Monthly Archives: July 2009

AAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is the sound of a happy author. I love you Entertainment Weekly, I love you so much. I have read your magazine religiously all this last decade, snickering along with all the insider-y jokes, the Bullseye, the Hot List, the Ausiello Files—it’s all so good—and now the love is RETURNED!

Go check out a copy of the AUGUST 7 ALL VAMPIRE EDITION of the magazine! It is amazing!! There is an interview with me, Charlaine Harris, Anne Rice, PC Cast and Laurel K. Hamilton. (Stephenie Meyer is taking a break from the press these days—so no interview from her.) It’s fun to see what all the other vamp authors think of vampires, and I like how the mag said it’s a woman-centered phenomenon. Very cool!!

As a former journalist, I am just so tickled and flattered—and I get a huge thrill every time I am covered in the magazines I read cover to cover, I still remember the first time I or my work was featured in the New York Observer, The New York Post, Page Six, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Glamour, Newsweek, Time, Teen Vogue, Cosmo and now…Entertainment Weekly!! Maybe that frothy piece in Vogue or Vanity Fair or Harpers Bazaar can’t be that far behind??? Hehe!! I’m ready for my close-up!!

Thank you to all of you guys who have followed the Bloodz through three books already. And now, because I’m in such a good mood, here’s a sneaky-peek at Van Alen Legacy. We are hard at work at our INSANELY COOL trailer which will drop mid Aug or early Sept. So watch this space!

AND NOW….A LITTLE SNEAK PEEK OF THE VAN ALEN LEGACY!

“Jack Force stepped inside. Unlike the other revelers, he was dressed simply, all in black. A Venator’s uniform. His platinum hair was cut short, in military fashion, making his sharp aristocratic features look even more striking. He moved with a natural grace, stalking the edge of the room like a dangerous animal circling its prey. How handsome he was—Schuyler had forgotten. Or maybe she had only imagined she had forgotten.”

Happy Weekend!

xoxo
Mel

July 29, 2009 (7:30 PM)
Reading at Skylight!
1818 N. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 9002
I will be reading from Eternal Kiss with Cecil Castellucci, Aimee Bender and Lisa Yee!
Here’s the descrip from Skylight: Vampires, freaks, and geeks! A night celebrating the publication of three new anthologies of young adult short stories. Eternal Kiss presents twelve teen vampire tales, Sideshow turns the spotlight on the freaks and outcasts with ten original stories, and Geektastic covers all things geeky with thirteen stories, plus illustrated interstitials. It’s an evening of short fiction for current and former freaks, geeks, nerds, and jocks (and vampires?) alike.

It’s going to be so much fun and a great show!

xoxo
Mel

Hello all!

I’m sorry I have not been blogging in a while. It’s just been a very hectic summer. We decided not to rent the beach house this year and instead go on lots of little trips and stay at fabulous hotels all along the coast. It’s been fun but I don’t know if I prefer it in the end. We’ll have to do better next year, we’re thinking of renting a house on St. Bart’s—it’s not high season (or it’s the “wrong” season to go to St.B but who cares? Maybe we’ll bump into SILEX from Real Housewives NYC!!). Anyway…

I have so many questions from you guys… most of them concern when is a movie or TV show of Blue Bloods coming out (not anytime soon)  or a fifth Ashleys book (no, no fifth Ashleys. I’m sorry. But I am writing a short story that will resolve the end of the series and will post it here before the end of the year), or how to pronounce Schuyler’s name (Skyler not Shooler), is covered in the FAQ section. So please look there first to see if any of your questions have been answered.

As for me, it’s been an interesting transition, my kid is almost three years old, and I’ve really been feeling, well, OLD lately. I think if you never have a kid you kind of stay young forever because you have all the time in the world for yourself. But once there is a kid, it’s just different. Part of why being a parent is so difficult now is that, well, we are just older—we had this great life of friends and freedom and then it all kind of crashes down and ends and you’re just sitting on the couch again watching TV.

Mike and I grew up in houses where our parents were home all the time. Not during the first part of my childhood, when my parents were socialites and went out all the time—I only saw my dad, for instance, on Sundays. But once we moved to the US their social life ended and they were just home. And that’s a great feeling, having your parents at home when you’re young. It makes you feel really secure. I remember feeling WORRIED all the time when I was little and not really falling asleep until I heard my parents’ car in the driveway and the gate opening in the middle of the night—I was always WORRIED they would a) never come back or b) get killed while they were out.

So Mike and I are home a lot now. Because we are parents. Sigh. And it’s just other things, like looking older. In my mind I still think I’m this hot cool young thing but lately people are calling me ‘ma’am’ at the Whole Foods. Ma’am!! Who is that??? Don’t I carry a wallet that says I DON’T WANT TO BE AN ARTIST I WANT TO BE A POP STAR EVERYONE IS AN ARTIST THESE DAYS – JOHNNY ROTTEN. Johnny Rotten! Yeah, Johnny Rotten on my wallet! I mean c’mon! I’m still rebellious and cool…and oooh, truffle oil. Yeah. Put that bitch in my basket. Truffle oil!! I am old.

