But what do you do when you get to OfficeMax and the only calendar choices left over in the store are Indy 500 and Glee? No offense to either of these fine institutions but sometimes I fall asleep in my office (aka my bed). I do not want to wake up and see a car crash or Mr. Shu looking at me first thing in the morning.

Although it’s a bit ironic because I’m from Indiana (home of the Indy 500), and I just found out from D-Listed that Heather Morris (Brittany from Glee) and I have the same birthday (making us both February 1st D-Listed Birthday Sluts). Which I should have known because Brittany and I have so much in common, given our mutual love of cats, rainbows, and unicorns.

Since I didn’t get what I wanted for my birthday (a cat, rainbow, and unicorn office wall calendar, or to wake up in the body of mixed martial artist Carla Gugino), I decided to order Rob O’Neal’s wall calendar online. He’s a local Key West photographer who was badly injured in a scooter accident. All the proceeds from sales of his calendar to go to help his recovery. His photos of the ocean are very soothing to wake up to, I find.

Anyway, I was so touched by how many of you wrote to wish me a happy birthday! You’ve already made my year, and the year’s just getting started! There’s still so much to do before I leave for my mini-book tour for the release of Overbite in paperback on February 7 though!

Overbite’s sexy Italian cover

I have to, for instance, learn how to become a mixed-martial arts expert like the guys in Warrior (which the Oscars ignored, except for Nick Nolte. Whatever, Oscars! And no best supporting actor for the guy who played the monkey in Rise of the Planet of Apes? I give up).

It’s gonna be OK, buddy. Look, my arm grew back from last year.

I’m leaving for Dallas, TX (LOVE YOU DALLAS) where I’ll be on Saturday, February 18 from NOON to 3:30PM (check it out! This event had a time change!) for Tea at The Adolphus on 1321 Commerce St!

(Actually, with the time change, this is now more of a lunch. YUM)

I hope I’ll see you there! There are still some tables left, so click here to make a reservation!

What you’ll get if you go to this event:

*A delicious lunch.

*One of the first copies of Overbite in paperback, signed (I’ll sign all your other books, too. Even books not written be me. I’ve done it before. Sorry, JK Rowling, the kid was convinced I was you. Also, I signed that copy of Webster’s Dictionary. I wasn’t going to tell that kid no.)

*An edifying talk about unicorns princesses Keynesian economic theory writing, the creative process, how to get published, and live your dream. Or at least how to deal with the fact that you are not a mixed-martial arts fighter (yet) but that dream could still come true if you get a trainer now!

Click here to read more about DFW’s fabulous author teas!

Then on Saturday, February 25 I’ll be in Long Beach, CA at the Passion and Prose Conference! If you’re a book lover or an aspiring writer and you haven’t signed up for this YA Rom-Con you need to do so NOW! There’s still time…. and you can get 25% off the conference rate if you click here. Moms and daughters can get a special rate too! Attendance is limited to the first 450 readers who register.

What you get:

*Delicious breakfast buffet

*Meet and greet with the authors

*Interactive author activities

*Delicious lunch with one author at each table

*Young Adult author panel featuring these authors:

*Three keynote speakers (I’m one of them!)

*Incredible memories that will last a lifetime

*Edifying talk about Keynesian economic theory writing, the creative process, how to get published, and how to deal with the fact that you are not a mixed-martial arts fighter (yet).

*Multiple book buying and signing opportunities

*Free goodie bags to all participants, and

*An opportunity drawing to benefit WriteGirl, a non-profit organization that promotes creativity and self-expression through writing to empower girls.

And much much more!

Don’t miss out!

Click here to register

So . . .

Do you Pinterest? Because I’m having a contest on Pinterest, and I’d love for you to join in. I’ve been working on pinning pics of some of the places that appear in my books, plus random adorable kittens, and of course, food that I like (click here to see my boards)!

So if you’re on Pinterest, and you’d like to win a free copy of Abandon (not to mention an advanced reader copy of the sequel to Abandon, Underworld, not out officially in the US until May), just make a Meg Cabot book-themed Pinterest!

Post the cover (or covers) of your favorite Meg Cabot books, along with photos that remind you of the story or series’ setting, plot, and characters, etc, and go to town! The possibilities are endless!

Just go here to read the full contest details and rules! You can enter as many times as you like! Hmmm, creativity.

Finally, the new web page for Underworld is up! We’ll be putting up lots of fun extras, like excerpts, FAQs, deleted scenes, and maybe even some videos, and a map of Isla Huesos and the Underworld itself closer to the pub date. But for now, it’s just looking pretty. I love it (blue is my favorite color). So stay tuned! Take me to the Underworld!

Coming May 8, 2012

Now I have to get back to work bailing Heather Wells out of her latest jam. Look for
Size 12 and Ready to Rock in stores in July 2012, God and massive amounts of Coke Zero willing.

Coming July 10, 2012

In the meantime, here’s a quiz that author Michele Jaffe and I came up with a few years ago to help you tell if the guy you have a crush on likes you back, and whether or not you should give him a Valentine, or just wait to see if he gives YOU one. GOOD LUCK!

Remember: Be Safe, Be Happy, but most of all, Be YOURSELF!

More later.

Much Love,

Meg

You would think that as a royal, I’d be the busy one, what with going to college and helping my dad to rule a country (for the last time: he only died in the movie version of my life. He is alive and well in real life).

But I’m getting pretty good at multi-tasking. I’m actually writing this during my Interactive Media class (blogging counts as interactive media, right?).

Anyway, a lot of you have been writing to ask where I’ve been lately, and why I haven’t updated my own blog in so long.

Unfortunately, blogging isn’t as emotionally therapeutic as I’d hoped. I hadn’t counted on the fact that everyone can read it (hi, Mom).

I thought Tweeting might be more fun so I’ve been doing that a bit (you can follow me here), but again, those pesky privacy issues.

I really think I’m better off journaling. Who knows, maybe I’ll have something else for my royal biographer to publish someday. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, since so many of you seem to have questions for me, I thought I’d try to answer a few of them. So here goes:

Dear Princess Mia,

Do you still go to the Plaza in New York City for tea with your grandmother? Because I went there over winter break hoping to get your autograph, and you never showed up.

Wondering If You’re Even Real

Dear Wondering,

As a matter of fact, I am real. I don’t get to the Plaza for tea as much as I used to because I’m in college now and don’t have to take princess lessons anymore (thank God).

I did, however, spend winter break in Genovia, where the median temperature is always seventy-five degrees. (Please plan your next vacation in Genovia!)

Due to my busy study and travel schedule I won’t be making many public appearances in the near future. However, if you’d like to meet my biographer, Meg Cabot, she’s got TWO public events planned for the month of February in advance of the release of Overbite in paperback! If you’ll be in either Texas or California, you can have tea (or lunch) with her, and even sit at her table (if you buy a ticket in time).

The details of those events are:

Saturday, February 18

2:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Tea at Fresh Fiction
The Adolphus

1321 Commerce St

Dallas, TX

Friends, books, chat, and high tea! Who could ask for anything more? Not me. An exclusive luncheon with Meg Cabot in the famous French Room at The Adolphus!

This will be Meg’s only appearance in Texas and a perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon! Click here to sign up!

You’ll also get one of the first copies of Overbite, which will be out that month in paperback, which Meg will sign! (She says she’ll sign all your other books, too. Well, the ones you bring/buy at the event that were written by her.)

Maybe she’ll even give you some spoilers about the next book in the Heather Wells series, Size 12 and Ready to Rock, coming out this July, and the sequel to Abandon, Underworld, coming out in May, too!

