shai, this is my brother, Matt. He’s a policeman. And he’s not dead, I promise. And he, and other policemen like him, and probably even the Army, will catch the bad guys.”

Shai (no longer crying): “Okay.”

And she went back to her puzzle.

Watching from my living room window, we saw the crowds of people streaming out from what was soon to be called, forever after, Ground Zero, thin to a trickle, then stop altogether. That was when 4th Avenue became crowded with vehicular traffic again. But not taxis or bike messengers.

Soon, our building was shaking from the wheels of hundreds of Humvees and Army trucks, as the National Guard moved in. The Village was blockaded from 14th Street down. You couldn’t come in or out without showing proof (a piece of mail with your name and address on it, along with a photo ID) that you lived there.

The next day, after having spent the night on our fold-out couch in the living room, Shai’s parents snuck back to their apartment (they had to sneak, because the National Guard wasn’t letting anyone at all, even with proof that they lived there, into the area. For weeks afterwards, on every corner from 14th Street down, stood a National Guardsman, armed with an assault rifle. For days, you couldn’t get milk, bread, or a newspaper below Union Square because they weren’t allowing any delivery trucks—or any vehicles at all, except Army vehicles—into the area), and found Mr. Fluff alive and well.

They snuck him back out, so that later that day, we were able to put the entire family on a bus to the Hamptons—where they lived for the rest of the year.

As my husband and I were walking back to our apartment from the bus stop where we’d seen off our friends, we saw a familiar face standing on the corner of 4th Avenue and 12th Street, where we lived:

Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea Clinton, asking people in our neighborhood if we were all right, and if there was anything they could do to help.

I didn’t go up to shake the ex-President’s hand, because I was too shy.

But I stood there watching him and Chelsea, and something about seeing them, so genuinely concerned and kind (and not there for press or publicity, because there WAS no press, there was never any mention of their visit AT ALL in any newspaper or on any news broadcast I saw that day), made me burst into tears, after having held them in the whole time Shai had been in my apartment, since I didn’t want to upset her.

The actual REAL president of our country at the time did not show up in Manhattan until THREE DAYS LATER. I would just like to point that out. He was hiding in a bunker or something.

But Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea showed up, ON MY STREET, on 9/12, without press or fanfare, to ask if everyone was all right. I’m just saying, because no one ever mentions this. I saw them both with my own eyes. There was not a single photographer in sight.

Both he and Chelsea were crying. Rudy Giuliani, our mayor, whom I will admit up until this crisis I had not particularly liked (he was not very popular in NYC until 9/11 for numerous reasons, including cheating on his very nice wife, Donna Hanover, who used to be on the Food Network), kept showing up on New York 1, no matter what time you turned it on, even at two in the morning, there he was, like he never slept, always telling us it was going to be all right, which was BRILLIANT. Except that he, like Bill and Chelsea, was also crying.

Because you couldn’t NOT cry. It was impossible. Everyone was doing it…so much so that the deli across the street put a sign in its window: “No Crying, Please.” Our doormen were crying. People in our building had not come home on 9/11. I was so, so lucky.

The same day we put Shai and her family on a bus to the Hamptons, September 12—which happened to be her birthday—companies—even RIVAL companies–all over Manhattan offered up their conference rooms and spare offices to my husband’s company, so that it would be able to remain in business, since all its windows had been blown out, and asbestos had fallen all over everything. In fact, from that office my husband was able to save only one thing: a picture of our beloved cat, Jenny, whom we’d had to put to put to sleep the year before, at age 20, from kidney disease.

On his way in to gather sensitive data that needed removing from his office, a few days after 9/11–he was the only person in the company who lived in Manhattan, so he was elected the man for this duty–my husband had to pass through the Brooks Brothers in his building’s foyer, from which he had bought so many of his business shirts and ties. The Brooks Brothers was now serving as Ground Zero’s morgue.

While under escort of the National Guard retrieving his company’s data, he and the National Guardsmen–the first to enter his floor since the event–found a body in an emergency stairwell. It was determined to be the body of someone from another office, who had probably suffered a heart attack while trying to evacuate. The body was removed and taken to the morgue while my husband watched. He threw away the clothes he wore that day.

