Ooh la la, le French cover for Misguided Angel! Called “Le Secret de l’Ange” – The Angel’s Secret. Love it!!!
And this is the Polish cover for Revelations! Also my publisher over there tells me this book is a bestseller in their country. Awesome!
In Smart Chicks Tour News, we now have t-shirts!
Happy Monday!
xoxo
Mel
I’ve been reading a lot of bestsellers lately. It’s summer, it’s hot, and in between finishing up my own books I’ve been enjoying reading a bunch.
THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett: I had this book on my shelf for a long long time and the size of it looked intimidating. Also for some reason I thought it was a very “serious” book ie, not entertaining. I was very very wrong. You cannot put this book down, you just inhale it. I loved it mostly because of the depiction of this completely different lifestyle- not just the help, but the bridge clubs, the pool clubs, the junior league. I liked all the ‘society’ parts, I found it so fascinating, it’s a window into a world that we haven’t really seen. Can completely understand why it got so huge, it covers so many tricky subjects: race, domestic life, women, their friendships, their roles in the 60s and in the South. Some of my writer friends think the plot structure is amateurish, ie, in the end one of the characters writes a book called “The Help”, but it didn’t bother me too much. I have a fondness for the book-within-a-book thing, I think I even did it in Au Pairs: Crazy Hot. It’s kind of an “easy out” to end the story, but a forgivable one I think.
CUM LAUDE by Cecily Von Ziegesar: My editor sent me this to read and it was fun to be back in Gossip Girl land, sort of. It’s quite different and the author tries for something that we haven’t seen before either: the iconic college novel. What IS it about college: first-year (NOT freshman!) orientation, the strange intense people who are your roommates who become your best friends, the ear-flap-cap wearing boarding-school crunchies. (One of my roommate’s boyfriends was classic boho pseudo-intellectual prepster: he refused to change in their room because he was protesting the difference between public and private space. Yeeeeah. Put your clothes back on, hippie, we don’t need to see the meat and two veg, as my Aussie friends used to say.) Entertaining and fun and makes you nostalgic for Top Ramen and long-winded philosophical discussions about the meaning of life. (What, you didn’t do that in college? It was all “Beirut” and funnels? Hmmm.)
CHEAP CABERNET by Cathie Beck. Another Hyperion book (my adult publisher sent me a buttload of books, huzzah!). Crazy intense story of a friendship that changed her life, it’s extremely sad, very funny and really captures what it’s like to have that one wonderful crazy friend who makes everything better but with whom it’s also hard to sustain a friendship in the end. I so related to this roller-coaster friendship of all or nothing, a friend who will lend you money, ie steal it from her husband’s account so you can get a mortgage on your first house kind of friend, who is also the friend who will drop you and not talk to you for three months. Oy. It made me miss my crazy friend, and be glad that I had that friend for a time, but these friendships are almost more than friendships – they are like relationships without the sex. The love is so strong but…misdirected maybe? (My mom told me once that it was unhealthy to have this kind of relationship outside of marriage.) Real friends keep *some* distance. But what can you do? Sometimes you are damaged and you turn to these magnetic people who love you so intensely they also have to cut you off from their life.
Right now I am reading SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY by Gary Shteyngart. I cannot pronounce his last name, but he is a genius. This is an amazing book. Believe the hype. It is so funny and true and crazy and intense. And he gets so many things right, although I have a quarrel over the obvious Asian-fetish streak the guy has. I had never read anything by the guy except all the hype surrounding him and I only bought the book because the trailer was so funny and I realized, oh literary writers have a sense of humor too! (I am genre writer biased of course!) Also it’s slightly sci-fi, Orwellian, dystopian which appealed to me. Also very funny. It made me laugh/snort out loud. Dirty and raunchy and smart and insane. A mean and sharp satire of the “Decline of the West” (in college my friends and I used to point out the vacuous and the super-indulged among us and knowingly whisper to each other “Decline of the West!”) A great book that is a great work of art. Fabulous and inspiring.
That’s it for me. I’ve got two books due before the end of the month so I’ll be working a lot. I’m reading as I work this time, I find it makes the work go faster!
xoxo
Mel
I like to spend the summer reading the big book bestsellers, to find out what people are reading and also as a writer of popular fiction, it makes sense that I like popular fiction, right? But let’s get the literary stuff out of the way first, ‘cos I like that too.