Click here to read more about DFW’s fabulous author teas!

and

Saturday, February 25

Passion and Prose Conference
 

12:00 PM to 2:00 PM

333 E Ocean Blvd

Westin Long Beach

Long Beach, CA

What is Passion & Prose, you ask? Well, it is a daylong conference especially designed for readers
, aspiring writers, and published writers, particularly of books containing romance (right up my alley, since, as you may or may not know, I have a published romance novel of my own. All the author proceeds go to Greenpeace).

This 2012 inaugural event features bestselling authors Meg Cabot, Christina Dodd, and Gail Carriger, among the fabulous 50 romance authors in attendance. From the Passion and Prose conference brochure:

We can’t think of a better place to spend a winter day than in sunny southern California at the luxurious Westin Long Beach. The event commences with registration and a fun breakfast buffet meet and greet with 50 authors. You will love this unique opportunity to mingle with authors, readers, fans, and aspiring writers.

After breakfast, you are guaranteed to be seated with an author for the day of festivities. Once seated, a passionate round of speed dating will ensue, where authors will circulate table to table to woo you with their tales of romance and love.

Since we know that you would love nothing better than to chat with the authors, multiple book buying and autographing sessions will be available as well. Here is your chance to collect autographs from your favorite authors, as well as some of the new authors with whom you will be introduced.

The Passion & Prose continues with special luncheon keynote presentations by bestselling authors Meg Cabot, Christina Dodd, and Gail Carriger.

Our passion for reading and writing would not be complete without passing along community support. Join us in an exciting opportunity drawing to benefit for WriteGirl, a non-profit organization devoted to supporting disadvantaged and at-risk girls with the means to achieve success thru the creativity and self-expression of writing.

And of course we know you love giveaways, so every attendee will leave with a goodie bag filled with fun giveaways!

Share the love, share the passion, and share the prose!

Click here to register!

So, everyone who lives in Texas or California, please come to one of these events!

Dear Mia,

Where can I get a nice boyfriend like yours?

Shevonne

Dear Shevonne,

The minute you stop looking, you’ll find him, the same way Little Bo Peep found her sheep.

Usually the perfect guy shows up when you’re least interested (like when your dad’s been arrested and you’re about to leave to go study in England, as in the case of Diane Court in the fantastic teen movie Say Anything).

Or maybe he’s the guy who’s always mowed your lawn and you never even considered dating him until that time you spilled that drink on your mom’s suede jacket and he said he’d pay you to go out with him and you did because it was the only way you could pay for the dry cleaning and then you discovered that he was actually kind of special and even cute, just like Cindy Mancini did about a young Patrick Dempsey in the amazing teen movie Can’t Buy Me Love.

Or maybe you thought he’d never give you a chance because you have low self-esteem and he’s your best friend’s brother and you’ve decided it’s safer to think you’re in love with some shallow hot popular boy than risk your feelings on the guy you truly like, like a certain princess who shall remain nameless (hint: it’s me).

Whatever the case, just stop looking. He’ll show up at the exact worst possible moment, guaranteed.

Hopefully like all of the above, your story will have a happy ending (but not without some heartache and probably a lot of fights and maybe even some kick-boxing and journaling).

Dear Princess Mia,

I got into one of the best Ivy League schools in the country early decision (I know, yay me!).

Unfortunately I received no financial aid or scholarships. My parents already told me that I will have to take out student loans to pay for tuition myself since they can’t afford it, as I have two other siblings in college as well. I did the math and this means I will owe $200,000 upon college graduation.

Or I can go to the local state college, which I am pretty much guaranteed to get into, and which my parents said they will pay for.

The problem with the state school is that it has a reputation for being a party school, all my friends will make fun of me for going there, and I won’t get nearly the education I would at the Ivy League school, severely limiting my job prospects after I graduate.

What should I do?

Signed, Freaking Out

Dear Freaking,

It’s a little awkward for me to answer this question since I’m a princess and so rich that my cat has his own tiara (although I refuse to make him wear it).

But I did some research for you, and I found out there are a ton of famous people who have attended so-called “party” schools, either because that’s the only school they could afford (hi, Mom!) or the only school to which they were accepted (hi, Dad!). And they did just fine.

In fact, a huge amount of the CEOs in the Fortune 500 went to large public universities. 200 out of the 500 had no graduate degrees, many were college drop outs, and 19 had no college degrees at all!

“This information should help allay the anxieties of many parents and their college-bound children who believe admission to a top-ranked school with a powerful alumni network is a prerequisite to success in the upper echelons of business management,” says an article in a Wall Street Journal.

“Today’s crop of chief executives are, of course, at least a generation older than current college students, but they are in the position to hire and say they don’t favor job candidates with certain degrees.”

“I don’t care where someone went to school, and that never caused me to hire anyone or buy a business,” says Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, who graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

What counts most, CEOs say, is a person’s capacity to seize opportunities. As students, they recall immersing themselves in their interests, becoming campus leaders and forging strong relationships with teachers. And at state and lesser-known schools, where many were the first in their families to attend college, they sought challenges and mixed with students from diverse backgrounds — an experience that helped them later in their corporate climbs.

Apparently even my royal biographer Meg Cabot went to a state school. She says the advantage of graduating “owing nothing to anyone” was that she did not have to feel guilty about failing to pursue a career in her major (art), or when she took the first job she got that paid benefits.

“That was as a receptionist at NYU. Later, I got a promotion to assistant manager of a dorm at NYU, like Heather Wells from Size 12 is not Fat. I did that for ten years while also writing novels on the side, until eventually I made enough money from my writing to support myself. Not having to pay back a lot of loans made that all possible.”

Meg says to tell you that, like anything else, your education is what YOU put into it, whether you go to community college or Columbia.

I am certainly putting a lot into mine, sitting here in class writing for someone else’s blog. Which is why I’m going to stop soon. But not before I say that I think I will pawn Fat Louis’s tiara and donate the proceeds to a scholarship fund….

But before I do here is a brief photo essay Meg is making me include of her cat Henrietta discovering the paperbacks of Abandon, which she says just arrived in the mail:

Henrietta: “What is it?”

“Smells delicious.”

“I think I will rub my face on it.”

“Nevermind.”

“No, wait, maybe I’ll come back and rub my head on it some more.”

“Or maybe just against this wall.”

Thanks for reading! Come back soon!

More later.

Much love,

Mia

I don’t know. All I know is that 2011 went by like lightning.

Like most writers, I am a person of deep reflection (mostly when it concerns the lives of my characters, and celebrities, too, of course), so I realize that most of the highlights of 2011 — for me, anyway — involved all the traveling I did for the books that I wrote that came out this past year (Abandon and Overbite, not to mention my short story for the anthology What You Wish For) . . . not just this past month in France , but over the summer, too, when I got to go to places like Cedar Rapids and Tulsa and Boston and San Francisco.

Shop window in Strasbourg

Amazing French rugby shirt and fun poem courtesy of Florence – who wins the prize for coming to the most signings in a single country: every single one of them except one! Florence, you rock. I can’t thank everyone involved in my French tour enough for all their kindness. Merci!

2011 was especially meaningful to me since it was the year I finally found the answer to a question that is asked in nearly every interview I have:

“Which 5 people, living or dead, would you most like to have over for dinner?”

How can anyone answer this? I know everyone thinks you can tell something really deep and important from the way a person answers this question, but I personally feel that this question is incredibly stupid, and that no one can tell anything about anyone from the way they answer it – at least not anything deep or meaningful, unless the person mentions 5 dead members of her own family. And this is why:

Everyone expects authors to answer that they’d have someone literary to dinner, such as Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte or maybe Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. And I’m ashamed to admit that upon occasion, I have answered in this way.

But the truth is, I was lying. Except for a few of my author friends, I do not want to entertain any authors (except ones I already know) in my home. If you look at the great writers in history, almost all of them have had some kind of mental problem (presumably from being tortured by the burden of their genius, as one of my professors in college explained to us), and have self-medicated to numb the pain of their exceptional intelligence and creativity. This is true of nearly every great artist and musician as well (poor Amy Winehouse).

