Be sure to check out Megan Crane's EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL!



I asked Megan a few questions about her and her book ... check it out:



EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL is your second published novel, right?  How did the
experience of writing your second book differ from your debut?

---My first novel just sort of poured out of me, over the course of about three weeks one summer.  (It took much longer to edit, of course.)  But there was no pouring with EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL.  Every word was a struggle, every scene was a fight.  I changed from first person to third person and then back again.  It was like running uphill!  But I hear most second novels are like that, so I'm just glad to be finished!

What was the inspiration for EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL?

---I wrote the bulk of EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL while involved in what I like to call an "extended move" from York, England to Los Angeles, which really means I spent six months hidden away in my parents' attic finishing up my dissertation, something I felt I was unlikely to do once I escaped west. 
 
What, I thought at the time, was more likely to make a grown women revert to her absolute worst than an extended stay right smack in the middle of her adolescence?  And from that thought came Meredith!


Your bio indicates you live in Los Angeles, which was my stomping ground
a few years ago.  What's your favorite restaurant in the LA area?  Your
favorite kitschy clothing store?

---I'm a little bit obsessed with the dates wrapped in bacon that they serve at A/O/C.  SO delicious.  But I'm not sure I have a favorite restaurant.  I love to eat far too much to narrow it down.  I feel the same way about clothes.  I love all the little boutiques along Third Street (although I can't really afford them) and I have an unhealthy addiction to Lucky.  And, of course, I love wandering around Fred Segal while dreaming of a starlet's bank account...  I could go on and on.  


When (and under what circumstances) did you realize you wanted to write
novels?

---I'm not sure I had that realization, really.  I had always written, but, with the exception of a teen romance I wrote in high school, I'd never completed a novel.  One summer a friend of mine, also a writer, sent her completed book out and got an agent and I thought, why have I never finished anything?  (This might have had a lot to do with the doctoral dissertation I was also not finishing at the time.)  So I decided that the next thing I started I would finish NO MATTER WHAT, and four hundred pages later, I had the first version of ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE.  Once I sent it off to the woman who would become my agent (this was about a year later, for various reasons), I thought I should probably have a second novel.  It wasn't at all clear to me that I could write a second novel.  The same friend who inspired me to write ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE pretty much talked me into finishing that one, too.  After HEAVY revision, it became EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL.  Then there was nothing to do but write a third...


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here's some more scoop:

Megan Crane’s debut novel, English as a Second Language, was a hit when it was published last year, garnering overwhelming buzz and now in its fourth printing. Kirkus called it “an engrossing, intelligent read never lacking in drama or humor,” and author Melissa Senate (The Solomon Sisters Wise Up) hailed it as a “very funny, from-the-heart debut.” Crane’s sophomore effort, EVERYONE ELSE’S GIRL (Warner Books Trade Paperback Original; October 21, 2005; $12.95), is a smart, sassy story about a quintessential “good girl” who discovers she may not be so good after all. EVERYONE ELSE’S GIRL is a welcome addition to the newly minted 5 SPOT imprint launching this fall.

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Meredith McKay has gone to a lot of trouble to create the picture-perfect life for herself—far away from her troublesome family, thank you. When her father's car accident forces her back to her hometown, however, she soon discovers that there's no running away from family issues—there's only delaying the inevitable.

Can anyone sort out a lifetime of drama in one hot summer? Throw in a hot guy from back in high school with an axe to grind, a best friend turned enemy turned soon-to-be-sister-in-law, and, of course, the sometimes irritating/sometimes delightful members of her own family, and Meredith is on her way to figuring out that a trip through the past is the best way to move forward.

With one revelation after another coming to light, Meredith must reexamine all the things she’s ever believed, including the truth about herself. Could it be that she isn’t the picture-perfect good girl she always thought she was? EVERYONE ELSE’S GIRL is a funny, poignant reminder that a trip through the past is usually the best – and only – way to move forward.

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Megan Crane, author of her debut novel English as a Second Language, is a New Jersey native who graduated from Vassar and received her MA and PhD in literature from the University of York in England. She currently lives in Los Angeles.