Meg Cabot
The novelist who created the wildly popular “Princess Diaries” series for girls will make her first trip to Iowa today to promote her newest book for adults, one with more teeth.
Meg Cabot says “Overbite” is her second foray into the underworld of vampires in New York City, a big departure from the pink and pretty tales of princesses.
“The heroine of the book has discovered this vampire infiltration that is being hidden by the mayor’s office and she’s trying to fight it,” Cabot says.
“Unfortunately, she is in love with one of the vampires, but she didn’t know he was a vampire when she fell in love with him. So it’s the big moral question, what do you do when you find out your boyfriend is a bad guy? Do you turn him in? Do you stay with him and try to change him? But we all know you can’t change men, especially when they’re demons.”
With 50-some books in print, Cabot has had multiple number-one New York Times best-sellers and has sold more than 16-million copies worldwide. The new book is a sequel to last year’s “Insatiable,” which she says is a modern tale of more traditional vampires, in the vein of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
“I’ve tried to base mine on ‘Vlad the Impaler,’ the original kind of Eastern European vampires, which is what the creator of ‘Buffy’ did, too,” Cabot says. “I wanted to bring it back, away from the very popular ‘Twilight’ series right now, which didn’t really have vampires that were the scary kind, the kind that don’t sparkle and actually want to kill you.”
The 44-year-old Cabot says she became a dedicated fan of the fanged and fearsome when she started reading Anne Rice’s ten-book “Interview with the Vampire” series, which was launched in 1976. “Vampire stories hit and peak about every ten years, then there was ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ then I started researching Bram Stoker’s vampire story hit at a certain time and really throughout all of civilization, there have been vampires in every single culture in the world.”
These books target adult readers, but Cabot’s seen much success with her other writing that aims at teens and pre-teens. Cabot’s 16-book series, “The Princess Diaries,” has been published in 38 countries and was made into two hit films by Disney. She says she has several books in the works right now and may eventually revisit that popular character, especially after all the buzz following the Royal Wedding back in April.
She says, “After Kate Middleton and Prince William got married, I got a lot of mail from people wanting to see Princess Mia’s wedding, so who knows?” Cabot is an Indiana native and now lives in Key West, Florida. She’ll be speaking and signing copies of “Overbite” at seven P.M. today (Tuesday July 12th), at Kirkwood Community College’s Ballantyne Auditorium in Cedar Rapids, her first and only Iowa appearance. For details, visit: www.megcabot.com