After Meg graduated from Indiana University, Cabot moved to New York City, with the original aim of pursuing a career as an illustrator. in 1991. However, she soon quit this job and started working as an assistant manager of the freshman dormitory at New York University.
Meg Cabot married financial writer and poet Benjamin D. Egnatz on April 1, 1993. Their wedding date, April Fool’s Day, was a deliberate play on her husband's belief that only fools get married in the first place. The wedding was actually an elopement in Italy. Her novel
Every Boy's Got One is loosely based on her own elopement. She has two cats, Henrietta (a one eyed cat) and Gem, about whom she often blogs.
After living in Indiana, California, New York, and France, she now currently resides in Key West, Florida. She splits her time between an apartment in New York City and a barn in Bloomington, Indiana.
Children's novels
Allie Finkle series
- Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls: Moving Day, March 1, 2008
- Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: The New Girl, August 5, 2008
- Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Best Friends and Drama Queens, March 10, 2009
- Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Stage Fright, September 15, 2009
- Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Glitter Girls and the Great Fake Out, March 2010
- Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Blast From the Past, September 7 2010
The Allie Finkle series chronicles the challenges Allie Finkle faces when she moves away and becomes the new girl in school, as well as other difficulties associated with growing up. Allie confronts these issues by making rules to live by, which helps her find out who she really is.
Young adult novels
The Princess Diaries series
The Princess Diaries series is the most notable series written by Meg Cabot, and has been published in more than 40 countries. Meg Cabot Biography — Airhead Author — CosmoGIRL! The first book in the series was published in October 2000; the series spent 38 weeks on the
New York Times Children's Series Best Sellers List and was sold to publishers in 37 foreign countries.
In 2001 and 2004 respectively, the series was brought to the big screen by Walt Disney Pictures as
The Princess Diaries and
Royal Engagement starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews.
Note that in the UK and Australia the books are published under titles based on the volume number (e.g.:
Mia Goes Fourth).
- The Princess Diaries, Volume I / The Princess Diaries (October 2000)
- Princess in the Spotlight / The Princess Diaries: Take Two (June 2001)
- Princess in Love / The Princess Diaries: Third Time Lucky (March 2002)
- Princess in Waiting / The Princess Diaries: Mia Goes Fourth (April 2003)
- Project Princess (August 2003)
- Princess in Pink / The Princess Diaries: Give Me Five (March 2004)
- Princess in Training / The Princess Diaries: Sixsational (March 2005)
- The Princess Present (October 2004)
- Party Princess / The Princess Diaries: Seventh Heaven (March 2006)
- Sweet Sixteen Princess (May 2006)
- Valentine Princess (December 2006)
- Princess on the Brink / The Princess Diaries: After Eight (January 2007)
- Princess Mia / The Princess Diaries: To The Nines (January 2008)
- Forever Princess / The Princess Diaries: Ten Out Of Ten (January 6, 2009)
Illustrated by Chelsey McLaren:
- Princess Lessons (March 2003)
- Perfect Princess (March 2004)
- Holiday Princess (November 2005)
On January 6, 2009, a companion book to
Forever Princess entitled "Ransom My Heart" was published under the name Princess of Genovia, Mia Thermopolis by Avon Books, the adult division of HarperCollins, the Princess Diaries series publisher. All author proceeds from the novel, which was printed on 100% recycled paper, go to Greenpeace.
The Mediator series
- Shadowland (October 2000)
- Ninth Key (February 2001)
- Reunion (July 2001)
- Darkest Hour (December 2001)
- Haunted (February 2003)
- Twilight (January 2005)
The Mediator Series is about a 16-year-old girl named Susannah "Suze" Simon. Suze is a mediator, whose role is to help ghosts finish their business on earth so they can pass on to the afterlife. To this end, she can see, touch, communicate with, hit, punch, and 'kick ghost butt' when she has to. The series begins just after Suze's widowed mother marries Andy Ackerman, when she has moved to Carmel, California, to live in an old house complete with three stepbrothers. To make matters worse, her bedroom is haunted by an attractive male ghost named Jesse de Silva, who died 150 years earlier. Suze remembers that back in New York a fortune teller had told her that she was a mediator (which proved correct) and that she would only fall in love once but it would last for an eternity. Her one love for eternity just might be Jesse. But does he love her back?
The first four books were originally released under the pseudonym Jenny Carroll (this was when Cabot was working with different publishing houses).