Most of us who grew up in large Catholic families already know how dinners like this go (generally there is a fist fight, then someone passes out on the living room floor).

It would totally spoil my enjoyment of Pride and Prejudice if its creator came over to my house and threw up on my carpet after too many vodka and cranberries.

Jane Austen. Crazy eyes?

Another way people expect you to answer the “5 People” question is with religious or political figures. Like, “I’d just love to have Jesus Christ, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, and Buddha to my house for dinner.”

Even though I have actually said things like this in answer to this question in the past (sorry, I panicked), I was totally lying, and it was only because I just wanted to get on to the next question and finish the interview and get back to sleep and/or to my deadline or whatever. I totally would NOT have these people to my house for dinner – not because I dislike Mother Theresa or think she might throw up on my carpet, but because one of the first rules of etiquette is never to discuss politics or religion over a meal.

But what else do you think these people would want to talk about over their supper? Probably not the things I like to talk about, such as whether or not Kate Middleton is pregnant (Jesus would totally give spoilers).

The same goes with celebrities. I would never have any of the Kardashians or Scar-Jo or Rhianna or Marilyn Monroe or LeBron James or anyone super famous over for dinner. I’m sure they’d be very nice (to my face) but afterwards they’d call their publicist and be like, “OMG! SHE SERVED STEAK FAJITAS! I TOLD YOU, I’M VEGAN!” Honestly, it would just be too stressful. What if the towels in the bathroom weren’t soft enough? What if Lamar’s dad showed up? Just no.

It wasn’t until this year I realized I had the perfect answer all along to the 5 People question and just didn’t know it:

Fictional characters. Not my own. Other people’s.

Most of the books I read this year featured serial killers (I went on a heavy duty Laura Lippman kick. So delicious), so honestly, I wouldn’t want to have THEM over. For the Meg Cabot book club this month, we’re reading an excellent YA book by Josie Bloss called Faking Faith about a girl named Dylan who gets into some trouble at school (something you or I could easily have done. Well, I would have when I was her age. She did it for love), gets suspended, and starts spending a lot of time online, reading—innocently enough—the blogs of girls who lead lives very different from her own…homeschooled fundamentalist girls.

Eventually Dylan begins to envy the seemingly simpler world in which these girls live (one in which what happened to her would never have occurred), and starts a fake blog of her own…an action which leads to an adventure that changes her life, and the lives of others, in both good ways and maybe not so good ways (I think mostly good, personally).

I enjoyed reading this book so much, I wanted it to go on and on. I wanted sequels . . . which is why it’s so fun to talk about it on the message boards, so join us! (It doesn’t hurt that Asher, the boy in the book, is totally hot!) More importantly, the book gently raises—and argues—a lot of important points about faith and religion (and feminism) without being judgmental (at least in my opinion. Maybe someone who belongs to the religion the girls in the book follow —it is never named, though— would disagree, which also makes it fun to discuss).

I’d definitely have Asher, his sister, and Dylan over for dinner (and Josie, too).

But if I could have ANYONE to my house for dinner, it would be the casts of my favorite TV shows of 2011. Not the casts as themselves, aka the actors, but the fictional characters that they play.

Because I think 2011 was an EXCELLENT year for television, one of the first we’ve had in a long time that wasn’t dominated by reality television…no offense to reality TV, because I certainly have gotten sucked into my fair share of marathons of Dance Moms and Hoarders and I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. Because guess what? A lot of people in history have NOT KNOWN THEY WERE PREGNANT.

But I got sucked into way more excellent scripted TV series in 2011 than I have in a long, long time.

I think it would be fun to invite the characters from all the new shows that made 2011 such a great year. How awesome would it be to have the entire cast of Downton Abbey over? Difficult, yes, because not only is their new season debuting Jan 8 so I’m sure they’re quite busy, but some of them are members of the aristocracy in turn-of-the-century Britain and expect to be waited on, so I’d have to hire help for sure (but that’s OK, because you know who I’d hire? Yeah, you got that right, the 2 Broke Girls), while some of them are “servant class”, so ARE the help. How on earth would I do the seating chart? Plus some of them are helplessly in love with others, while others are murderers, or attempted murderers at least, which only we, as the viewers, know. Awkward!

Then of course I’d HAVE to invite the cast of Game of Thrones, which presents the same problem as the Downton Abbey cast with the aristocracy thing and the serving class thing, not to mention the murderer thing (oh, and the romance thing! And the incest thing! And the dire-wolves! Plus, when last we saw her, one character had just given birth to not just one, but three dragons. Now everyone in the seven kingdoms wants to kill her. Where am I going to seat HER? Plus, what will I do with the dragons while we’re eating?)

Oh, well, maybe the cast from Happy Endings could babysit the dragons. I’m pretty sure baby dragons wouldn’t faze Max too much. He’d be like, “Oh, look at the fun dogs with wings!”

I will definitely seat Penny next to Tyrion from Game of Thrones because I could see her being all over a cynical dwarf.

And even though it didn’t debut in 2011, I’m inviting the cast of Courtney Cox’s Cougar Town, the show with the worst name ever, because this show needs the love…and after dinner, we can all cheat at penny can, and make Prince Joffrey super mad!

Okay, so obviously if I’m allowing Cougar Town on my list, I can’t not invite one of the best shows of all time, Friday Night Lights, even though it didn’t debut in 2011. But it did END in 2011, so I’m counting it (it’s my party, I can do what I want).

Of course this means Tim Riggins will be there. So how am I going to keep the girls from the casts of Awkward and Suburgatory away from him? I can’t not invite these shows, because they both debuted in 2011, and they’re both great, but let’s face it, those girls are going to be all over Tim, and he’s too old for them. What to do?

I know, I’ll invite Brody from Homeland! He has a teenaged daughter and is a Marine sniper, so he’ll keep the girls in line, even though he might be actually be a turned Al Quaeda terrorist (no one, not even his castmate Carrie, the CIA agent investigating him, is sure).

So I’ll get the members of the UTF (Undead Task Force) from Death Valley on MTV to keep an eye on him (they battle vampires and zombies all day so a possible terrorist should be easy for them).

For entertainment I’m hiring The New Girl to sing (if she promises to bring her roommates and Winston plays the bells).

There are a few other shows I liked that are on the backup list if any of the members of the above shows can’t make it—for instance, I liked The Hour, and Enlightened, and Louie, but I’m not sure they’d get along with the other shows. I would have liked to invite Episodes or Once Upon A Time and Grimm, but I really think we have enough. Other favorite shows, such as Parks and Rec and Parenthood and The Closer, will have to be invited at another time, since this is a 2011 Debut party only, with just a few exceptions for special circumstances.

Those exceptions, by the way, include you guys. YOU are totally invited to my hypothetical party, of course, because 2011 wouldn’t have been the same without you. I’m sure we would have the best time. I know because I’ve met so many of you (and/or heard from you online) in the past year, and I know we’d get along (even with the dragons and the dire-wolves and possible terrorists and murderers).

So THANK YOU. Not only for making 2011 so incredibly great, but because next time anyone asks what 5 People I’d have over to dinner, I’m finally going to have an answer that isn’t a lame lie: I’m going to say you . . . and our fictional friends.

Feel free to add to the invitation list on Facebook!

And I hope your 2012 is filled with health, happiness, and plenty of good books.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

But here’s a little known secret: in real life, hopping on a plane to Paris for your book tour turns out to be less than glamorous (at least if you’re me).

Because right now I can’t find the leggings I just bought (two pairs!) for this very trip.

And I’ve suddenly realized I only have one hour to change planes in Atlanta, which means my suitcase (which weighs 75 pounds even without the leggings, because I’m bringing 3 pairs of boots) will never make it onto the plane.