For the next week in Lower Manhattan, even if you wanted to forget, for a minute, what had happened on that cloudless Tuesday morning, you couldn’t. The front window of my apartment building filled with Missing Person posters of loved ones that had been lost in the Trade Center. The front doors of my local fire station filled with flowers and black bunting. The old ladies who used to bring cookies to the fire station stood in front of it and cried.

You couldn’t go outside during that week—until it finally rained Friday night, four days later–without smelling the acrid smoke from Ground Zero…and, in fact, you were encouraged to wear surgical masks outdoors. An eerie grey fog covered everything. Some of us tried to brave it by not wearing masks—like Londoners in the Blitz—meeting for lunch like nothing had happened, but it burned your eyes.

It wasn’t until workers from a barbecue restaurant drove all the way to Manhattan from Memphis, and stationed their tanker-sized smokers right next to Ground Zero, and then started giving away free barbecue to all the rescue workers there for weeks on end, that the smell changed to something other than death.

Everyone loved those guys. It was just barbecue. But it wasn’t just barbecue.

It was life.

It’s been nine years since 9/11, but it’s still a day I cannot write about without crying. It’s a day I can’t even THINK about without crying. It’s a day I’ll never forget, the worst day I have personally ever experienced, and that includes every single day of my dad’s alcoholism, the crazy fights and arrests, interventions and rehab, his cancer and eventual death, all those students at the dorm who killed themselves, neatly or not so neatly, and all the times I had to help clean up what they left behind, then pack up their stuff in a box and hand the box to their sobbing parents, and say, “I’m so sorry.”

Strangely enough, the thing that makes me cry most of all when I think about 9/11 was what happened to Fred, the volunteer paramedic, and to my housekeeper Luz’s son, and it’s not even sad.

While I was wondering if I’d ever see my husband again, Fred, Jen’s employee, the EMT who had ridden his bike downtown to see if there was anything he could do, found something to do:

He commandeered a city bus, and started cramming as many civilians onto it as he could. This was before the buildings fell, before anyone had any idea those buildings COULD fall, when the police and firemen were still streaming into them, thinking they could get people out.

While Fred was commandeering the bus, the crew that he normally volunteered with were inside one of those buildings, helping people down the stairs. Fred couldn’t find them, so someone told him to drive a bus they’d found. Fred was mad. He didn’t want to be outside driving a bus, he wanted to be inside, saving people.

Fred’s entire team was crushed to death.

Like many rescue workers who lost coworkers in the attack, Fred seemed to feel guilty about having survived, while his friends had not. Even when we all pitched in and bought him a new bike (after his old one got buried at Ground Zero), Fred couldn’t seem to shake his sadness. It was like he didn’t believe he’d done any good that day.

“All I did,” he said, “was drive a stupid bus.”

But that’s not all he did. Because remember Luz’s son?

Well, he showed up at my apartment not long after Jake and Shai and their parents did. Luz grabbed him and kissed him and shook him and cried, and when she finally let go of him, he told his story:

He had been heading towards—not away from–the towers, because he’d wanted to help, he said. A lot like Fred.

But suddenly, from out of nowhere, someone grabbed him from behind, and threw him onto a stupid bus.

“But I want to stay and help!” Luz’s son yelled at the guy who’d grabbed him.

“Not today,” Fred said.

And he drove Luz’s son, and all the other students from that community college to safety, just before the towers fell.

It’s now been nine years since that day. A year or two after finding that body, after the company he worked for got back on its feet, my husband decided financial writing wasn’t for him, and he decided to follow a lifelong dream: he enrolled in the French Culinary Institute. He got to work under chefs like Jacques Pepin. At his graduation, Michael Lamonaco–who ran Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the Twin Towers. Michael is another person who happened to be late to work on 9/11–offered him a job in his new restaurant.

My husband declined, however, because we were moving to Key West, where the pace of life is a little bit slower. Michael said he completely understood.