Haunted was the first title to have Meg Cabot's name on it. The first four books were later reprinted under Cabot's real name in 2005 with new cover art when
Twilight was released in hardcover. The UK titles for the series were as follows:
Shadowland- Love you to Death, Ninth Key- High Stakes, Reunion- Mean Spirits, Darkest Hour- Young Blood, Haunted- Grave Doubts, and
Twilight- Heaven Sent.
The Mediator series rights have been sold to producer Julia Pistor, and will be made into a movie in the near future.
In 2010, HarperTeen announced it will be reprinting the series in omnibus editions, to be published in 2011.
1-800-WHERE-R-U series
- When Lightning Strikes (February 2001)
- Code Name Cassandra (August 2001)
- Safe House (March 2002)
- Sanctuary (September 2002)
- Missing You (December 26, 2006)
This series revolves around Jessica Mastriani, an ordinary 16-year-old girl given extraordinary psychic powers after being struck by lightning. Her powers allow her to know the exact location of missing children; after seeing a picture of a person, they appear in her dreams. The first four books take place over less than a year, and chronicle her attempts to help missing children while trying to avoid the scrutiny of the federal government. The fifth book, published four years after the fourth book, picks up the story line after Jess has turned 19. Over the course of the books, Jess is romantically involved with Rob Wilkins, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks.
The first four books were written under Cabot's pseudonym, Jenny Carroll. After poor sales, the series was discontinued. Sales improved when the books were re-released in 2004 under Cabot's real name. Cabot was unhappy with the discontinuation; she stated that she wanted to take the series up to eight books. Her current publishing house agreed to publish one more installment.
Missing You was released in December 2006 and ended the series.
The
1-800-WHERE-R-YOU series was the basis for the television show
Missing, which aired on the Lifetime cable network for three seasons from 2003 to 2006.
The series has been reprinted in the US in an omnibus edition, and retitled
Vanished.
All-American Girl series
- All American Girl, September 2002
- An All-American Girl Novel, July 2005
The series revolves around Samantha Madison, a Washington, D.C. native, who, while skipping her after-school art class, saves the life of the president, and becomes a national hero. The two books revolve around her rise to fame and her love life with the president's son, David with whom appears to want to take their relationship to the next level in the second book. There is also a short story called Another All American Girl in the anthology Our White House:Looking In, Looking Out, about Samantha's experience in the White House.
Avalon High series
- Avalon High, December 2005
- Avalon High: Coronation (three-book manga series)
- The Merlin Prophecy (July 3, 2007)
- Homecoming (June 24, 2008)
- Hunter's Moon (September 1, 2009)
There is a sequel to the first
Avalon High novel. However, instead of a regular novel, it is part of a new partnership HarperCollins brokered with Tokyopop (a leading United States manga company). It has been released as a three-book manga series, called
Avalon High: Coronation. The first manga, titled
The Merlin Prophecy, was released on July 3, 2007 and was drawn by manga artist Jinky Coronado, who does the
Banzai Girl manga. She also illustrated the other two manga.
A Disney Channel movie based on the first book will premiere in November 2010.
The Airhead trilogy
- Airhead, May 13, 2008
- Being Nikki, May 5, 2009
- Runaway, April 20, 2010
This series is about an overachieving high school girl, Em, who wakes up after an accident to discover her brain has been transferred into the body of a teen supermodel. Now instead of being judged by her grades, everyone is judging Em by her looks, and she has to fight a worldwide corporation to find out the truth about what happened if she wants to get her old life back and save the lives of her friends and family.
Other young adult fiction
- Nicola and the Viscount, August 2002
- Victoria and the Rogue, March 2003
- Teen Idol, July 2004
- How to Be Popular, July 2006
- Pants on Fire (formerly titled Tommy Sullivan is a Freak), May 2007
- Jinx, July 31, 2007
- The Abandon trilogy, Spring 2011
Adult Novels
Insatiable series
The first book in Meg's latest series for adult readers,
Insatiable, was released on June 8th, 2010, and became an instant
New York Times bestseller. This series is a modern retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but with a twist. The main character, Meena Harper, has a special gift: she can foretell people's death . . . just not her own. Even worse, she's being forced by the television show for which she works to write vampires into the plot due to their popularity. Meena, however, hates vampires (she doesn't believe in them, and doesn't like how they always go after--and kill girls). This complicates things when she finds out from Alaric Wulf, a demon-hunter with a secret unit of the Vatican called the Palatine Guard, that vampires are attacking girls all over her native New York City, and that her new boyfriend might be one of them . . . Lucien Antonescu, Dracula's son, the Prince of Darkness. A sequel to Insatiable called
Craving will be out in the US in July 2011.