And my 19 year old cat Henrietta has decided that the floor of the office across the hall from the laundry room where her litter box is actually located is really the most convenient place for her to go to the bathroom (number two only).

Oh, and the touchpad of my MacBook Pro died, just when my revisions are due for Underworld. I have my trusty MacBook Air, but it only has 2 hours of battery, for some reason. Perfect for a 9 hour plane ride during which I hoped to get some work done.

Obviously I shouldn’t complain because

a) I am incredibly lucky (and thrilled) even to be having a book tour in France, and

b) things can only improve, right? By the time I get there and see all those smiling French faces, everything will be fine. Even my suitcase will show up eventually!

But until then, zut alors!

Anyway — yoga breath — this week, Abandon is being released in France. It has the same title in France as it does in America (and England).

Tres jolie!

My French publisher’s amazing website has the lowdown on all the contests and fun stuff that’s going on online while I’m there. But below are some of the places you can stop by to say hi to me in person (sorry I don’t have links for all of them. You should contact the stores to make sure the information is accurate and up-to-date. I do think you might need bracelets and stuff in advance to get in to some of them, so it’s worth double checking).

Lille
Friday, December 2
Signing at Le Furet du Nord bookstore
5:30 – 6:30PM

Montpellier
Saturday, December 3
Signing at Sauramps bookstore
3:00 – 4:30PM

Paris
Sunday, December 4
Signing at the Montreuil Book Fair
4:00 – 6:00PM

Strasbourg
Wednesday, December 7
Signing at La Librairie Kleber bookstore
4:30 – 6:30PM

Paris
Thursday, December 8
Signing at FNAC Montparnasse
6:30PM

And if you have questions you’d like to posez you can posez them here (I have a question. WHERE ARE THOSE LEGGINGS?).

On the days I don’t have events listed, I will still be working — behind the scenes, doing interviews and videos and stuff you’ll see later! I do get a little time off, but this is a work trip! Besides, I used to live in France, so going there is like going home!

OK, I’m completely making that up. But when I was six, my family moved to Grenoble, France for a year so my dad could teach there on sabbatical. I went to French school and actually learned to read in French, from some of the best books of all time . . .

. . . because they saved me from my overwhelming confusion at suddenly being plopped into first grade in a foreign country:

Martine!

Oh, la belle Martine! No one can understand how much she meant to me! I was a lonely little American girl who understood no French, but I could look at the pictures in my Martine books (by author Gilbert Delahaye, available at any grocery store in France in the 70s) and tell exactly what Martine was up to (always something incredible).

Because of the amazing Martine (and my mom, who bought one of her books for me every time she went to the grocery store), I was inspired to WANT to learn to read (in both English and French. Now I remember only the English, alas)!

Isn’t it cool how books can transcend language barriers? I took my Martine books to my French school, and instantly had an “in” with the girls there.

I still have all my Martine books (I was very choosy and only liked the ones where Martine looked like she was about to die or become famous. But I pretended to like all of them).

Oh, Martine! You were my inspiration! What did you become when you grew up? I hope it was this:

Whatever Martine became, I bet unlike me, she can still eat wheat-gluten. This will be my first trip to France since being diagnosed with celiac disease.

Although I’m happy to no longer have weird rashes on my face and the feeling that there is a bee inside my head — which were the mild but annoying symptoms that finally drove me to the endocrinologist who diagnosed me — French bread is basically my favorite thing in the world. It’s going to be REALLY hard not to eat it.

Anyway, last blog post we had a very exciting contest to see which cover you liked best for my July 2012 release, Size 12 and Ready to Rock. The votes have been tallied, and I know who won . . . but I can’t tell you which until the official unveiling! Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, I seriously can’t believe Thanksgiving is already over, which means Christmas and Hanukkah are right around the corner. I am NOT ready (obviously. I can’t even find my pants).

But if you’re looking for things to give, the nice people at Bookwish are having an interesting contest for aspiring YA authors looking for professional input on their work here! I guess you can’t actually give that to someone, but you could give them a copy of the anthology What You Wish For, which was recently named one of Penguin’s books best YA of 2011! And the contest would also make a nice classroom assignment.

In the meantime, I’m off to France, where I will not only be touring (and letting people who come my signings in on spoilers about the sequel to Abandon, Underworld!) but looking for cool gift ideas for you all for the holidays (and of course, for more Martine books – and leggings – for me).

In the meantime, be safe, be happy . . . and be sure to read some books!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Which is not good because I have so much to get done before I leave for my mini – book tour at the end of the month in, of all places, FRANCE. I have deadlines to meet and French to learn and suitcases to pack for the Salon du Livre Jeunesse! (If you’re going to be in France at the same time, also look for me in Lille, Montpellier, Strasbourg, and other bookstores of Paris! I’ll be putting up a real schedule soon, but in the meantime, check out my French publisher’s site, Lecture Academy, for updates.)

Meanwhile, both the covers for my 2012 releases have been released, and, if I do say so myself (and I can, since I had nothing to do with them), they’re pretty gorgeous.

But your input is vitally needed for one of them.

But first, OK, the cover for Underworld? OMG. So amazing. Don’t even get me started, I love it so much:

Underworld won’t be in stores until May 8, 2012!

Yes, that’s the same model from the first book! Isn’t she amazing? Just LOOK at her. And yes, that’s John’s arm.

Blue is my favorite color (to look at, not to wear), FYI.

But for my next book in the Heather Wells series, Size 12 and Ready to Rock (in stores in July 2012), I completely need your input! Because we’ve got two covers and we couldn’t decide which one was better! So I was like, “What if we just asked everyone what THEY thought?” and my editor, Carrie, was all, “YES.”

So take this uniquely rare opportunity to VOTE on which cover you like better here on the Heather Wells Facebook page (voting ends Sunday)!

This one?

Or this one?

I know some of you are looking at these covers and thinking, “What is the difference?”

But to some speople (like me) there is clearly a major difference (I will not tell you my preference so as not to prejudice the voters, but I do have one. Although honestly, either one would be fine).

And thank you to the amazing people at William Morrow for letting everyone have their say! You have no idea how many covers we went through to narrow it down to these two! We saw Heather in black dresses, gold dresses, red dresses, green dresses, jeans, on and on.

But this was hands down our fave. It’s just so . . . Heather. Sometimes you have to let your heroine dress up a little. Even if she’s solving a MURDER.

Anyway, here are some of the other things in my life that I’m excited about:

Of course, Princess Mia Thermopolis has a Twitter page and has started Tweeting. Mostly she’s just quoting Grandmere’s advice right now, but occasionally she has her own stuff to say. If only that lazy royal would update her blog.

(It was pretty sad when Princess Mia went to start her Twitter page and her own name and just about every variation of it was already taken by people who are not her, as was The Princess Diaries, etc. But of course Mia is too princessy to complain. Not.)

Did you know we’ve launched something called the Fab Five for Friday? That means every Friday we pick five fabulous commenters from my message boards and give them a free book (of mine or the author whose book we’re reading on the book club, or sometimes both or sometimes some completely random ARC I have lying around. YOU JUST WON’T KNOW)!

All you have to do to be a potential Fab Five winner is comment on the message boards (in the Books section, duh). So go do that right now while I wait.

Hi, thanks for coming back.

OK, also, next week I’m doing a webinar with the Girl Scouts of New Jersey. Yes, I was a Girl Scout! I freaking LOVED Girl Scouts, and not just because of the cookies (which I can’t eat now because of celiac disease, so we need to work on a gluten-free cookie, Girl Scouts)! I loved the Girl Scouts because all the fun, creative girls were in it.

Love this. Although no real Girl Scout would ever do this.

