Rooting through a thrift shop probably wouldn’t be considered cool by the in-crowd classmates of junior Steph Landry.
But that’s how author Meg Cabot created the character, a teen desperate for the Holy Grail of peer approval in Cabot’s latest novel, “How to Be Popular.”
“I found this old book from the ’50s on popularity, and it had silly advice, like what kind of gloves to wear to a garden party,” she says.
“So I started thinking about all the e-mails I get from readers bemoaning the fact that they’re not popular. I don’t know, maybe this is just symptomatic of girls who e-mail authors,” she jokes. “So I began to read a bunch of other books on popularity.”
Cabot also wrote “The Princess Diaries.”
“If you Google `popularity,’ you get all these business Web sites. So it’s essentially the same thing if you’re in 7th grade or a CEO. The tricks aren’t all that different.”
Cabot herself, however, didn’t know those tricks growing up in Bloomington, Ind. It’s tough to believe that this chatty, enthusiastic woman who punctuates every other sentence with a laugh used to be, well, a big dork.
“I was a total nerd,” she says. “But I went to my 20th high school reunion a few years ago, and a lot of the girls who had everything — the great bags and the fancy jeans — were divorced wives of plastic surgeons and were miserable.
“What was really weird is that girls who wouldn’t talk to me in high school came up to me with their kids and said, `Meg and I were best friends!’ and I was, like, who is this person?”
Kids, especially young teens, are drawn to Cabot’s books, such as “All-American Girl” and “Avalon High,” because she speaks their language.
Like. Whatever. Seriously. Hello?!
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Funny thing is, this isn’t just in her writing. This is how she talks. Seriously.
When asked how she met husband Ben Egnatz, a financial consultant and poet, she recalls briefly meeting him when she was in high school.
“He was going to Indiana University, and he asked me what I was going to major in. When I said creative writing, he said, `Don’t do that. They’ll suck all the joy out of it for you.’ So I always remembered this random guy. Years later, we met again in New York.
“Isn’t that, like, totally creepy?”
Although Cabot has written 44 books since 1998, including titles for adults (“Queen of Babble,” “Size 12 Is Not Fat”), she and Egnatz have a literature pact.
“We don’t read each other’s stuff. I don’t get poetry, and he doesn’t get fiction for girls. I say, `This would be better if your language was more accessible.’ And he says, `This would be better if you didn’t say “whatever” so much.”‘
After graduating from Indiana University with a fine arts degree, Cabot moved to New York to try her hand as an illustrator. When that didn’t pan out, she became assistant manager of a freshman dorm at New York University. (“Talk about drama!” she says.) She wrote in her spare time and racked up rejection letters.
Eventually, she got a historical romance published, followed by six more.
Then came “The Princess Diaries” in 2000 and the hit Disney flick a year later (and sequel in 2004). Additionally, her 1-800-WHERE-R-U books have been adapted by Lifetime television as the series “Missing.”
She keeps up with teen issues, she says, by “lurking” on her Web site, which has a message board for fans. And she cranks out a rough draft of an entire book in about a month.
“I just like the physical act of writing,” says Cabot, who crafts her tales in bed on a laptop computer. “I feel better when I’m typing. I don’t really look at writing as an art form. I look at it as a puzzle, a challenge. Like people who’re addicted to Sudoku.”
In “How to Be Popular,” bumbling Steph Landry is addicted to boosting her status — so much so that she vows to adhere to rules in a dusty volume she discovers in an attic.
Like the one Cabot found in a thrift shop.
The author sprinkles excerpts from a fictional ’50s social guide throughout “Popular”:
Judging by the behavior of others around you, you should be able to tell whether you are liked, merely tolerated — or totally unpopular. If you are merely tolerated or totally unpopular, it is time to take action.
While Steph is stumped on how to triumph over stylish (but evil) Lauren Moffat to win the eye of gorgeous (but vapid) quarterback Mark Finley, Cabot is at the top of her game.
What’s it like to be the head cheerleader of teen fiction?
“It’s fabulous, but it’s weird,” replies Cabot, 39.