Meg's Diary

It’s Here!

5445035573_d9721470d0Abandon is in US (and Canadian) stores now (officially on sale Tuesday, April 26)!

I’m really excited about the publication of this book (and not just because it’s always exciting to have a book published. It’s exciting just to finish writing a book, let alone get it published)!

But there are a couple of reasons that I’m particularly excited about Abandon.

Yes, like the very nice April 26th review in the New York Journal of Books says, Abandon “puts a new spin on the Greek myth of Persephone. . . .”

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But, Meg I can hear you asking, didn’t you actually do that before with Avalon High (which was a sort of a modernized re-imagining of the myth of King Arthur)?

The difference between Avalon High and Abandon, as the reviewer goes on to say, is not only that “one is drawn right into the story, all the while trying to reconcile how this new take on an ancient myth is going to play out. The author is able to capture a sexy, angst-filled sensibility that is a popular and common thread in much of the recent offerings in young adult fiction,” but that “ . . . the author is also clearly not averse to tapping into darker elements.”

I know what you’re thinking: Meg Cabot? Dark?

But as I mentioned yesterday in my piece on the Huffington Post on how “Reading for Pleasure is Serious Business,” being a teen is dark (or at least, it was for me).

(I’ve actually gone fairly “dark” before. I’ve been writing YA paranormals—starting with The Mediator series, about a girl who helps the dead move on, and the 1-800 series [which has now been re-issued as the Vanished series] on which a Lifetime television show starring Vivica Fox called Missing was based—since the year 2000.)

But Abandon is a story I’ve been working on since I got the idea for it in high school. And when I posted the drawings from my Algebra notebook about it on this blog way back in 2006, you guys were so supportive when I later mentioned I’d always wanted to write it as a book! Remember?

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Dreams are fragile things. They can be so easily trampled. That’s why I often advise aspiring writers to guard their story ideas like precious jewels and don’t post them on the Internet (they could be stolen, or worse). Sometimes when I told people back when I was a teen that I wanted to be a writer, they laughed, because I didn’t get the best grades, etc. So for a long time, I never even bothered to try to get published.

But the minute I confessed to you about my dream for this book, all I heard from you was a surge of, “YES!” You guys rock.

And because the first thing everyone asks when they hear you’ve written a book is, “Where did you get the idea for it?” I took that old Algebra notebook filled with drawings from the Persephone myth to the very talented people at One Hundred Robots in New York (because I’m so impressed with their book apps. To me, their apps are art)!

I thought they could help me explain to everyone in video format just how special this story has always been to me.

So they took those old doodles of mine from that high school Algebra notebook, and made them come to life, telling the story of how I came up with the idea of Abandon!

I love how they did it. What do you think?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlMLDeAl3Us&feature=channel_video_title[/youtube]

(Drawings and voiceover narration mine. Animation and everything else, including music—they wrote the song!–theirs!)

So, as you can see, I’m super excited about Abandon launching today . . . not only because it’s exciting to see my book in print at last, but because I get to see all of you, who made this possible, on my book tour!

I’m writing this from my hotel in Memphis. Will you be at my (possibly historic, due to the bookstore maybe closing) signing tonight in Memphis at Davis-Kidd Bookstore?

Will I see you at my appearance in Southlake, Texas on Wednesday?

Or my signing in Alpharetta, GA on Thursday, or my signing at Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, MO on Saturday? I hope so!

(For details or a complete list of all my signings, go here!)

And for those of you I won’t get to see, hopefully I’ll be coming to a town near you soon . . . and in the meantime, thank you for letting me share this story with you! It means so much to me.

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XXXOOO

More later.

Much love,

Meg

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