Speaking of fun girls, I’m so excited about this new addition to the Betsy-Tacy series (which also has all new covers) with a forward by Judy Blume, Ann M. Martin, and Johanna Hurwitz (it even got a mention in the NY Times)!

So cute, right?

Honestly the reason I think I’m so into the Betsy series is the old-fashioned hand-holding (“No!” Betsy cried. “I won’t do it! I just won’t!”) and gossipy misunderstandings and sandwich-making. With all the bad news to which we seem to get subjected week after week, I find slipping into an “old-timey” book more and more comforting.

(My favorite in the Betsy series is the one that I wrote the forward to, Betsy Was A Junior, but I receive no financial kickback if you buy it, dammit! And it’s probably good to start with the treasury to find out how it all began.)

Betsy-Tacy is very nice for comfort reading, but what I love BEST for this is Mary Stewart novels. They do have murders in them, but Mary Stewart’s books are never TOO shocking, and they always have a sensible but pretty heroine, and handsome men with strong, chiseled profiles, who urge the heroine to drink whisky–”Drink it, dammit!”–after she’s had a shock. Plus, there’s kissing.

So that’s why most exciting to me of all (because in case you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a total cover NERD) was my very tardy discovery of the re-release of the entire romantic suspense collection of Mary Stewart, with ALL NEW COVERS.

Ta da!!!

Lady Mary Stewart (yeah, it’s official. She’s a lady) is pretty much my all time favorite living writer. She did most of her writing in the 50s-90s, and is now retired and lives in Scotland, so it’s unlikely I will ever meet her. I will just have to blog about her instead, which is OK, because that’s the next best thing (besides reading her books).

I think these American covers capture the eerie romance of Mary Stewart’s books, but not the wittiness of them (they’re often quite funny) like the new British ones above, although I worry the quirkiness of the new British covers (which of course I’ve already bought) might not attract younger readers used to, say, The Hunger Games:

It’s important to remember that while some of Mary Stewart’s books have elements of magic in them (usually explained as coincidence), almost all of them have MURDER in them! Like The Hunger Games, this book below features children being murdered (for money, not food). But you wouldn’t know it from the cover:

Nine Coaches Waiting is about a modern day English governess (well, modern for 1958) looking after a young boy in a fancy French chateau. She is just doing her job and trying like crazy not to fall in love with the devastatingly handsome elder son of the chateau owner (hint: she fails. It is not her fault, his name is Raoul and he takes her to Monte Carlo in his fancy car one night. How could she NOT fall in love with him?) when she stumbles across a terrifying plot to MURDER THE CHILD FOR WHOM SHE IS CARING.

(Okay, maybe the child murder plot of Nine Coaches Waiting is nothing like The Hunger Games, in that it is a secret plot, and the heroine is trying to stop the child murder, not commit it. But it’s still quite alarming! And the heroine does have to run through a lot of woods, like Katniss.)

This was my original copy (my BFF Beth, who introduced me to Mary Stewart, gave it for me). I have no idea who the hot chick on the cover is supposed to be. I suppose the heroine, though she is barely in her twenties.

Frankly I like my cover best.

There are no coaches in the story Nine Coaches Waiting. There is, however, a BALL (and a fashion designer)!

I don’t know which Mary Stewart novel is my favorite since there’s one for every mood. Right now I’m quite fond of Madam, Will You Talk in which a young lady visiting Provence meets a nice little boy at the hotel where she’s staying. Too bad he says he’s so scared of his widower dad, the crazy MURDERER!

Then later she runs into this very handsome gentleman with a chiseled profile who, when he learns that she’s met this adorable little boy, ABDUCTS her, because it turns out he’s the boy’s dad, and he thinks SHE’s kidnapped his kid, and he wants her to tell him where he is (which she won’t do, because she thinks HE’S a crazy murderer).

Maybe he should just realize what a horrible mistake he’s made after he sees how pretty and nice she is and take her out for a really nice dinner and make her drink brandy to get over the shock of being abducted by him and say how sorry he is and then maybe accidentally try to kiss her because she’s so pretty and then apologize for doing THAT, it’s just that he is so overcome by how CRAZY he’s been on account of being set up for a MURDER he didn’t commit, and he’s desperate to clear his name and get his son back. Also maybe he’s in love with her.

Will the heroine talk, and tell him where his son is and try to help him get him back, or turn him in?

(OMG almost all of the above covers are HIDEOUS and in no way convey how amazing this book is. Here is the new one, but it’s set in the parched Provencal landscape during summer, so why does it look vaguely Christmasy?)

I should probably admit I was asked to write a forward to this re-release of Mary Stewart’s novel Thornyhold, but this edition is currently out of print (and obviously I did this for love, not money)!

I should probably also admit I’ve never read what are considered Mary Stewart’s “scholarly” novels, the King Arthur ones (shut up. I know! I wrote a King Arthur novel myself). But I’m saving these books for when I have a terminal disease and desperately need something new by Mary Stewart to read.

Anyway, one of Mary Stewart’s books, The Moonspinners, was made into a movie by Disney, starring the delightful Hailey Mills.

In the tradition of Disney movies based on books, The Moon-spinners doesn’t exactly follow the plot or tone of the book, which is about a young lady on vacation in Crete who stumbles across an injured young man, and obviously suspects him of having done something terrible when she learns the injury is a knife wound and the young man urges her to get away . . . for God’s sake . . . just get away.

But he is quite the handsome gentleman, so she’s hesitant to leave him to die . . . .

Big mistake? Or best decision of her life? What do you think? Perhaps there’s a MURDER . . . (there is).

It is said that Lady Mary Stewart “took a friend to see the film opening, only to find that the producers had wanted to buy the rights to the title but not the plot, and the story line was unknown to her.”

Ha! But I do remember seeing this movie as a kid and LOVING it. Though not as much as I love the book, of course.

The Mary Stewart novel I just finished reading was about the crazily named Gianetta (don’t worry, her crazy name is explained), a fashion model who is quite tired after all her busy fashion modeling and needs a vacation in the Isle of Skye because it’s so TIRESOME living in London during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth (actually if you liked the TV show The Hours on AMC, which I did, this is the book for you because everyone in it smokes and drinks sherry, even when they’re fishing, and also they listen to the wireless about horrible news coming out of the USSR, which I shouldn’t have found hilarious but I did).

So Gianetta goes for a nice relaxing stay in a swanky inn on the Isle of Skye, and what does she find there?

Not only her bitter ex-husband whom she had to divorce because he was all post-traumatic stressy from the war (and he’s also a novelist, so divorcing him was quite understandable), but . . . multiple MURDERS!!!

I highly recommend Wildfire at Midnight to anyone with an ex about whom they dream of one day reuniting. Or anyone who likes reading about the Isle of Skye, or drinking sherry by the fire, or models.

OK, that’s enough cover chat for one day (obviously I could go on for much longer, but I will spare you). If you want to know more about Mary Stewart, you need to go to this excellent blog.

And of course don’t forget to vote for MY covers here. Lately my poor heroines too have a tendency to be going about their business in a perfectly normal fashion, and then suddenly stumble across a MURDER.

Fortunately they’ve got feisty personalities, handsome (if moody) gentlemen friends, and all of you to help them out. They couldn’t ask for more, and neither could I.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

So I thought I would try to answer a few questions from Twitter and Facebook here. Who knows? Maybe you’ll see one of yours. Or a friend will see yours, and Tweet you about it. That is what social media is all about!

From Malena
Hi Meg? What are you going to be for Halloween?

Am I the only person freaking out because Halloween is this week and I still haven’t figured out what my costume is going to be? I did come up with one, but when I showed it to some people, no one knew what I was until I explained. See if you can figure it out:

Get it? I’m one of those people who always writes “First” under an online news story whenever he/she is the first one to comment.

OK, never mind, maybe I’ll just go as a witch again, like last year.