Luz’s son is doing fine. Fred is now head of his own division at NYU. Jake is about to start college, and tomorrow Shai will turn 13 . . . soon she will have her bat mitzvah. Mr. Fluff did eventually die, but of natural causes, and now there’s a dog to take his place. Shai’s mother says her daughter has no memory whatsoever of that day, or of the conversation she and I had, or of the promise I made her—that we’d catch the bad guys.

But I remember it.

I talked to my brother the other day—the cop—and he’s taking yoga now. They encourage cops to take yoga, which I think is funny, until I tried it myself.

And it wasn’t until the instructor said this that I realized why it’s a good idea for cops to take yoga:

“In daily life we see people around us who are happier than we are, people who are less happy. Some may be doing praiseworthy things and others causing problems. Whatever may be our usual attitude toward such people and their actions, if we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate toward those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our minds will be very tranquil.”

I can see how this is excellent advice for all of us, but especially for cops, who see so many awful things every day, and really need to be tranquil in their minds. I know it’s hard to be undisturbed by the errors of others . . . especially when the errors of others can hurt so many.

But after I thought about it for a while, I realized that by remaining undisturbed by the errors of others, and not getting all bent out of shape and reactionary about them, we’ll have the time and energy to focus on ways to gently help others correct those errors. Kind of like yoga warriors.

Like this father of a firefighter killed on 9/11, who is also an active founder of the 9/11 Tribute Memorial. He has some great suggestions about how to prevent another 9/11 that don’t include burning Korans.

So that’s all I have to say today. Except namaste.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I’ve been trying to answer all them, but in between all the work I have to get done before I leave for Orlando next week*, plus keeping up with the Bristol/Levi excitement (not to mention Kathy Griffin’s grief about it), and dealing with my senile cat (and don’t forget my in-laws!), I don’t have a minute to myself anymore, even to read Us Weekly.

It’s sad, really.

And have you guys been following the latest on the Insatiable Facebook page? Dr. Ann Larson, exegetical demonologist, has started blogging. It’s kind of hysterical. She’s has a thing for Abraham Holtzman (not that she’ll admit this. And he’s a character from Insatiable, for those of you who don’t know. Not even one of the cute ones, either).

If you’re not following Dr. Ann, you’re really missing out. Look for the truth about why she’s so anti-demon this week! You won’t want to miss it.

Anyway, the reason I love getting letters like the ones you’ve been sending me—which are so thoughtful and inspiring (I’ve posted a few below)—is that I always think of them when moms come up to me at book fairs (like one did recently) and go: “When are you going to write a book with a (insert non-white race) as the main character?”

“It shouldn’t be any different,” this one mom assured me, “than writing one of your white characters. Just give her a (insert any race that is non-white) name. And have your publisher put a (insert any race that is non-white) girl on the cover! You don’t even have to have any (insert any race other than white) cultural references.”

Me: “Wow. I had no idea writing books from the point-of-view of non-white characters was that easy. Really?”

The Mom: “Oh yes. We’re exactly like everyone else.”

Me: “Well, I knew that. But shouldn’t I at least make some—”

The Mom: “Oh, no. I don’t even serve (insert food not usually served in white people’s houses, unless they are ordering in) in my house.”

Her Little Daughter: “I hate (insert food not usually served in white people’s houses, unless they are ordering in).”

Honestly, Allie Finkle hates tomatoes, like me, and I’m half-Italian. So I know what it’s like to be ostracized for disliking the food of your people.

Whenever a mom says something like this to me, it takes me back to when I worked as an assistant dorm manager at NYU. You wouldn’t believe the number of parents who would call me after the room assignments went out and ask for their kid to get moved to a new roommate!

“Oh, it’s not that we don’t like Jews/blacks/whites/Koreans/Mexicans/Catholics/gays,” they’d always begin in a friendly way on the phone. “We just don’t want our son/daughter to live with one! HA HA HA!”

I am not kidding.

I always gave them the same prepared speech: what I like to call the Let’s Try Something New (or, “There Are Other Restaurants In The World Than Cheesecake Factory”):

“Part of the college experience is learning about the diversity of our world and its cultures,” I would say. “Your son/daughter will be getting to know lots of different people when he/she arrives at NYU, and trying many new things. We strongly recommend that—”

At this point, the parent would either back down, and say OK. Or he or she would completely lose his or her s**t.

