Monthly Archives: May 2008

Book Expo This Week!

Just a reminder that I’ll be signing books at BEA this year for Hyperion and Simon and Schuster.

The Hyperion signing, where we will be giving out copies of the chapter samplers of REVELATIONS, is this Friday (May 30th) at 2PM. I will be at Table Four in the Autographing Area.

For Simon and Schuster I will be signing copies of The Ashleys: Jealous? on Sunday (June 1) at 10:30 AM at Table Fourteen in the Autographing Area.

So come see me—and lots of other awesome authors—Sherman Alexie, Neil Gaiman, etc are all going to be at the expo!

xoxo
Mel

Wedding Belle

It’s a happy Friday.

First off, gay marriage has now been legalized in Cali! Woo-hoo! Now all my dear friends can get married and I can subject them to bridal showers and coffee pots and raunchy bachelorette parties in Atlantic City via white limo and homemade Comsos (oh yeah that’s how I rolled when I got hitched) everything they did for me when I got married. When Mike and I got married, I was paralyzed by guilt that we could get married while so many of our best friends could not. It is a human rights issue people!! And here in Cali we have stem cell research and emissions laws and now gay marriage. Yeah! Our closest friends are a circle of gay couples, most of whom have been together as long as Mike and I have been, and yet Mike and I are the only ones who have tied the knot with the requisite blowout and New York Times wedding announcement. Oh yeah, we made it into the paper. Suck it! Just kidding.

You do know the hoo-ha that goes into getting into the Times wedding announcements yes? You know how in Sex and the City Charlotte dances around when they hear that she made it? Well, that’s exactly what happened to us too. There was dancing. There was smugness. As a social highlight I would say getting your announcement in the Times is like getting into an Ivy League school. It means absolutely nothing and absolutely everything at the same time. To those of us who grew up with dads who put “ALL3IVY” on their license plates because all three of his progeny went to schools in the same ancient athletic league, getting into the Times was a big deal. Especially since my sister, who got married first, got her announcement in too. So there was MEGA pressure when I got hitched. Would we make it? Yes we did. Next to the Veuve Clicquot we served at the reception (one of the things I always remember fondly was drinking a glass of champagne at our wedding and thinking HOLY COW! THEY SPENT ON THIS SH-T! and then realizing *we* had doled out the dollars for the yellow boys and laughing maniacally). The second fondest memory was of floating away on our honeymoon with a copy of the Times, our announcement (with photo!) safely tucked under the seat.

I’m in a good mood. My cold has finally abated. And yes, I’m sorry this and the latest posts have been a bit delirious. (A commenter said delusional—but I think delirious is the more apropos word.) I’m just a bit giddy. It’s summer. I have copyedits due and a fun fun fun new novel to write- my new series GIRL STAYS IN THE PICTURE, which we’re kind of calling the “GIRL” series (it used to be called Social Life).

Btw, if you have emailed me BEFORE December 2007 and you have not yet received a reply, then email me again. Because I am now caught up with all the emails and everyone up to December 2007 should have received a reply unless you changed your email address or your email to me ended up in Spam for some reason. I’m hoping to be FULLY caught up in the next week or so. So bring ‘em on!

xoxo
Mel

Straight from the de la Soul

I just got my schedule for BEA – so all you Blue Bloods fans who are coming to the convention—I’ll be signing on Friday, May 30th from 2-2:30 PM at the Traditional Autographing Area – Table 4.

I heard the chapter samplers of Revelations looks fabulous!! And I’ll be running a contest to give them away to five lucky winners. Will let you know what the contest is and how you can win soon.

Still sick over here. And finished the Host. Now am moving on to Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children. I love the title. But before I can get to that book, I finally got the copy-edit back on Revelations!!!! Yeaaahhh Boyyyy!!! When I was in college my friends and I always said this to each other when we were psyched about something. Weren’t we dorky? And yet we thought we were SO cool. A friend of mine writes that he was just looking at photos from college, and said it was like looking at shots of junior high when he was in college. Everyone looked so young and awkward. “I know I wasn’t that cool. But I had some cool friends. And yet no one looks cool. Sorry, friends.” Well. I have to disagree. I looked at photos from college too. And yes, we did look YOUNG. But looking at the shot of me in my vintage pajama top and black silk jersey pants, I have to disagree on the awkward jibe. Okay, so maybe I needed to pluck those eyebrows better. Hmpf. Btw, this is why stars in their 30s can still play high-school kids. Because you can look young for a LONG time because people who are actually in their late teens and early 20s look TWELVE. But on another tangent, don’t you think everyone actually looks the best when they are older? Like Demi Moore? and Sarah Jessica Parker? Although when I think of this argument, Blake Lively’s gorgeous face comes to mind, and I sigh.