From Ana Christina
Helo Meg, how is your cat Henrieta doing? We haven’t heard about her in a while.

Well, thank you for asking, Ana Christina. Henrietta has a bit of arthritis, and now requires special stairs so that she can reach the side of the bathtub on which she likes to stand to drink out of the caps from water bottles, which are the only receptacle from which she will consume liquid. But other than that (and being completely insane) she is doing well.

From Cristen
Hey Meg, I was wondering if you happened to know when Underworld is coming out because the suspense is killing me!

Dear Cristen,
The suspense is killing me too! I’m glad you want to know more about Pierce and John (and this is a good time of year to wonder about them, since Coffin Night just took place here in Key West! Once again, no coffin burners were actually caught)! Look for Underworld, the sequel to Abandon, in stores in May 2012.

From @janelleminniti
Hanging out for @megcabot to release the next heather wells book…..

Dear Janelle,
That’s funny, because my editor and I were just hanging out, trying to pick a cover for Heather Wells #4! I’d show you what we finally decided on, but then, of course, I would have to kill you. Size 12 and Ready to Rock will be out in late Summer 2012!

From Daphne
I just finished “Overbite” and it was really engrossing! Loved everything about it. I would love to see/read about what happens to them next!! ♥

Thanks Daphne! I’m super glad you liked it. The ending of Overbite certainly left the door open for a third book (with a very intriguing premise for a heavenly love triangle . . . ha ha get it? Heavenly?), but for now I’m concentrating on Heather Wells and the Abandon sequels (and maybe some other surprises if I drink enough caffeine).

From Sanny Appy Gal
Hey Meg!! I love all your books. From the first word I read in the first Princess Diaries Series I fell in love with all your books! I always wanted to know where you get all those awesome ideas!! Can you share your secret?

Good question Sanny Appy Gal! Ideas can come from so many different places. I heard another writer (whose name I now can no longer remember, which is killing me) describe a good idea as being like a shark: once it bites you, it won’t let go until you punch it in the face (or write it all down).

I was inspired to write the first Princess Diaries book when my mom started dating one of my former teachers after my dad died, which is what happens to Mia Thermopolis (PS Like Mia’s mom and Mr. Gianini, my mom and my teacher are still together, and it is so disgusting I mean sweet).

I got the idea to write the Allie Finkle series when my older readers’ little sisters kept coming up to me at signings and asking when I was going to write a book for them (with no kissing).

The idea for Abandon came from a book I read in high school.

So you see? Ideas can come from anywhere (and everywhere). Look out for them.

From mercedes
Meg, what books have YOU read lately?

I’m reading two great books! One you’ve already heard about. It’s
Rosemary Clement-Moore’s excellent ghostly YA paranormal, Texas Gothic:

It’s about a girl who comes from a long line of witches. Her summer gig is ranch-sitting for her aunt with her sister. Only bodies start turning up, and a VERY scary ghost is on the prowl. Plus, there’s a hot neighbor cowboy!

We’re discussing this timely read for Halloween on the Meg Cabot Fiction Club — AND giving free copies away — so be sure to stop by here!

The other book I’m reading is Sarah Dooley’s novel Body of Water which is IN STORES TODAY!

Don’t let the cover of this book fool you! I know I’m a writer, but sometimes I wish all the publishers would hire me for their art departments. I WAS a fine arts major, after all. Then I could make all the covers look the way I think they should. Of course, then all the covers in the world would look like this. But would that be a bad thing?

Sarah Dooley is an author who has a gift for writing compelling books for and about kids (her last book, Livie Owen Lived Here, was about a high-functioning autistic girl).

Body of Water is about 12 year old Ember who has been forced to start living in a campground because her home has burned down. Ember and her sister have no clean clothes, no notebooks, nothing at all for school . . . even Ember’s dog has gone missing. Worst of all, Ember suspects her best friend may have started the fire . . . on purpose.

This book is especially timely because I saw a report just last week on Brian Williams’ NBC nightly broadcast about how 49% of American kids are arriving at school hungry these days. Another 36% are homeless . . . just like Ember!

The report went on to say that teachers have discovered that reading books like Body of Water in class, about kids who are living in poverty, helps students struggling with these issues learn to cope, by finding out they are far from alone . . . and students who don’t have these issues learn to empathize with the kids who do!

Proving once again that a good book really CAN change the world!

Body of Water is not only amazingly topical but also one of those great reads that will keep you riveted until you get to the last page, anxious to see how it all turns out (and I promise you’ll like how it turns out).

(Watch the clip from Brian Williams here.)

From Oo Evey
Tu aimes Meg Cabot?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Merci, Oo Evey! So cute! I’m working on my French so maybe I’ll compris it soon! I hope it means “See you all in France this December when I go there on a book tour!”

Finally, I’ve received A LOT of Facebook messages and tweets lately asking about the Mediator movie and series, like this one from @themediatorfan.

@megcabot It’s also never too late to release more books for the Mediator series!!

Thanks, Sara! I don’t have any new Mediator movie news, but I love that so many of you support this series (and have visited the at Mediator facebook page). I know I’ve said I might do an epilogue to Suze and Jesse’s story someday, but I just couldn’t think of a book-length story for them.

Well, thanks to all of you endlessly asking about it and keeping it ever present in my mind, a shark finally bit me with a book length idea for a story for them (and the whole rest of the gang, including Paul Slater).

Now I just need to find the time to write it (please note: I still have to finish some other books first before I can work on it, so it will be a while before you’ll hear any details).

So please discuss amongst yourselves while I work, and thanks so much, as always, for the support!

Happy Halloween, everybody!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Fall also traditionally brings us the birthday of the most FANTASTIC PERSON IN THE WORLD (again, I am completely partial), someone with whom some of you might be familiar. . . He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog.

Yes! It is true! On October 5, HWSNBNITB will be half a century old (just like George Clooney, HWSNBNITB was born in 1961, obviously the best year for men).

As you can tell by this recent photo, HWSNBNITB is still filled with youth, vitality, and many other things:

(Yes, HWSNBITB still refuses to allow me to mention him or put his photo on my blog. I thought you would enjoy looking at this photo of George Clooney instead. HWSNBNITB is actually younger by six months than George, but of course a better cook and even more handsome and erudite)

So I hope you will join me in wishing HWSNBITB a happy birthday (only you can’t go to his Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Linked In, or Google + pages because he is old school and doesn’t have any of those things. You will just have to wish him happy birthday to the air).

To celebrate, we are going to do super fun things, many of which I am almost done planning (birthday plans should never be left up to me).

Fall also brings us Banned Book Week, a very important week that has passed (another example of my planning) when the American Library Association celebrates the importance of the First Amendment (the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might not be your personal cup of tea).

But as we scan the lists of the Most Banned Books in America, it’s important to remember that the vast majority of books disappearing from our library shelves are not even on these lists!

Why?

Because library patrons (and parents) have caught on that rather than going to all the trouble of asking for an official ban, it’s much easier simply to remove the offending book from the library and pay the fine.

The library rarely has the budget to replace the missing book with a new one of the same title. The book is gone, and 7 – 15 bucks later, nobody’s the wiser.

For every book challenge that’s been reported, research suggests at least as many as four to five have gone unreported, and who knows how many books have simply gotten “banished” due to material inside that a single patron found personally distasteful!**

**Thanks to Author’s Guild Board of Directors member Rachel Vail for the above data.

How can you help libraries get more money so they can replace books that have been “banished?” Contribute when you hear your local library is having a book drive (every penny counts), and enter your zip code here:









In addition to HWSNBNITB’s birthday and Banned Books Week, Fall also brings us a new book discussion at the Meg Cabot Fiction Club: By popular demand, Rosemary Clement-Moore’s excellent ghostly YA paranormal, Texas Gothic, was chosen!