The New Yorker published its 20 under 40 Best Writers of All Time round-up, and it is the kind of list that makes other writers (who don’t make the cut) throw the magazine against the wall, sobbing. Or else seethe with a bitter rage: WHY. NOT. ME??? Because the New Yorker is the magazine that all aspiring writers aspire to write for one day. Something about the Holy Grail of the Algonquin Round Table and all that writerly goodness even dripping into Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights Big City (the novel that made me want to move to New York) where the main character worked as a fact-checker or some other lowly factotum at the rag.
But as I’ve grown older, like Somerset Maugham, (whose work is analyzed in a recent issue) I’ve come to accept my limitations, and to work as hard as I can within my talents, and have learned how not to live in denial, despair, or some other kind of depressing d-word because I’m not the greatest writer of all time.
I’m happy writing popular fiction, and every week I’m happy to read the New Yorker. I only read two of the stories all the way through, the one by Jonathan Safran Foer, which I found pretentious at first, and then kind of moved me, and I ended up liking it a lot, and the one by Joshua Ferris, which I thought was brilliant and funny and awesome, give that man an award already! (Oh they already did. Heh. The PEN/Hemmingway I think.) The other stories I started but could not finish, they bored me and were eminently forgettable, and I’m not sure I buy the “these are the writers we’ll be reading in a hundred years” thing. Like, really? Mmm.
When I was writing Misguided Angel, I didn’t read a THING so after I turned it in I went on a reading orgy, even while writing Bloody Valentine and Witches of East End. The following are thoughts on several books I read.
I never know what to recommend to people when they ask me what they should read. As a reader of anything and everything, I just like books, and I don’t need every book to be this amazing Oprah-like journey of learning and enchantment. (In fact I can’t think of any genre I detest more than the Oprah book. I like Oprah. But I don’t like her taste in books. I don’t know, I just get the heebee-jeebies around those kinds of books. They just strike me as the most manipulative twaddle. Drowning babies. “Madness.” “Courage”. Bleh! I like my courage with a SWORD.) (My dad used to ask me when one of my books would be on Oprah. I cheerfully told him, NEVER.)
I like books that entertain, that are fast-paced and tell a good story. Most of popular fiction is like this, which is why I like it. But that doesn’t mean it’s all trash either—and what’s wrong with trash anyway? Trash is different from crap. Crap is insincere while trash is fun and frothy and has a bad reputation because it’s either filled with romance or shopping or some other aspect of life that we ladies like. (See the vicious criticisms of Sex and the City. Ugh!)
So yeah, I never know what to recommend because I mainly read for pleasure, which is a habit I picked up from my parents, who had a lot of Sidney Sheldon and Harold Robbins in the house when I was growing up. There’s nothing I like more than visiting someone’s home and seeing, on their shelves, among the high-falutin’ stuff, the Joyce and the Foster Wallace and the Chabon, books that are read just for the fun of it, whether it’s techie fun (all those Ludlums) or spy fun (Le Carre) or detective fun (Parker) or glitz fun (Krantz, et al). That’s when I know I’m in a reader’s house. Whenever I see shelves that are stocked with all the “right” books I always think that no one in the house reads, they only want us think that they do.
Of course, having books as decorative objects is so much better than not having any books at all. (I’m looking at you, most of the homes in L.A. SHAME!)
So anyway, here’s what I’ve read lately…
Jen Lancaster’s My Fair Lazy: Fun and feisty as usual, with a lot of heart in the end. I thought it was the most gimmicky of her books, but I still enjoyed it. I get that it’s part of her schtick, part of the story, and I didn’t let it bother me too much. I like her humor and her ambition.
Meghan Daum’s Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House: Another fun book, but kind of long, could have used some editing. Also I thought the tone was a bit too one-note somehow, that it was in the end a very shallow subject that the writer wrote very deeply about—I enjoyed it, and I like her work, mostly because I love hearing how other people live, and she’s really good at describing aspiration, and what she considers status-y and important. I’m a bit of a gossipy reader that way.