Heather Wells series
- Size 12 is Not Fat, December 27, 2005
- Size 14 is Not Fat Either, November 28, 2006
- Big Boned, December 26, 2007
The Heather Wells series is an adult mystery series that features former pop star Heather Wells. Heather was once a teen star, but was fired by her recording company when she asked to sing songs she had written instead of the ones they composed for her. The book opens just after Heather has gotten a job as a residence house coordinator at New York College and quickly discovers that young girls in the dorm are being murdered.
The second book was originally titled
Phat Chick, but this was changed by the publishers to
It's Not Over Until The Size 12 Chick Sings, and finally,
Size 14 is Not Fat Either, which continued Heather's amateur sleuthing adventures.
The third book in the series is published under the title "Size Doesn't Matter" in Australia and Great Britain. (In other countries, such as the U.S. and Canada, it was entitled "Big Boned".) In 'Size Doesn't Matter', Heather solves another mystery, and is involved in a love triangle with Tad, her boyfriend, and Cooper, whom she secretly loves, but rejected her.
In March, 2008 the series was contracted for two additional books, which should be released in 2011 or 2012.
Queen of Babble series
- Queen of Babble, May 2006
- Queen of Babble in the Big City, June 26, 2007
- Queen of Babble Gets Hitched, June 24, 2008, April 21, 2009 (paperback)
Queen of Babble debuted at #27 on the New York Times Bestseller List. The main character of this romantic comedy, Lizzie Nichols, is a recent college grad who isn't sure what she wants out of life. All she knows is that she can't keep a secret, even her own. This causes her many romantic, friendship, and work-related problems, especially after moving to New York City after graduating from college. There, she can't seem to keep her mouth shut long enough not to screw up her dreams . . . but nothing is going to keep her from trying to find the career she's wanted. And maybe a boyfriend, too.
Romance novels
These novels were written under Cabot's pseudonym Patricia Cabot:
- Where Roses Grow Wild, March 1998
- Portrait of My Heart, January 1999
- An Improper Proposal, November 1999
- A Little Scandal, June 2000
- Lady of Skye, December 2000
- Educating Caroline, November 2001
- Kiss the Bride, May 2002
- Ransom My Heart, January 2009 written by Mia Thermopolis, Princess of Genovia
Boy series
- The Boy Next Door, October 2002 (as Meggin Cabot)
- Boy Meets Girl, January 2004 (as Meggin Cabot)
- Every Boy's Got One, January 2005
These books are loosely connected romantic comedies told in emails, IMs, and brief journal entries.
The Boy Next Door was a Kelly Rippa Book Club Pick on
LIVE! with Regis and Kelly.
Other works
- She Went All the Way, December 2002 (as Meggin Cabot)
- Insatiable, June 2010
Short stories
- "The Christmas Captive" (as Patricia Cabot), included in the adult romance anthology A Season in the Highlands, which was published in November 2000.
- "Girl’s Guide to New York through the Movies" included in Metropolis Found: New York Is Book Country 25th Anniversary Collection, published in August 2003.
- "Kate the Great" included in Thirteen: Thirteen Stories That Capture the Agony and Ecstasy of Being Thirteen, published October 2003.
- "Party Planner" included in the adult short story collection Girls' Night In, published September 2004.
- "Connie "Hunter" Williams, Psychic Teacher" included in the teen short story collection Friends: Stories About New Friends, Old Friends, and Unexpectedly True Friends, published August 2005.
- "Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls" included in the CosmoGIRL! short story collection Shining On, published April 2006.
- "Reunion" included in the adult short story collection Girls' Night Out, published June 2006.
- "Cry, Linda, Cry: Judy Blume’s Blubber and The Cruelest Thing in the World" included in Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume, published Spring 2007.
- "Ask Annie" included in Midnight Feast, published July 2007.
- "The Exterminator's Daughter" included in Prom Nights From Hell, published May 2007.
- "Every Girl's Dream" A short story written by Cabot out of the Mediator Series.
- "Princess Prettypants" A short story in the anthology Zombie vs. Unicorns published in September 2010.
- The Night Hunter A short story in the anthology Fear: 13 Stories of Horror and Suspense published in September 2010.
Screenplays
- Early versions of the screenplay for Disney's Ice Princess, released in 2005, were written by Meg Cabot