Amy Goodnight’s family is far from normal. She comes from a line of witches, but tries her best to stay far outside the family business. Her summer gig? Ranch-sitting for her aunt with her wacky but beautiful sister. Only the Goodnight Ranch is even less normal than it normally is. Bodies are being discovered, a ghost is on the prowl, and everywhere she turns, the hot neighbor cowboy is in her face.

Starred reviews from both Kirkus and School Library Journal (wow, Rosemary)! I can’t wait to dig in.

We’ll be discussing Texas Gothic on the forums starting next week, so you have plenty of time to grab your copy and start reading! Be sure to stop by here!

Fall also brings another momentous occasion upon us: The new TV season!

(I do not apologize for loving Vitamin TV.)

What shows are you loving so far?

While technically it wasn’t a fall show, more like a late summer show, the one I really loved was Awkward. (period part of the title) on MTV, about a high school girl who made what I consider some poor decisions in the romance department over the summer, then had to spend the first half of her sophomore year dealing with them.

Unfortunately the season is over, but the ladies at Forever YA did some hilarious recaps here if you want to catch up! And you can still catch a few epis at MTV.com!

I think MTV is hitting it out of the park this year, because I also love Death Valley, a “reality show” (not really. It’s a scripted dramedy) in which San Fernando Valley in California has been taken over by vampires and zombies — and don’t forget werewolves! — so the police find themselves forming an Undead Task Force to keep the peace. There’s a lovely feisty female rookie cop and a film crew that follows the UTF as they make sure wives lock their werewolf husbands in at night, while teen vampires host illegal “venom” parties. It’s hilarious but also kind of gory and also totally good. I’m HOOKED.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I actually thought from the ads that the new show Suburgatory was going to be a mix of Awkward and Death Valley — a sarcastic New York teen whose dad forces her to move to the suburbs for a more “wholesome” life finds out that the suburbanites are actually possessed by Satan?

But it turns out (at least so far) that it’s not a paranormal show. That would be so funny if the new girl had to fight undead cheerleaders!

But, wait, that was the plot of The Mediator series! Ha ha, never mind.

Speaking of The New Girl, the heavily promoted new Zooey Deschanel vehicle on Fox that comes on after Glee about a quirky girl, Jess, who moves in with a bunch of guys after a break up, do we love it? You guys, we’re supposed to super super love it, OK?????

Except if Jess reminds some of us of someone we know who is JUST LIKE the character she plays, the one who brings her guitar to parties and insists we all sing along to the song she just wrote about her ex-boyfriend Joe, about whom she has 65 songs, and they’re all about Joe (ha ha, that was a Say Anything joke).

But seriously, if Jess were a real person and you had to live with her, she might seem a little less quirky and a little more annoying than anything. NOT THAT I KNOW SOMEONE LIKE HER AND SUSPECT THIS SHOW IS BASED ON HER.

But since it’s a show and not reality maybe that’s the point? And maybe that’s the point of the new show Whitney? I saw Whitney Cummings (who plays Whitney) on Hoda and Kathy Lee and she was even more hilarious in real life than she is on her show. This is how Zooey Deschanel is, too. If these two ladies just sat around drinking cocktails, talking, I would pay money to watch. I don’t think they’re really like the characters they are playing.

Uh, where was I? Oh, yeah . . .

Many of our old favorites are back (Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, The Office, Happy Endings, Parenthood, Glee) and seem better than ever after their summer break (thank goodness for the slightly older Baby Lily on Modern Family)!

And some of my favorite TV shows haven’t even premiered yet (The Walking Dead on AMC, debuting October 16, and I Used to Be Fat on MTV, debuting October 11). Although all I can say about The Big C season finale is that if the character Oliver Platt plays is dead (Oliver was born 1960, not 1961 like HWSNBNITB, which is disappointing, but I will let it slide), I am done with that show.

Oh, and I’m excited about Homeland on Showtime, starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis. I belong to a secret fan club for Damian’s tiny mouth. All you have to do join is notice that his mouth really is very tiny and adorable. Look at it in comparison to Claire Danes! Not that there is anything wrong with Claire’s mouth, I’m just saying, Damian’s mouth is very small.

In the meantime, I have been quite busy writing because I have the sequel to Abandon, Underworld, scheduled to be out in Spring 2012, and a fourth book in the Heather Wells mystery series, scheduled to be out in Summer 2012 (it just got the title Size 12 and Ready to Rock. I actually thought of this title! So yay!)

Plus, at the end of November, I’m going to France on a book tour! More info on the stops I’ll be making there soon, but stay tuned to this website for the most up-to-date info (coming soon)!

So between all that, the TV viewing, the birthdays, the bannings, and the Tweeting and Facebooking, it is all I can do just to keep up, obviously! Here is a picture HWSNBNITB took recently of how I look when I’m doing all of the above because he felt the truth should come out. But I’m not ashamed, except maybe of my hair which I admit has looked better:

I call that ^^^^ the command center. I don’t know why I have so many computers, I guess I use certain ones for certain things. The middle one is an Alphasmart that I purchased YEARS AGO and only use for first drafts. When TSA people see it (especially in Europe), they laugh at me, because Alphasmarts are what they use to teach children word processing. But now the world has woken up and realized Alphasmarts are the best thing since homemade fudge. I have written at least part of something like 75 published books on mine – and even parts of most of my blog entries – so who is laughing now, TSA? Also, I have dropped it in the pool several times and it’s still just fine!

For a more in-depth look at what a typical day for me (and probably most writers) is like, here’s a video that was made quite a while ago, but is still pretty much true today (minus the part about the stump grinder, although HWSNBNITB just informed me that we need to redo the laundry room because termites have eaten through the ceiling). The books and household disasters have changed (also, we ended up adopting that neighbor’s cat when the family who owned her moved away), but the rest remains the same!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Have a great one! And as always, thanks for reading!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

We all have a book out today! It’s called What You Wish For.

We each contributed a story or poem for this book to the The Book Wish Foundation for free, so that 100% of their proceeds would go to the UN Refugee Agency!

That means if you buy a copy, you’ll be helping to build libraries all the way across the world, where they barely have any books, let alone libraries, or even pizza.

And if you buy a copy through this link, 100% of their net profits from the sale will go directly to the Book Wish Foundation, so they’ll get even more funds than they would if you bought a copy anywhere else.

So what are you going to do today? I think you should make sure you get a copy of What You Wish For, which contains “captivating, inspiring, sometimes creepy and ofttimes funny stories and poems” that “offer hope about things we all wish for.”

Not to mention, my story has romance AND pizza in it, both of which the world needs a lot more of (it goes without saying it needs more books and libraries).

Thanks for reading!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

I’m going to re-post an entry I wrote a while ago about the experience my husband and I shared on 9/11, not because I think it’s so well-written or anything, but because I think the memories from that day shouldn’t be forgotten.

But I also know that some people come to this blog looking for an escape from bad memories, not to relive them (hey, that’s why I come here, too). So for all of you, I’m also posting a link to this Back To School quiz. May the Force be with you.

For the rest of you, here is this:

On 9/11 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, not a single cloud, 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: a part of 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 and hit the tower.

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 few 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 those clothes would be forever associated with that student’s death.

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. The Internet 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.

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 that night. 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, because she herself lived in Connecticut, and had no way home either.

Another co-worker from NYU, my friend Jack, did manage to reach his spouse, who worked in the Trade Center, that day.

Jack’s 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 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.

JUST COME DOWN, she wanted to tell them.

But she 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 goodbye 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, 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 the Towers are 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 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 the terrorists 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 had taken them forever to our place.)

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. No one realized the collapsed buildings themselves might have given off toxic chemicals. 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 Shai’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, while Shai, who’d be turning 4 the very next day, 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 Mr. Fluff is 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 within a block of Ground Zero. 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.