“I DON’T CARE!” the parent would scream. “WE ARE PAYING FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR! WE DON’T WANT OUR KID LIVING WITH A #@&$!”

Whoa. It was hard to listen to this ten times a day. You have to remember, back then, I was living with my Arab-American boyfriend. And of course, many of my friends—and co-workers, people these parents were going to have to be dealing with when they got here—were black, Asian-American, Hispanic, Jewish, Catholic, and/or gay or even transexual. You name it. My own African-American brother was also living in New York City at the time. Have I ever mentioned that he’s gay? A hugely talented dancer, he was just starting out, so was often broke.

So he frequently stopped by my office, “just to say hi” (but being a big sister, I knew it was for loans). Then he could never resist blowing some of his rent money on leather pants, so he’d look “hot” for his next audition. Then he’d stop by to show me what he’d gotten—ON SALE! Such a bargain!

That’s why, whenever I’d be on the phone with these parents, I’d look up, and see this:

But seriously, Meg. How do I look? It was only TEN DOLLARS!

These were parents whose only experience with a different culture had been—I’m not even making this up—at Cheesecake Factory.

“Oh, yeah! I eat (insert food from culture other than theirs) all the time. And one of the waiters at that restaurant is gay! So he touches my plate! And I don’t mind. I just don’t want my child to live with a (insert race/religion/person of sexual identity other than theirs).”

Everyone loves the Cheesecake Factory. It’s a place where you can sample the cuisine of many lands and cultures. But none of them are too spicy!

The food there is also in no way actually authentic. Everything at the Cheesecake Factory is a deliciously bland imitation of what its actually supposed to be.

A good example would be the edamame I ordered there recently. In case you don’t know what edamame is, it’s boiled, salted soybeans.

When I tasted the ones I ordered at Cheesecake Factory last month, I called the waitress over and asked her what was on them, because they tasted so weird (though still good, of course). Just unlike any edamame I’d ever had before.

“Oh,” she said, cheerfully. “That’s the butter!”

Butter?

I don’t know if you know this, but edamame is not supposed to have butter on it. Edamame is the single thing that is semi-good for you that I actually like to eat.

Here is the Wikipedia page on edamame. Note that nowhere on it does it mention the word butter.

Anyway, whenever someone asks me when I’m going to write a book from the point-of-view of a non-white character, I think of those parents at NYU who used to get so mad at me. Then I think of the Cheesecake Factory.

Not because I don’t think there are white writers who can write convincingly and well from the point-of-view of non-white characters. Because of course there are MANY great books by white writers written from the point-of-view of non-white characters.

And not because I don’t think what Cheesecake Factory is doing is great. It’s presenting food from many lands to Americans who might otherwise not try it.

And it’s great that America has become the giant melting pot our forefathers imagined, with all of us adopting the good bits (edamame!) of some cultures, while rejecting the bad bits (female circumcision!) of others.

But because sometimes I worry that if we don’t celebrate our cultural differences more, we’re going to become like those parents:

So fearful of anything that isn’t watered down or swimming in butter (like what that mom asked me to write—you know, a book with a non-white character, but who isn’t any different than a white character, because she’s just been given a non-white name, and had a non-white face put on her), we aren’t going to want to try anything new.

And then, as a country, we’re going to lose all the REALLY “good bits”—those differences that make us all the wonderful, special people we are, and are part of what make this a really GREAT country, and that make an author’s character seem REALLY believable, and really . . . well, spicy.

That’s why, in spite of what that mom believes, you actually can’t take a white character and just put a non-white name on her and turn her into someone a reader will actually believe in. Because what you’ll actually be turning her into is . . . .

Something that tastes weird. Like that edamame I had at Cheesecake Factory.

If you’re going to write about a culture or race (or sexual identification) that isn’t your own at any great length, you need to research it . . . to, as Harper Lee put it, “walk around a little in that person’s shoes,” just to make sure you don’t do something that makes it “taste” weird—such as drown it in butter—to people who actually live that life on a daily basis.