Steig Larsen’s Girl With a Dragon Tattoo: My dad was reading this book before he passed away and for the longest time I couldn’t pick it up because I was too sad to do so. It just reminded me too much of my dad, in bed, when he couldn’t move around anymore, reading this yellow-jacketed book. Sigh. But finally I was able to read it and I could not put it down. It reminded me a lot of Dan Brown, in that it was a complete page-turner, lots of good surprises, and the storytelling had a great pace. I understand why it is so popular, but I was also shocked by how NASTY the mystery in the story was—I used to read a lot of Stephen King when I was a teenager and I grew out of it a little because I don’t want to read about so much perversion anymore. It was unnerving, and part of me wondered how cynical a writer Larsen really is—he had boasted that he had written a bestseller without even publishing one book. As if he understood people’s tastes all too well. I felt the same way after reading this book after watching SPLICE. I was lured in by the “this book/movie is NASTY!” rumors but when I read/watched it I kind of wish I hadn’t. I don’t think I’ll be continuing the trilogy. When I was younger I liked this sort of thing but now that I am older I don’t like to read about violence and abuse really.
Emily Giffin’s Heart of the Matter: I discovered Emily Giffin when I was a new mom and the only books I could buy were the ones from Target because that was the only place other than home that I went when the kid was a few weeks old. I love the way she tells her stories, and again, this was another page-turner where you just get swallowed up in the story and you feel for all the characters. I also like her books because they have a little bit of the status-y thing about them, they are a description of this very genteel, upper-middle-class way of life. Especially with the private schools and the Goldman Sachs name-dropping. The book is about infidelity and marriage and I thought it was great, even though I thought the husband in it was kind of a jerk and not just because he cheated.
Peter Hedges’ The Heights: I bought this at the half-price books in Cleveland. I had heard a lot about it, and wondered what all the hoopla is about. I like checking out hoopla. It’s almost the same novel as Heart of the Matter, about a young couple and infidelity. I didn’t like it as much as HOTM, and not just because I don’t like guys writing chicklit disguised as middlebrow literary fiction. Something about the way Brooklyn was portrayed, and the young couple in it, just rang false. And I think with HOTM, Emily writes very well about women’s lives and women’s point of view of the world, while in The Heights, the female character was just the typical female character written by a dude: she looked like a former model, blah blah blah. (WHY do they always look like former models?) I like models in my fun, glamorous books (like Blue Bloods, natch) but not in my supposedly literaryesque fiction. Everyone in literary fiction should be ugly and ordinary. It’s a rule. HEH! The book was enjoyable, but I can see why women would flock to HOTM over The Heights. In a way, the snobbery in the Heights is even more subtle, and more insidious. I can’t say I liked it, but I enjoyed reading it. See what I mean when people ask if I recommend it? I mean, I do… sort of.
I haven’t read much YA / Fantasy lately because I find it’s too close to what I write and I like to write my books without knowing what’s going on in my genre really. But if you guys like my books, I’m sure you already know about Vampire Academy, Morganville Vampires, The Vladimir Tod Chronicles, the Immortals, Gallagher Girls, Shiver, Linger, The Hunger Games, Reckoning, Summoning, Beautiful Creatures, Wicked Lovely, and all those beautiful books in my section. They are all wonderful and written by wonderful YA / Fantasy writers. So go check them out if you haven’t already!
Oh, we Smart Chix have a website! It’s lovely and we will be blogging on it! Very cool.
I’m also looking forward to reading Lisi Harrison’s Monster High, which sounds HILARIOUS. And I have Cecily Von Ziegesar’s Cum Laude to look forward to, I’m hoping it’s like Cecily-does-Bret-Easton-Ellis. The main character is called Shipley, which kind of says it all. I hope she’s a model! Heh!
xoxo
Mel
Blue Bloods en Brazil!
Pretty cool right?
In other cool news, KEYS TO THE REPOSITORY hit the USA Today Bestseller List! A pretty hard list to get on because it tracks ALL books regardless of category. Suh-weet!! Thanks you guys. To celebrate KEYS best-selling status, I am finishing Bloody Valentine.
Here is the awesome pawsome final cover!