There, they 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 celebrated Shai’s birthday, and lived for the rest of the year, until their apartment got cleaned and cleared for human habitation again.

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 no one wanted to upset her by crying in front of her.

Both ex-President Clinton and Chelsea had been crying. Rudy Giuliani, our mayor, who had not been very popular in NYC at the time 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, just like the rest of us, 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. No one from the fire station across the street had come back. I felt so, so lucky to have my husband when other wives and husbands weren’t so fortunate.

The same day we put Shai and her family on a bus to the Hamptons, September 12,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 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 the smoke 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 ten 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.

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.

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 to help, had locked up his bike, and was looking for the EMT crew with which he normally volunteered. They were inside one of the towers. This was before the buildings fell, before anyone had any idea those buildings COULD fall, when the police and firemen and EMTs were still streaming into them.

Fred couldn’t locate his crew (because no one’s cell phones were working). Someone told him to make himself useful and drive this bus they’d found, to help transport civilians away from the scene.

Fred didn’t want to drive the bus. He wanted to be inside with his crew, saving lives. But he did as he was told.

While Fred was driving the bus, his entire unit was crushed to death when the tower they were in collapsed.

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 afterwards (his old one got buried in the rubble 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 bus.”

That’s true. But remember Luz’s son?

He showed up at my apartment not long after Jake and Shai and their parents did. Luz kissed him and shook him and cried, and when she finally let go of him, he explained where he’d been:

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 pulled him onto a bus.

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

“Not today,” Fred said.

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

Ten years later, Fred is still a volunteer EMT, and a father of two. Luz’s son is doing fine. Jake is a sophomore in college, and Shai will turn fourteen. Mr. Fluff did eventually die (but years later, and of natural causes), and now there’s a dog to take his place.

It’s still hard, though, a decade later, to make sense of what happened that day. But how can something like that ever make sense?

I like this thing that our yoga instructor reads sometimes at the end class. It doesn’t actually explain why things like 9/11 happen, but it does give advice on how to behave when they do:

“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.”

My mind isn’t tranquil yet, but I’m working on it. Thank you for reading this blog.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Having been through numerous hurricanes since I moved here in 2004, I feel qualified to give some advice to people going through one right now. If you need proof, just click on this entry from my Hurricane Diaries.

You can read many similar posts just by putting the word “hurricane” in the search engine of my blog. Though why you’d want to, I can’t imagine. It’s just more of the same!

Because the worst part about being in a storm isn’t the fear that your house might get swept away, because most likely that isn’t going to happen (unless you live on the beach and you didn’t evacuate, in which case, you should probably leave now, if it’s safe to drive).

No, the worst part is the clean up (especially if the power was out for a long time and the stuff in your fridge gets stinky) . . .

. . . and the abject boredom as the rain pours down, the power flickers, and everyone realizes they’re in no real danger . . . except of losing their minds because there’s nothing to do (hopefully you’ve been to the store in advance and stocked up on cheese popcorn and Gummi Bears and awesome reads.* Oh, and a flashlight. And, if you are over 21, beer and wine. And ice)!

If that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place! (Assuming you charged your batteries and can still read this).

Because here’s a cool quizz I made up to keep everyone stuck inside, riding out the storm, occupied and having fun!

So get out a pen and try to figure out . . . .

WHICH 80s TEEN FILM HEROINE ARE YOU?

Your friends would describe you as:

A) Popular
B) Brainy
C) Weird
D) Tomboy

When dressing for school in the morning, you make sure:

A) Everything looks cute
B) Everything matches
C) Everything is black
D) Everything is within easy reach of the bed so you can sleep in a little later after the alarm goes off

Your idea of a perfect Saturday afternoon is:

A) Shopping at the mall
B) Getting a head start on your history paper
C) Painting a self-portrait
D) Skating in the park

You’re packing to go to camp for the summer. You take:

a. Your yearbook
b. Your Powerbook
c. Your poetry notebook
d. You would so not go to summer camp.

Your favorite kind of movie is:

A. One that has kissing
B. One that is historically accurate
C. One that has a serial killer
D. One with explosions

Your ideal boyfriend is:

A. Sensitive loner
B. Brainy underachiever
C. Jock with a heart of gold
D. Artistic type

What does your favorite purse look like?

A. Prada
B. Anything big enough to fit all your books
C. Anything big enough to fit all your sketchpads/knitting needles
D. Purse? Who needs a purse when you have pockets?

Your preferred eyeliner color:

A. Blue
B. Natural
C. Black
D. Eyeliner? Yuck.

You favorite TV show is:

A. Jersey Shore
B. Masterpiece Theater
C. You only watch movies
D. Anime

Ready? Count up all your As, Bs, Cs, and Ds!

If you answered mostly As, you are:

Congratulations! You are a PROM PRINCESS. The 80s teen film heroine you are most like is MOLLY RINGWALD from THE BREAKFAST CLUB. Popular and pretty, you are universally liked, but long to break out of the cookie-cutter mold you feel you’ve been thrust into by society, and get real. May we suggest doing so by dating a hot (but harmless) juvenile delinquent like JUDD NELSON’s John Bender, also in THE BREAKFAST CLUB?

If you answered mostly Bs, you are:

Congratulations! You are a BRAINY BEAUTY. The 80s teen film heroine you are most like is IONE SKYE from SAY ANYTHING. Your good grades and preppie style make you the classic overachiever. Still, you long to shed your good-girl image and have some fun, but are afraid of what everyone will think. May we suggest you find a kick-boxing iconoclast along the lines of JOHN CUSACK’s Lloyd Dobbler (also from SAY ANYTHING) to show you that can make straight As and still have time for making out?

If you answered mostly Cs, you are:

Congratulations! You are an INTRIGUING INDIVIDUALIST. The 80s teen film heroine you are most like is ALLY SHEEDY from THE BREAKFAST CLUB. Stunning but shy, you prefer to keep to yourself and concentrate on perfecting your poetry/paint/performance art. But it’s possible to be a rebel and still have fun, you know.
Stop hiding your light under a bushel, and break out. Who better to show you the way than a jock with a heart of gold like EMILIO ESTEVEZ’s Andy Clark from THE BREAKFAST CLUB?

If you answered mostly Ds, you are:

Congratulations! You are a TOMBOY TEMPTRESS. The 80s teen film heroine you are most like is MARY STUART MASTERSON from SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL. True to yourself and loyal to those you love, you don’t have time for makeup and high heels. But guys could be intimidated if you always play it tough, so take a cue from ERIC STOLTZ’s Keith Nelson from SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL, and show your sensitive side from time to time. A little lip gloss never hurt anybody either.

If you answered equal numbers of A, B, C, or D answers:

Congratulations! You are an IN-CROWD CUTIE. The 80s teen film heroine you are most like is LEA THOMPSON from SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL. Pretty but shy, you’re the girl everyone wants to know better—but how can they, when you don’t even know yourself yet? Break out of your current clique, and try something new…like skateboarding or drama. You’ll never find a sensitive loner-type—like JAKE RYAN from SIXTEEN CANDLES—if you’re not willing to meet him halfway.

More quizzes coming soon! Everyone stay safe and dry!

More later.

Much love,

Meg

*Note that a hurricane and its many accoutrements, such as the now infamous “cone of uncertainty,” plays a large part in my newest YA novel, Abandon, which will be in UK stores on Sept. 2 (click here for the special UK page for games, contests, and giveaways), and will also figure prominently in the sequel, Underworld, coming in 2012!

And don’t forget that the most important thing in any emergency, weather related or not, is to keep a level head and a sense of humor, and, of course, to be prepared in advance! Visit the FEMA webpage for more info on how you can prepare yourself and your family for any disaster, including, of course, a zombie attack!

XXXOOO

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