Some of my friends are over forty or turning forty this year which is unacceptable because that means in TWO YEARS I will be forty myself. FORTY!!! SHOOT ME NOW!! And I’m not one of those people who really care about age, really, I’m not a numbers girl. But it’s just…so weird. Like, how did that happen?? WHY GOD WHY??? I loved being twenty-two. God I was cute at twenty-two. And you know it’s so sad to hear formerly attractive women talk about losing their looks because it’s like, oh god, just shut up already. Did anyone else read the Elizabeth Wurtzel piece in Elle about losing her beauty? Fascinating right?

And you know why it’s sad, because even though there are so many beautiful women over 40 like Michelle Pfieffer and Demi Moore and all those ladies, is that even though you are still beautiful, you are still.. OLD. And there’s just something gorgeous about being young. All the young are gorgeous and fresh. And you, beautiful as you are, are old, and should make way for the young and hot to take their turn on the stage.

I remember guys would ask me out on the street, I remember a guy following me all the way down to the subway and asking me out, I remember one guy telling me he saw me at the movies over the weekend and he noticed we always took the same train and could he take me out to dinner? And I remember old rich guys hitting on me at fancy nightclubs. (They were old because they were…what? 32? HA! Although some were um, 52.) And then I met Mike when I was 25 and then you know… you kind of stop exuding that ripe sexy availability…and then it just fades…although you do make an effort to keep looking cute for your husband, who if he is a good guy, will try to notice once in a while (knee-high boots always seem to do it)…but to the rest of the world you’re just…

A Mom. Ma’am.

Growing-up sucks.

I always think EVERYONE ELSE looks old, which is why I can’t seem to make friends with people with kids because they all look like PARENTS! As hip and cool they try to look, they still look like PARENTS! And I can’t be friends with such squares!! PARENTS! And then, I realize I AM A PARENT and I PROBABLY LOOK OLDER THAN THEY DO. ARGGH!

Anyway.

What else am I doing other than worrying about aging. Which for a YA author is like, gross, right? Like shut up already old bag! HA!

Working on BB5 now, and it it’s so fun. Planning our trip to the Venice Biennale this November (which inspired Masquerade). Still weekend-house-hunting in Palm Springs even though it 120 degrees out there. Shopping for my fall wardrobe for my book tour. Contemplating hiring a personal shopper although a personal shopper=crack dealer basically. Missing my friends in New York. Planning a huge launch party. (I loves me a fab launch.) Dropping the kid off at preschool. All is right in the world…

xoxo
Mel

Hello! I answered this question on the Pulse It boards but thought I would re-post here too.

One question that a lot of you guys want to know is: why write about super-rich people?

Well, I have to blame the escapist entertainment of my youth. I have always loved stories about mega-rich, mega-tragic people, like Dynasty, Dallas and Falcon Crest, and when I was a kid, I sneakily read all of my mom’s Jackie Collins and Judith Krantz books. Those books were all about people whose problems were on a larger scale in every way – diamonds, jets, furs, cheating boyfriends of aristocratic heritage. I loved them. The world they showed was so different from the world I lived in.

But also: Not TOO different.

When I was growing up in Manila, my mother’s family lived in a four-mansion estate, walled in and guarded by sentries, and I was brought up on stories of fortunes lost and won, married into and out of, and the strict rules of being in “society”. (An ordinary conversation around the table would be like, “Oh, Lola, she could have married the heir to the [BIGGEST ELECTRIC COMPANY IN THE COUNTRY], he was so in love with her, but she didn’t, and now look what happened.”) It was like a 19th century novel—you know, she could have married Mr. Darcy! My grandfather was from a very wealthy, landed Chinese family, who disowned him for marrying my grandmother, who was Filipino-Spanish. (My grandmother’s family wasn’t too shabby either—she was a debutante and from a prominent Spanish line. But you know, she wasn’t Chinese, which didn’t sit well with my grandfather’s fam.) On my dad’s side, there were vast provincial holdings, real-estate and ties to the Marcos clan, (my grandmother was one of Imelda Marcos’s Blue Ladies – a “lady in waiting”).

When I was little my parents would have our clothes custom-made for three months of travel to Europe. My dad had a tailor in Hong Kong and all his suits made there. Vacations were on private beaches, sometimes private islands (flown there by friend’s private jets). It was this lush, kind of feudal life and it all ended when my dad’s investment bank went under and we had to move to America and become humble immigrants.

But I still remembered what it was like: the chauffeurs, the servants, the entitlement. My parent’s glamorous, crazy parties. My mom teaching me how to put together a dinner menu with our chef. The thought that I would have to learn to cook never crossed either of our minds! All good famiies had personal chefs. What I needed to learn was how to plan dinner menus!

So in a way, my childhood had become, for me, as fantastical as the stories in Judith Krantz’s novels. Because it was gone in a poof. And now we were living in America, working at the mall, and all that ordinary stuff. (I had never seen my mother wash dishes until we moved here.)

My stories are my escape, and also a remembrance of what my life was like, a way to reconnect with my childhood.

xoxo

Mel