Bloody Valentine is INSANE you guys. It’s like, Charles and Allegra as teenagers! And a crazy action-packed emotional roller coaster story featuring Schuyler and Jack! And a surprise couple that I won’t reveal here! Seriously, I was getting CHILLS writing this book. It comes out December 28th. Just in time to celebrate the new year and look forward to V-D Day. I’ve taken to calling Bloody Valentine, “Bloody V” which I think grosses both my editor and my agent out, but heh.
I was reading this hilarious story in New York magazine about Twitter transgressions. Pretty amusing. I’m definitely guilty of some of those crimes. In fact, I think the writer of the piece unfollowed me because of my incessant word-count tweeting. ‘Sokay. Some writers took a lot of offense to the story, but I’ve always had a good sense of humor about myself, so I chuckled. The thing is, the Internet makes EVERYONE annoying. So I don’t take it personally when someone Qwitters me. Just as I hope people don’t take offense when I Qwitter them. It’s impulsive, and sometimes I follow, then refollow, then defollow then wallow… you know what I mean.
The Internet sometimes can feel like this distorted mirror where you “check” yourself daily. (GoogleAlert, I’m looking at you.) So you have to take everything with a grain of salt.
I had a great July Fourth in Cleveland, although my husband’s family lives about an hour away from the city in a semi-rural area so saying “Cleveland” isn’t quite right. When you think of Cleveland you think of a brown, industrial smoky place. And he comes from the freaking green countryside. There are horse ranches and apple farms near his house, and it’s all very idyllic and American and whenever I go back there I feel like driving a Chevy and having a Bud and singing Lee Greenwood (“Proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free…”—> a song they play at naturalization ceremonies. I know this because they played it when my parents got their citizenship.)
And there’s homemade peach/blueberry pie and lots of chocolate and molasses cookies. We Jet Ski’d on Lake Erie which was choppy as usual (“the lake is ALWAYS choppy” according to my husband). Then took the big boat out, and the kids (our kid and all her cousins) fished and caught a few sunfish which we threw back, relatively unharmed. (My father in law kept one a few months ago as a pet, it is a catfish and it is humungous now.) Then we saw fireworks at the Yacht Club and called it a night. It was fun, and it made me less sad because last year we were with my dad at a resort in San Diego and while things had gotten bad, in that he was starting to have a lot of pain and could only sit places and not move around too much, he was still at the pool with us, making jokes and ordering lamb chops. It’s hard to remember that and it was easier to enjoy the holiday in a totally different way. With my family, it’s resorts and shopping and with Mike’s it’s outdoorsy stuff. When our families first met—in Niagara Falls of all places—to celebrate our engagement, after the introductory lunch my family went to the outlet mall and Mike’s family took a hike to the falls.
Anyway. I need to get back to my manuscript as it’s due tomorrow and my very nice editor has threatened to have my agent’s hide if I don’t get it in. Fear is still a huge motivator for getting it done! It never changes.
xoxo
Mel
The end of Lipstick Jungle was the end of the Ashleys series. I had planned to write at least two more books, but my schedule did not end up allowing me to do so. I’m so sorry to keep you hanging.
So, at last, here are the answers to your questions about what happens to the Ashleys in THE END.
Ashley Alioto (“A.A.”) moves to Los Angeles with her mom but she and Tri have a long-distance relationship that they struggle to keep together. As the years go by, they keep making up and breaking up and then go to college and graduate and fall in love with other people and think back fondly on their first love. (Because, c’mon, you can’t end up with the person you fell in love with at TWELVE can you? Can you?) Surprisingly, the answer to this question is a YES. Tri and A.A. meet again in New York, where he is a lawyer and she is a sports agent. They have their wedding at the Tribeca Rooftop. The only Ashley at the reception is Ashley Spencer. She and A.A. are still friends, and they laugh that once upon a time, they had fought over Tri, whom most people now call Robert. A.A. and Tri move to Westchester and have three children.
Ashley Spencer gets shipped off to boarding school after Miss Gamble’s, where she goes through a bohemian phase, demands that everyone call her “India” and hooks up with lots of long-haired Phish fans. Cooper is no longer her boyfriend after he comes out of the closet in high school, but they remain the best of friends. Ashley goes off to Brown for college, and moves to New York, where she works for a succession of fashion magazines and is subsequently laid off not once but several times due to the ups and downs of the magazine industry. Finally tired of all the chaos, she starts her own blog, Daily Kisses, and after a few years sells it to Stalker Media for twenty million dollars. She’s thirty-six, still single, and has moved on to dating moguls.
