Thank you, Karen Abbott, Camille DeAngelis, Stephanie Gayle, Erika J. Kendrick, Renee Rosen, and Deb Olin Unferth for making my visit to the Midwest Literary Festival so memorable.
(And if any of you have a picture of that surrealist window display with the disembodied mannequin arms and the creepy muneca de Quinceanara and the droopy blonde wig, please send it so I can write Acto Numero Dos of my telenovela-in-progress, “La Escaparista Incomprendida del Aurora” or “The Misunderstood Window Dresser from Aurora.”

In only tangentially related news, I am not a big fan the NYT’s David Brooks. But his column caught my interest this morning because it’s about The Odyssey Years.
There used to be four common life phases: childhood,
adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at
[…]

Original post by megan

I’m leaving later this afternoon for the Midwest Literary Festival in Aurora, IL. The (retro)blog will return on Monday.
I have way too much reading material for a 3 night, 4 day, tightly scheduled trip, especially when the plane ride is only 3 and a half hours long.
I have:
Drown
and
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
Gifted
by Nikita Lalwani

The Death of the Grown-Up : How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization
by Diana West.
I read a lot of non-fiction on the state of contemporary youth culture as I prepare to write my novels. (A quick scan of my bookshelf reveals several titles I read in advance of Fourth Comings:
Emerging Adulthood by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett
Quarterlife Crisis by Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner
Delaying the Real World by Collen Kinder
The Price of Admission by Daniel Golden
Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita
Marriage, a History by Stephanie Coontz
I would link to all […]

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More of my arguments against a first reader’s edit suggestions: 4.) Carrie B. served no purpose.

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Before Sloppy Firsts sold, I paid an editor to read my draft and give me suggestions as to how I could make it better. I remember agreeing with most of what she said, and was happy to revise those problematic sections to strengthen the story. I still have that pragmatic approach to all revisions. I consider what’s being said, take what I need, and–as objectively as possible–think through, then defend my reasons for not incorporating the rest.
However, there were a few editorial points in that first round that I disagreed with: 1.) That it was unlikely that anyone like Hy would go undercover at a high school. 2.) That no school would allow a student like Marcus in its Honors classes after returning from rehab. 3.)The Sloppy Firsts joke between Jessica and Marcus was crass and made no sense whatsoever.

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So as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t watch a lot of TV, but the TV that I watch tends to be pure crap. For example, I loved Rock of Love. For those of you with more cultured taste in TV, this was the VH1 celebreality show in which Bret Michaels, the lead singer of Poison**, tried to find a girl who would “rock his world.”
There are many, many reasons why I loved this show, despite (or–let’s face it–because of) its rank among the worst of decline-of-Western Civilization-type programming. (How every single one of Bret’s new ballads sound exactly like Every Rose Has Its Thorn? The gratuitous girl-on-girl action? The pole dancing? The trashy golddiggers with circus tits accusing other trashy golddiggers with circus tits of being–you guessed it!–trashy golddiggers with circus tits? [I did not invent the expression, “circus tits” though I kind of wish I did […]

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The (retro)blog returns!
(With occasional postings from the here and now about the progress of the fifth and final Jessica Darling book, appearances, books you should read, songs I’ve sung just because someone asked me to and other flights of randomness.)

This quote from Time magazine was one I returned to time (ugh…that was unintentional) and again as I wrote Sloppy Firsts.

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Such as Patricia McCormick, whose devastating novel, Sold has so rightfully earned her numerous awards, most recently the Quill Award in the Young Adult Category. Between now and October 10th, vote here to make Sold the Quill Book of the Year. Show the world that the best in teen literature is often the best in literature…period.
I also know the fabulous, notorious Carolyn Mackler, whose Printz Honor book The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things was one of the most banned books last year. Celebrate Banned Book Week by reading Carolyn’s book or any one of a number of books that some people DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE. Hey, censorship! Suck it! (If that’s not a T-shirt, I don’t know what is.)
If you live in or near Chicago, you can see Carolyn and other banned writers in person today. Go here to find out the details. (Incidentally, if […]

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Last night at the Berkeley Library I was asked to sing Manic Monday by The Bangles. So I did.

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“Darling” Author Returns to Berkeley
I went to two out of four Homecoming dances. In my freshman year, I went without a date, borrowing a velvet dress that my neighbor’s daughter once wore to Eddie Murphy’s New Year’s Eve Party ‘86. I think I had fun. I didn’t NOT have fun, otherwise I would have written about it at length in my journal.
Um, wow.
I just discovered that my memory is totally wrong.
I didn’t go to Homecoming in my freshman year, I went in my sophomore year and I had a date I did write about it. The only part I got right the first time was about the dress, which I swear on the good memory of Mr. Robinson, Gumby, Buckwheat, Little Richard Simmons, and Velvet Jones that I did indeed borrow it from my neighbor’s daughter who wore it to Eddie Murphy’s New Year’s Eve Party ‘86.
(For […]

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I’ve been doing a bunch of interviews for college newspapers lately. I enjoy doing them because I find that college interviewers tend to know the books inside-out and ask more creative questions than usual. If you write for your college paper and would like to schedule a Q&A session, email me via megan@meganmccafferty.com with College Newspaper Interview as the subject. I’ll try to make time for whatever requests come in.

Just a tip: For students who live in parts of the country I haven’t traveled to (basically anywhere outside the NJ tri-state area), consider asking your campus activities board to have me speak at your school. UCLA asked. Now I’m scheduled for an event on November 28th.
While I’m on the subject of speaking engagements, I’ll be at my childhood hometown library tomorrow night at 7pm. Again, the first person who asks me to sing any song after I open it […]

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