Maybe MOST of America won’t realize that it tastes weird. But people who have actually tasted it before will.

It’s like the kinky hair thing. People who have actually lived with someone who has what is often universally referred to as “kinky hair” know that sometimes, kinky can just be a lot of very tightly—and beautifully—curled strands of hair, clinging very close to the head.

And that if you were to gently separate, then pull on one of those curls, it will slowly uncoil, like a tiny Slinky.

And then—if the person you were with doesn’t move, and allows you to do so, of course—you can wrap one of those silky curls around the end of your finger, like a little snake, and just hold it there awhile, soft as a feather.

Until of course the person whose hair it is jerks his head away, and goes, “Oh my God, what are you doing to my hair? Give me the remote, you freak. I’m going to tell Mom if you don’t, it’s my turn, ow, why are you so obsessed with my hair? You want it, don’t you? You want my hair. Admit it. Ow. Freak.”

Check out some of the letters I got this week:

Hi Meg, I’m an 18 year old Radiology student. I’m also a writer who is in the process of completing her first book, I’m an avid reader of your blogs, AND I’m Arab-American.

I can’t thank you enough for posting your ‘Break it Down’ post about racism. It just touched me so much and inspired me to follow my dreams no matter what my ethnicity is. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t apprehensive about how people would perceive me when I wrote a novel because of my Arabic descent, I even thought of a pseudo name just because I was nervous of public reaction.

So thank you a million for giving hope to a ‘dreamer’ in the process.

With Love and Appreciation,
A.

P.s. Hopefully when my Young Adult fiction novel is on bookshelves one day, I’ll send you a copy signed “With Love, from the Arab-American Radiologic Technology Student you Inspired”

Yes! Thank you, A.! I can’t wait to read your book. I hope your character makes out with a lot of boys. If she doesn’t that’s OK, too, though.

Here’s another:

I just want to thank you so much for posting about the Arizona law against Mexicans on your blog.

I am a Chicana. My parents and beyond all came to this country from Muochocan and Guadalajara in Mexico, but my siblings and I were born here in Los Angeles as Mexican-Americans.

It upset me very much when my father told me about this law when they were still trying to keep it under wraps. My father was an intense participant in the UCLA Chicano Movement for equality in the late sixties and seventies and as a family we are very proud of our culture.

The establishment of this law made everything my father and others like him fought for retract several steps backward and makes you wonder, if this is how it is going to be, what WAS fought for? It is very upsetting.

Once news of the law had circulated a little bit, I brought it up to some friends of mine at lunch. They immediately denied it, writing off the new law as being over-exaggerated, hardly anything to worry about, and definitely not anti-Mexican. They then moved on from the conversation to talk about some dumb video they saw online.

It made sense, I supposed. The only way for people to truly understand–and I do mean ALL people–is to help them understand what exactly is going on and to help instill in them the desire to WANT to know what is going on in the world.

Life is unfair, and it is our job as human beings to help put it back in balance, or at least very close to balanced.

Sorry this has been so long, but this entry meant a lot to me. I would like to visit Arizona someday, without being racially profiled or sent back to Mexico, though I was born in this country.

I think this is a great letter from someone who seems determined to remember her cultural heritage, and never let it get watered down, and who would be very offended at the idea of some writer putting a Chicana name and a Chicana face on a white character . . . and who, at the same time, seems very proud to be an American.

If you’re looking for good stories with strong minority main characters, go online and ask these nice moms, The Story Snoops, to help you find something. They write VERY BALANCED, THOUGHTFUL REVIEWS. I checked (well, not every single one, of course).

Or you can always ask a knowledgeable bookseller or a librarian to steer you towards them. Just say, “Hi, I want a book where the heroine is (state name of ethnicity/race/religion/sexual orientation you are interested in). It would also be great if she were a vampire or a princess or was only interested in going to the mall and making out with boys (or girls).” Whatever. They will definitely be able to help you. If they can’t run away until you find someone who can.

And please don’t get me wrong: I love the Cheesecake Factory. There is a lovely scene that takes place in it in Allie Finkle #5, Glitter Girls and the Great Fake Out in which there is a huge birthday party, and then someone (not telling who) fakes sick in the ladies room. There might even be crying.

