Meg's Diary

Weekend Wake Up Call

For those of you who’ve been asking, here are back cover blurbs to accompany the covers you’ve seen posted here on the homepage of my Fall 2007 releases, Big Boned and Princess Diaries 9, Princess Mia. Actual webpages for these books are coming soon!

Meanwhile…Kathy Griffin has been banned! As a fellow (fake) red-head and (half) Irish funny woman, I salute Kathy Griffin’s win at the Emmys, but I’m even more impressed with her acceptance speech being banned on Fox…though I’m not particularly shocked. Bascially, everyone has been banned but me.

I myself still haven’t been banned or censored lately (um…or ever, despite my efforts), though I was in the news recently for several other reasons. I got to play girl reporter a few weeks ago (something I’ve never really done before) and interview a girl from New York City and a girl from Iowa City for USA Today as part of a promo effort for Jinx, the results of which were published by USA Today/Weekend and appeared
in 610 newspapers this past weekend.

(Our conversation was actually much more in-depth and I felt like Monica and Charlotte and I really bonded and talked about much deeper stuff than is written here–I also asked much better questions than that–but I guess for space reasons they cut them. This why I am not a journalist.)

I also got a mention in the The Sunday New York Times Book Review! It was in a review of someone’s else’s book, but it mentions All American Girl–in a good way! My curiosity piqued by the review of this book, I immediately Googled burkinis. I think Samantha Madison would approve of someone helping Muslim girls who want to be able to go swimming in public pools and beaches without having to wear tons of hot drippy clothes. Go, Aheda Zanetti, go!

And one last link: I won’t be touring for either Big Boned or Princess Mia, but, since it’s never too early to plan your summer road trip, I thought I’d let you know I will be speaking at the Great Hall of the Stranahan Theater in Toledo, Ohio as part of the Author! Author! lecture series (which will also include the awesome author Kathy Reichs, who, in addition to her best-selling novels, also produces the hit TV series Bones) this June.

This past weekend was the Poker Run in Key West. Approximately 10,000 (no exaggeration) motorcycle enthusiasts cruised into town on their Harleys. Key West basically went overnight from looking like this–

to looking like this–

They were actually very polite (and are, according to the people I know who work in restaurants here, great tippers), and were here not to cause trouble but to raise money for charity. But those choppers were loud!

So I holed up in my house all weekend watching home improvement shows working on my revisions. It was this weekend that I realized I’ve been lying when I’ve answered “No, not that I can think of,” to all of you who’ve been asking me over the years if I had any strange superstitions or practices in which I indulge before writing: There is ONE thing I must do (after I’ve bathed and put on make up, of course)—and that’s have a clean work space.

This is a simple procrastination technique. I’m not a neat freak! I just can’t write if my work space is disorganized or things are out of place, such as–bed not made, litter box not clean, clothes not put away, papers not filed, etc.

I realize I am probably alone in this, however, because many other writers have posted photos of their offices online, and almost none of them were tidy. A disorganized work space, however, does not necessarily connote a disorganized mind (up to a point—if your work space is so messy you can’t find stuff, that’s bad). He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog has a very messy office—so messy that neither my housekeeper nor I are allowed to go in it (though we often stand in the doorway and shake our heads at it in wonder and dismay). However, HWSNBNITB knows where everything in it is.

I’m not like that AT ALL. I don’t have an office (well, I do, but it’s my bed) but if I did, I would not be able to work in it if it were not perfectly tidy. I realize this sounds compulsive, but I am not alone. There are even television shows for people like me, who get great satisfaction out of seeing things tidied up, like the Style Network’s Clean House. I totally adore the host, Niecy Nash—

Saint of Clean Houses. Perhaps one day St. Niecy will lead HWSNBNITB and people like him from the dark into the light….

One final piece of business: Some cats actually like to swim.

Now I’d better get to work. But first…I have to go clean.

More later.

Much love,

Meg

Share:

Newly Released

Cover of Enchanted to Meet You

Enchanted to Meet You

September 2023

Recently Published

The Quarantine Princess Diaries

Full Length Novel
March 2023

Little Bridge series

No Words

October 2021

Princess Diaries

20th Anniversary Editions
October 2020

No Offense

August 2020

Related Posts