Alumna targets post-collegiate readers in book

Bloomington-born author Meg Cabot has the Monroe County Public Library to thank for her love of literature.\nCabot, who is best known for the famed "Princess Diaries" series, spent much of her childhood in the young adults' section, soaking up books by fellow authors Judy Blume and Jane Austen, according to a press release for Cabot's most recent book. \nCabot's latest novel, "Size 14 Is Not Fat Either," was released Tuesday as the second book in her "Pink Mystery" series. "Size 14" chronicles the daily conundrums faced by Heather Wells, heroine of the previous Pink Mystery novel, "Size 12 Is Not Fat." Wells is a former teen pop sensation with a penchant for cracking the occasional murder case.\nAs an adult, Cabot frequently sports pink feather boas and sparkly tiaras. While answering college reporters' questions in a conference call, the author was talkative and always giggling. \n"Are you in Bloomington? Tell everyone there I said hi," Cabot said, adding that she would never forgo an offer for a French dip sandwich at Nick's English Hut.\nBefore she was an internationally known author, Cabot was a fine arts student at IU.\nAlthough she has published almost 40 books for young adults, Cabot said that she wasn't a popular writer in her English classes. She recalls a multitude of professors who colored her papers with cruel comments. \n"I would write for the one or two girls in the class who actually liked my writing," she said. \nStill, she took a creative writing course every semester and continued to write the contemporary fiction she felt was her calling. \nAfter graduation, she moved to New York City to pursue a career in freelance illustration. She often found herself feeling she could write better books than the ones she was illustrating.\nSo she did. \nAfter 10 to 20 years of writing books that various publishers turned down, the "chick lit" genre she had been writing for since college began to take off. Books like Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones's Diary" paved the way for her own novels, Cabot said. \n"What I was writing all along, people started looking at in a new way," she said. \nWhile most of her books are for young adults, "Size 14" is geared toward college students and other adults, Cabot said.\nCabot's "Pink Mysteries" heroine Wells -- assistant dormitory director at a fictionalized New York university -- finds herself overwhelmed with a sorry social life and a downhearted student body under her wing. Unbeknownst to Wells, her life is about to become even more complicated. \nWhen the university's most popular cheerleader is found dead in a dorm kitchen, Wells feels called upon to again play detective in a campus murder mystery. \nCabot, who worked for 10 years as an assistant dormitory manager at New York University, based much of Wells' daily life off of experiences she had, including residents' crazy antics, photos she took of their messy rooms and experiments like elevator surfing.\nSpending time with the young, enthusiastic students was such an enjoyable experience, she said. It's also part of the reason she is drawn to writing for young adults.\n"Being a college student is such a fun time in your life," she said. "Kids are like sponges ... they're into learning and learning about themselves."\nAs the teenage audience that enjoyed her young-adult novels grows older, Cabot seeks to keep their attention with post-collegiate characters such as Wells. She said she feels many authors are not addressing readers who are fresh out of college and struggling to find their places in the working world. \n"The age of the 20s crisis is a genre that needs to be explored," she said. \nBecause of criticism she received as a twentysomething, Cabot tries to encourage future writers. Being passive is not the key to getting things to happen, she said. \n"You're not a $100 bill -- not everyone will like you or your writing," she advised aspiring authors. "But be true to yourselves, and you'll be fine"