If someone were to take me to the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday (in six months), I would not fake sick AT ALL.

Next time, I’m just not ordering the edamame.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

*Anyone who is going to RWA: you HAVE to come up and talk to me if you see me at the conference. OK? Especially if you see me sitting anywhere alone, looking lost, as I’m wont to do at conferences. You’ll recognize me because I’ll be the pasty white girl. I’m the only person who lives in Florida who has no tan because I’ve been inside, working so much.

Mine’s to find a dead body (NOT someone I know).

I know that’s totally gross. But I love the show Law and Order, and I’ve lived in New York City for years and years, and I’ve never turned a corner and found a body like all those people do at the beginning of every Law and Order episode.

(Okay, maybe I just want to go back through time and play one of those people on TV so I get to meet Detective Mike Logan, aka Chris Noth.)

Anyway, once when I confessed this embarrassing secret to a friend of mine, she said she understood: Her secret heart’s desire was to find a big bag of money.

So you can bet that when I saw this through the window of a plane I just boarded the other day, I took a picture. These are the bags that were being unloaded from the passengers who’d just gotten off the previous flight:

No, your eyes do not deceive you! Those are bags of money. Each bag contained $250,000, according to the very excited flight attendant (of course I asked).

Yeah. That’s a lot of money!

The plane had just flown in, I was told, from the Cayman Islands. That’s the fifth largest banking center in the world! It’s where a lot of people—and corporations—keep offshore accounts.

I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how they were going to fit all those bags all onto that truck. I even started getting nervous that Hans Gruber might have survived his plunge from Nakatomi Plaza, and was going to show up and start shooting.

But eventually, they got all money on there (proof that if you’re determined enough, you can do anything, even in 100 degree heat, with a sidearm), and the guards closed the doors and drove away.

So. Was that the $20 billion from BP? You be the judge!

Anyway, finding a dead body isn’t my ONLY secret heart’s desire. The other thing I’ve always wanted, my whole entire life (well, okay, actually only since I was sixteen and my then boyfriend’s mom—hi, Shehira!—took me to her best friend’s house and said, “Go on, get in” because I’d never seen one before and didn’t know what it was) is a hot tub.

The minute I got in, I was like:

“As God is my witness, I’m going to get myself one of these. And every day, when I’m done earning the money to pay for it, I’m going to sit in it. And when it’s all over, I’ll never be stressed again. No, nor any of my folk! As God is my witness, I will work my fingers to the bone until I have a hot tub of my own!”

(Only in my head, of course, and not directly misquoting Scarlett O’Hara’s starvation speech from Gone With The Wind.)

27 years later, my dream has finally come true! How did I do it? One book at a time. I know I probably could have afforded a hot tub sooner. But honestly, I didn’t feel up to dealing with this:

Before

The cement mixer was so loud!

But it was worth it. Because in the end, I got this:

After

I honestly didn’t think it could get any better than this. I mean, except maybe for finding a dead body.

But apparently it can! Because last night I got the call: Insatiable made the New York Times adult hardcover bestseller list.

Honestly, I can’t thank you guys enough. All of my books mean a lot to me, of course, but this one is really something special. So you all helping to get it onto the NY Times list means an EXTRA lot! I wish I could give each and every one of you your secret heart’s desire, whatever it is.

But since I can’t, I’m going to give each and every one of you the gold seal carried only by officers of the Palatine Guard:

Unless of course you’d rather be members of the Dracul! In which case, for you:

I actually really can give you this! I have cool temporary tattoos of the dragon image above. So if anyone wants these (or Insatiable postcards or bookmarks or all three), just send a self-addressed stamped envelope to me at Meg Cabot, P.O. Box 4904, Key West, FL 33041-4904. I can send you autographed bookplates, as well!

Another thing I can give you is . . . the Insatiable sequel! You know I can’t tell you anything about it yet (except that the story begins a few months after the end of the first book).

But it’s coming soon. If you liked Insatiable, you’re going to love it. All your other questions should be answered here (deleted scenes to be added soon)!