Btw, isn’t Gossip Girl AAHHHSOME??? Can Chace Crawford BE any hotter?? I loved that shot when he was standing in a suit and some kind of unbuttoned shirt with the cuffs peeking out, when he was telling Vanessa he was going to take the subway. SWOON!! And I love Nate and Vanessa. I also love Chuck and Blair. I think Chuck is kind of my favorite. Although I also like Dan although c’mon, would anyone be THAT stupid? Especially Mr. Top of His Class boy? And I love all the bags and what they’re wearing and Blair’s flowered headbands. And I love how Little J got caught in the Valentino. Hilarious. But what up with the dorky-cool Asian girl they are hanging out with now? Nelly Yuki? Why does the Asian girl have to be dorky? Ugh. So unrealistic. When I was at Columbia the hottest girls in class were Korean and Chinese. And not Asian-girl hot like in Mean Girls where they all hung out with only other Asians and spoke in a foreign language. They were all-American down to the offhand Nantucket wardrobe and low, gravelly Northeastern prep school accents. I paid homage to two of them in Masquerade (the Chinese twins.). Anyway, even though the show is still depicting minorities as hard-working dorky kids, I still kind of heart the show a little more than the books now. I thought it was funny how Blair and Serena made fun of Nelly Yuki’s name because it was kind of fun to say it aloud. My friends and I used to do that, with Jennie Kim, my BFF, and it’s not even as funny a name as Nellie Yuki but we always called her JENNIEKIM!!! One-name-only. Which is still fun to say. You have to be able to laugh at yourself. When I was in collage the cutest guy freshman year called me Melissa DE LA SOUL!!! all the time because De La Soul was really big then.

Do you remember de la Soul? They sang Me Myself and I, and Jennifer Oh Jennie (which we also used to sing to Jennie all the time. I still do.) Why weren’t they in the Forgotten Nineties Band? Oh and when Lisa Loeb on Gossip Girl played Stay I totally remembered being nineteen and being in love with this boy who transferred to another college, and he was one of my best friends, and we were in love but didn’t tell each other and I remember hanging out with him and helping him pack and all I played on his Sony cassette was that album from reality bites, with “STAY” over and over again thinking he would get the message. He didn’t. He left. We’re still great friends, btw. And he’s great friends with my husband. Which is funny how that happens, but nice too.

In fact lots of boys I used to be in love with are still my friends now. And no, of course I’m not in love with them anymore! Mike and I have been together for twelve years and really, our relationship is so much work there is no time to even think of anyone else. I once asked Mike during the Spitzer scandal if every guy really is that sex-obsessed and he said maybe those guys who go into politics are, since power+sex is a thrilling combo, but he’s never been a power-hungry guy. He said the most cheating he would ever do would probably be buying lots of expensive modern furniture behind my back. LOL. So girls, marry architects not politicians. And no, my husband does not read my blog. Because if he did he would die of embarrassment and he’s too cool to tell me what I can and can’t write. In fact, the ONLY time he ever read my blog was when I said that Philippe Starck, this designer is like “a god in our house because Mike is an architect”. And Mike totally freaked out because it’s just not true—I mean, it’s true in a sense, but not really true. Because apparently saying something like that makes Mike very very uncool. And Mike is like Paulie Bleecker from Juno. He’s very cool. (And he tries really really hard. Which is cool because it’s so earnest. Which is even better than cool. You know? Mike is my Paulie Bleecker.) So I told him, okay, first off, none of your architect friends or clients read my blog. And if there ARE readers who are architects which I highly doubt, since my readers are mega shopper vampire fashion and book freaks, but anyway if any architect is reading this, Mike would just like to clarify that while he likes Philippe Starck’s stuff, he does not think he is a god.

Anyway, I should get to that copyedit now, and putting together the sneak peeks!

I think we will shoot to have the sneak-peeks out by May 30th, the same day that the BEA people get their hands on the chapter samples. So if you haven’t signed up for the newsletter yet, do so today!

xoxo
Mel

Sick Day

I’ve been battling a cold for the past two weeks, as has my child (last night: fever of 102, out of baby Tylenol, 2AM trip to the Ralph’s. Ooo, that was FUN.) But seriously, it’s times like that that remind me of how much parents really matter. Because even though I felt on the edge of death, the thought of my daughter (she’s a girl not a boy even though her name is Mattie. Which is short for Mattea which was my Spanish great-grandmother’s name) being so sick shot a bolt of adrenaline through me and Mike that for the hour that we freaked out and struggled to take her temperature and desperately consulted the baby books and considered calling my mom or his brother the doctor, we totally did not even think of how tired we were or how late it was, just the BABY IS SICK!! AAAH!!

She’s fine now. Still has the sniffles but her fever’s down, thank god.

But as for me, I’m still sniffling and shuffling. Part of me is kind of enjoying this because since I’m sick, I can’t be expected to work (as if anyone expects me to work but me!) and I just curl up on the couch and read THE HOST. I’m really excited for this new Stephenie Meyer since I would *love* to read Twilight, and friends, I tried, but I couldn’t get past a hundred pages, not because the book wasn’t great, but because I just couldn’t read about anyone else’s vampires but mine. You know? And I met Stephenie at a conference a few years ago and she told me exactly the same thing. She said she has a hoard of all the new vampire books including mine and she hopes to read them in the far future, when she’s totally done with her own vampires. But I’m TOTALLY psyched for the movie somehow. I dunno, why is it that reading about other people’s vampires feels weird, but watching them on screen does not feel like I am betraying my Blue Bloods? Have you guys seen the trailer? Hot hot hot. I’m excited!

In my first novel Cat’s Meow, the main character writes three-word fashion reviews. (McQueen: Volume! Extravagance! Carnavale!”) so I thought I would do the same for the recent books I’ve read.

Jhumpa Lahiri: Unaccustomed Earth: Unsettling! Powerful! Inspiring!

Jennifer Weiner: Certain Girls: Love! Love! Love!

Okay, so three words obviously isn’t enough for a novel. But for a fashion line, I do think it’s succinct! Haha. I loved that Jen Weiner’s new book had a YA angle—one half of the story is told by a twelve-year old girl which she does really well. Can we expect a new YA from her soon? I think we should!

That’s all for now. Updates on the sneak-peeks soonest. And I’ll be at BEA in a few weeks—come see me!

xoxo
Mel