‘Princess’ phone is off the hook
It’s time for fans of the “Princess Diaries” to bid adieu to Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldi – but author Meg Cabot isn’t going anywhere.
In the final “Diaries” installment, “Forever Princess,” the klutzy teen royal graduates from high school and sorts out her love life, leaving the multitasking Cabot to tend to the many other chick novels swirling in her head.
There’s also the restoration of her spacious 1870s house in Key West, Fla.; her auction of celebrity-created tiaras to benefit the New York Public Library; and the care and feeding of her one-eyed cat, Henrietta.
“It’s a little bit weird. I’m so used to writing about Mia,” says Cabot, whose career was boosted by two Disney movies starring Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway.
“I’ve already started talking about doing the college years and my editor’s like, ‘No!’ ”
Cabot, 41, has put a lot of herself into Mia, the gawky Greenwich Village girl who discovers at 14 she’s the sole heir to the throne of the tiny European principality Genovia.
Like Cabot, Mia wrote romance and had a hard time with algebra. Like Cabot, Mia was completely grossed out when her mom hooked up with one of her teachers. Like Cabot, she has a hefty cat.
And like Cabot’s first princess book, Mia’s steamy “Ransom My Heart,” her fictitious final senior project, was rejected by a steady stream of publishers before she hit it big – so big that Cabot put out the bodice-ripper in real life as a companion to the last “Diaries” book.
Before her writing career took off, Cabot graduated from Indiana University and headed to New York at 22 to be an illustrator, peddling her portfolio after earning a degree in art.
At age 30, after the death of her dad, Cabot got a call from her mom: She was moving to Maryland with one of Cabot’s art professors.
In the “Princess Diaries,” Mia is scandalized when her mom dates, gets pregnant by and marries her algebra teacher. Cabot’s parental tryst trauma was no less disturbing.
“I was totally disgusted and freaked out,” she says. “I can actually say I’ve seen my mom kissing my teacher at Christmas in his underwear.
“My friends were, like, ‘Why are you so upset?’ So I started writing the ‘Princess Diaries.’ ”
It took three years to get Mia into print.
“They hated it. It was rejected 17 or 18 times,” Cabot said. “There really weren’t any kind of funny chick-lit books for girls. There was a little bit of a feeling that there had to be a strong kind of moral message in children’s books.”
The series – with 10 books and six extras – has been published in 38 countries, selling more than 5 million copies in the U.S. alone.
The birthday bunch
Country singer Ray Price is 83. Singer Glenn Yarborough is 79. Country singer William Lee Golden (Oak Ridge Boys) is 70. Actor Anthony Andrews is 61. Actress Kirstie Alley is 58. Political commentator Rush Limbaugh is 58. Country singer Ricky Van Shelton is 57. Radio personality Howard Stern is 55. News correspondent Christiane Amanpour is 51. Actor Oliver Platt is 49. Singer-filmmaker Rob Zombie is 43. Singer Zack de la Rocha (Rage Against the Machine) is 39. Rapper Raekwon (Wu Tang Clan) is 39. Singer Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice) is 35. Singer Amerie is 29.