Ashley Li (“Lili”) never does go back to the Ashleys after the big split at the end of the year. She’s still friendly with A.A. but the two lose touch after A.A. moves to Bel-Air. Instead, she hangs out with Max and his friends and transfers to the art school that he attends. They split up after a few months, and after high school she goes to RISD, where she majors in Painting. She never speaks to Ashley Spencer again, although later the two of them will reconnect on Facebook and meet up for drinks in the city and laugh about how silly they all were in seventh grade. After working for a famous photographer, she has a gallery show of her own and achieves a modest amount of fame. Max grows up to be a corporate banker, which she also finds out through Facebook. Ashley Li lives in Tribeca with her husband Garret, a musician, and their two dogs.
Lauren Page’s dad loses all his money in Great Recession, but Lauren and her mom amassed so many designer clothes and jewelry while they were rich that they’re able to float the family on e-Bay sales for many years. She and Christian break up but they remain friends and take each other to prom in high school (still as friends, with maybe a few benefits, but nothing serious.) Lauren goes to Harvard, becomes the head of the Lampoon and moves to Hollywood after college, and works on one television sitcom after another. She and Ashley Spencer remain friends, and whenever Ashley is in LA, Lauren meets up with her at the Beverly Hills Hotel where they order too many cocktails and Ashley flirts shamelessly with the model-waiters. After several failed relationships and one failed engagement, Lauren meets the man of her dreams, a fellow writer on her TV show and they get married in Santa Barbara. They have one child and two homes.
And that’s how it all ends up for our girls!
Hope you enjoyed it!
xoxo
Mel
The minute I turned in Misguided Angel, I had TWO more books due. Thankfully they were in pretty good shape for deadline, so instead of panicking or collapsing, I took a few days off and just went back into it. But after STRUGGLING with Misguided Angel for the better part of a year, I figured I would finish Bloody Valentine and Witches of East End in a different way.
You see, it was a miserable several months getting Misguided Angel in shape. I stopped exercising. I stopped taking my kid on a Mommy Day (which is just her and me, no nanny, usually a playdate or two with some fun Mommy friends). I stopped shopping. I stopped READING. I stopped doing ANYTHING but AGONIZING over my novel. And you know what happened? I got stuck, I got frustrated, it was the worst experience writing a book I’ve ever had. I thought, if I just concentrate on the book, it will GO FASTER. But of course, it didn’t and I just got stressed and miserable. Misguided Angel is an awesome book, I’m so proud of it and my editors and agent think it’s the best one yet. But god it was hard to get there.
So this time, I decided I would not do that. I would make my deadlines, but I would take the time to live my life as well. I would work out every other day. I would have quality time with the kid. I would set aside time to read, vege out, do whatever I wanted. And you know what? It makes writing SO MUCH EASIER. I actually get my work done FASTER. Today I wrote three thousand words before breakfast. I’m so much happier and the work is flying.
Stress is an odd thing, if you don’t manage it, it takes over your life. After writing more than twenty books you would think I would know that but I have to re-learn it every time.
Happy weekend everyone!
xoxo
Mel
Hey guys,
I’m going to be in Toronto September 25th for the Indigo Chapters Teen Read Awards Night. That’s right! The good folks up north have nominated THE VAN ALEN LEGACY in BEST TEEN SERIES. They’re giving away prizes EVERY DAY and you can vote as many times as you like – every day until September 25th in fact.
Now, don’t fail me! I’ve run two successful class presidential campaigns (and two unsuccessful ones – but I always seem to forget those). And my wonderful publisher is already sending me to Toronto win or lose. But it would be nice to win. Or not, I mean, I could always pull a Kanye, right? 😉
xoxo
Mel
Thank you to everyone who sent kind emails and your own stories of loss. Thank you for sharing and for making me feel so much better. You guys are just awesome.
I feel much better today, mostly because my books are just too much fun to write! Misguided Angel for some reason was really difficult to write, but in the end it was exactly what I wanted it to be. It’s funny because I had the story for the book for SO LONG in my head and in the end it’s exactly like the story I originally conceived and yet it was so hard to get there. (Deadlines flew by. Whoosh! With no finished book.) One of the things that is so wonderful about being a writer is a sense of accomplishment once it is done. Priceless.