One question people always ask me that ISN’T on my FAQs (and isn’t about my heart’s desire) is:

How do you write so many books?

The answer is: The same way those guards got all that money onto that truck . . . one bag at a time! (And of course the same way Detective Mike Logan on Law and Order solves crimes . . . one body at a time.)

Being able to write full time was always another one of my secret heart’s desires. So it’s a joy to do (even if, just like Mike Logan, sometimes I do get frustrated and want to punch someone in the head. Usually myself). I just try to take it a book (or even just a chapter, or some days, just a word) at a time.

But I couldn’t do it without you . . . and also what I consider “brain food” (since when you’re working hard, you crave carbs. It’s a proven fact, even if Jillian of Losing It With Jillian may not agree)!

And the best way to help your brain recharge is to feed it tons of new, exciting stimulus. Such as books and music and movies and TV shows. Like Friday Night Lights (more fulfillment of my secret heart’s desire: It’s been renewed for another season! And Tim Riggins will be back)! And of course Law and Order re-runs. And Glee!

I was really looking forward to seeing Regionals on the season finale of Glee. Another secret desire for me was that Showchoir Regionals would look the way Cheerleading Regionals did in the movie Bring It On, only with showchoir product placement everywhere, such as Showchoir Summer Camp (don’t pretend like you don’t know someone who would LOVE this), Capezio Student Footlights, and of course, custom designed costumes:

Pictured, the Bubble Nimbus Dress, in Lime, available here.

But no! I got none of that (although we did get a spectacular teen childbirth scene, perhaps the first ever set to Queen, which I’m sure was someone’s secret heart’s desire).

Oh, well. This just gives me something to look forward to for next season! Which is great. Because now more than ever, we need things to look forward to.

Have a great weekend, everybody. I hope whatever your secret heart’s desire is—Finding a dead body. Or a bag of money. Solving a murder. Getting a hot tub. Snagging the perfect pair of Capezio Footlights. Getting the lead in Showchoir Summer Camp. Whatever—it comes true soon. It can, you know, if you take it one body—even one word—at a time.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I was supposed to get a pool/hot tub combo for my birthday (back in February). Will the new one be ready in time to use this weekend? We’ll see.

But something that IS ready?

The all new Insatiable page at megcabot.com!

My favorite part is the FAQs. I know the book isn’t due out until June 8, so not many of you have read it yet.

So these Frequently Asked Questions are actually based on questions the three of you who got ARCs (and my mom) asked, because you’re the only ones who’ve read it (besides a few awesome bloggers)!

I love the new page, especially the part about the inspiration for the book (the identity of this little dog is finally revealed)!

There’s also a third excerpt from the book up, too, from the POV of one of my favorite characters (not that I have favorites), the vampire slayer.

Plenty with which to keep you occupied this weekend, in case wherever you are, it rains!

(Of course, I have a book that’s actually in stores NOW, too, in the event this happens!)

It’s just so exciting to have something to look forward to . . . like the fact that, for the first time in a couple of years, I’m going to be at the Romance Writers of America Readers for Life Literacy Signing this year in Orlando! I’ll even be having a “Chat With” at 9:45, Saturday morning, July 31! (So don’t stay out too late Friday night, attendees!)

I’m sad RWA’s national conference had to move from Nashville to Florida (because of the horrible flooding in TN). This year kind of feels like it’s been one disaster after another. Everyone here in Key West is glued to the TV while we watch the terrible news out of Louisiana as they deal with the oil crisis (I feel weird calling it a spill. It’s not really a spill or a leak). I’m praying for a quick recovery for LA, while also praying all the oil that’s under the surface won’t find its way here to Florida or AL or Mexico or anywhere else. Though naturally, I know it’s going to have to. Sigh.

It’s times like these I feel like we all need something funny to get our minds off reality. Thank goodness there’s SATC2. I know the reviews are horrible. But sometimes a really silly movie is exactly what the doctor ordered. Sex And the City 2 in 60 Seconds, anyone?

Meanwhile, check out my Facebook page.

There might be ONE more surprise posted there to keep you entertained through the weekend!

More later.

Much love,

Meg