I’m working on Bloody Valentine, which is heartbreaking and insanely awesome at the same time. You guys are gonna lurve it because I am so obsessed with it, seriously, I wake up and think Schuyler, Jack, Oliver and Mimi are all real people. It’s weird to remember that they are characters that I made up. They seem very real to me. But as Meg Cabot says, You can love your books but don’t looooove your books. It always surprises me that I get my books done because there is so much REAL LIFE to live—raising a child, being a wife, running a household, keeping in contact with friends, having a LIFE. Books are not a life. I love what I do, but it’s not good to be so one-sided.
Today I made my word count and I’m off to have lunch with a dear friend I haven’t seen in a long time. I’m all dressed up because it’s lunch in Beverly Hills and when in Rome… 😉 I’m looking forward to gabbing and shopping and then going off to Disneyland with my family with our brand-spanking new VIP!!!! PASS!!!! from my wonderful publisher.
Have a happy weekend everyone!
xoxo
Mel
The other day I thought to myself, “Am I ever going to be happy again?” It was a strange thing to think… especially as I am not an unhappy person, one of my oldest friends told me when we first met that I struck her as incredibly cheerful in a very old-fashioned, almost apple-cheeked, 19th-century way, that I was “merry”—something you never think of as person as being anymore. I thought that was a good word to describe me, as I am a lot like my dad and my dad was very… well, merry. He had this liveliness about him. He was such a happy person and yet his favorite motto was “I’d rather be miserable in wealth.” He liked nice hotels, Pop.
Since my dad passed away seven months ago, while the immediate shock and intense sorrow has faded a bit, I find that there is a gloom that has settled over me somewhat, that I am not quite the person I used to be before it happened. Nothing like this has ever happened to me or my family before. Sure, my parents lost their fortune and we had to move to the US, but it’s only money. Really. I learned that very early in life, I grew up thinking three-month vacations to Europe was the norm. When that ended, it was a huge shock but it wasn’t as bad—not even in the same league—as this. Losing someone you love..I never really understood what that meant. What loss means. Absence. Missing. It amazes me sometimes: here are my dad’s books, here is my dad’s library card. There is the couch he used to sit on when he would come over. He used to drive my car when I drove him to chemo. It’s like he’s everywhere but nowhere. Even the word ‘grief’ looks like grief, doesn’t it? The way it fits together, with that g and that f, it already looks so sad. Grief is a good word to describe grief. It’s a sadness that stings, that is somewhat unexpected. What is that saying? Grief is another country.
Sometimes I forget why I am sad, I just notice that I am not as happy as I used to be. Not as merry maybe. Definitely a little blue around the edges. A little melancholy. I know that no matter what, for the rest of my life, the feeling of missing will never go away. And that this loss will only compound as the years go by and we all slouch towards the inevitable.
Will I ever be happy again? I hope so. My dad certainly was. He lost a brother when he was 18, his mom when he was 25, his dad when he was 33. Both his sisters died of cancer in their late 50s, early 60s. (My dad died at 60.) And yet he was the happiest person I knew. He told us to survive his loss and to carry on. He even joked about it. When friends would call and ask how he was during that last hard year, he’d always say, “Buhay pa!” (“Still alive!”)
Nice things that happened when my dad died. The flower storm. The cards. The cards with checks, from Filipino friends. My mom cried as she opened those—she had forgotten that in the Filipino culture, it was a custom to send money when someone died. That the community shares your loss. And sends money to help offset funeral costs. It’s an immigrant thing.
We buried my dad in a cemetery. The American way, it seems now, is to cremate and scatter. I grew up going to the graves of my grandparents every weekend. In the Philippines when someone dies you wear a black pin for a year to show everyone you are in mourning. It seems so casual to me, to scatter ashes. But where would you visit? Where would you go when you feel sad? Or the urn in the living room. Really? Just…there? Remains? By the fireplace?
Some days it is easier to forget, and then some days it is not.
xoxo
Mel
We taped this video a year ago while I was at BEA! And now here it is. Lots of fun sneaks at what is in the book!
Enjoy!
xoxo
Mel