Glamour

This week is supposed to be LOL moments. Sometimes, it's best to take crazy, insanely bad moments and try to see the humor in them, while you're in them. Turn them into LOL moments if at all possible. I recently had an experience that I will share with you here.

As you may or may not know, I am co-editing an anthology with Carrie Jones (bestselling author of the NEED series) called DEAR BULLY. It will be coming out from HarperCollins next fall. I will tell you more about this project as we get closer to it (and more information becomes available), but today I'll tell you about my very unglamorous GLAMOUR magazine shoot. If you check out the February issue of Glamour, you can see the article about me and Carrie and how we came up with the idea of putting together a group of young adult authors' personal essays about bullying.

In any case, I had really become fast friends with the writer assigned to the story. When she told me that we were going to be flown to do a Glamour photo shoot, I was so excited!

Were they flying us into New York City? Um, no.

They wanted us to go to Maine.

Hmmm???? Maine? Why Maine?

Well, whatever. It's a Glamour photo shoot and it will be fun. So I thought.....

Here's my correspondence with the writer of the story, letting her know that the Glamour experience wasn't exactly a "glamorous" experience.

Dear S.,

---

Left my house at 4:30 p.m. Just arrived at the hotel in Bar Harbor at midnight. First plane was canceled. Second plane rescheduled for 7:20. Once in the air, we discover we can't land in Bar Harbor because of fog. We land in Augusta. There's no car for me and the hair and makeup artist, M.. We are shoved into a van that seats eight. There are ten of us and a baby. We drive for three hours in pouring rain. During the van ride, I couldn't even sit completely on the seat and had an arm rest digging into the middle of my back. And the van driver said that even though the door I was shoved up against sounded and felt like it would bust open at any time, it had only been slammed shut so many times that it just made funny sounds. For three hours... Did I mention there was no heat in the van?

We arrive at the hotel to discover there is no one to check us in. By this point, M. and I have become best friends because we cannot believe this is actually happening. She just finished a fashion shoot in Sardinia, and now we are in the middle of nowhere Maine, near the Canadian border. We are slap happy and decide to pick out some couches to sleep on in the lobby. Finally we call and wake up the night person. He has some bad news. Our rooms aren't in the actual hotel, but are in the motel part that is a five minute walk in the pouring rain. Of course they are, we say!

The bright side is that M. and I have become fast friends due to this war story we've shared. We weren't so happy when the photo editor texted M. to say that we were missed at the lobster feast that the rest of the crew had.

So....why did we have to fly to Maine for this again? Was it to shoot some pretty trees and ocean views? Because we have those in Boston.

Okay, I'm going to sleep now in the Bates Motel section of the inn and hoping that the creepy van driver who almost ran us off the road several times doesn't come back and kill me in my sleep. Luckily M. will take pity on me tomorrow and try to hide my dark circles. Then again, it's a piece on bullying, so maybe people will think I just got into a fistfight with the bullies.

Just wanted to share my fun-filled evening. I think I'm going back to being a hermit and never leaving my house.

xx

Megan

(who is still your friend after this trip from Hell! I think I would have preferred sending in headshots. Or at this point, stick figure drawings. )

Hi S.,

The shoot turned out to be great (freezing cold and windy, but great). I still have absolutely no idea why it was in Maine, because we took pictures in a park on some bleachers and by the ocean. Considering we have tons of schools/bleachers/parks and amazing coastlines right here in Boston, it was kind of weird.

Anyway, the Glamour team, the photographers, and my new BFF M.-- the insanely talented and spirited makeup artist who was my partner in crime throughout the entire adventure-- were all wonderful. (I was very excited to see that the outfit selected by the stylist was almost EXACTLY the clothes I was wearing -- does that mean I'm in style? Who knew?) Although I do need to run right out and buy those AMAZING Frye boots that I wore on the shoot. I had to tromp through wilderness and muck in freezing temps and they kept my feet toasty warm. A definite bonus. Plus, they made me look supercool. The shoot was FREEZING, but really fun and I think that the photo editor felt bad that we had a night of hell getting to the shoot.

The kicker was when we left the next day, the cab ride to the airport was 20 minutes tops. (Not the 3 hour ride from hell that we suffered through the previous night when we landed in Augusta). So, live and learn. I've made a new BFF (M.) out of the situation, got to know some really great people from Glamour and had an experience that I never would have had if it weren't for YOU and your awesome article. (Plus, you and I are great friends and I even brought your book to read on the trip!)

M. sent me this pic of the shoot, so I could get some idea of what it was going to look like. So, I wanted to send it along to you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you again for everything. Can't wait to read the article.

xoxo

Megan

(who is now defrosted and happy to be home)

So, in closing, I took a situation that was really kind of miserable going through it, and chose to see the humor instead. I knew that the bottom line was that this book is going to do a lot of good and will hopefully help a lot of people. Getting the word out about it is just one of those things that I needed to do. And if it meant going on a 3 hour van ride from hell up to the hotel that was featured in The Shining, posing in freezing cold Maine and risking frostbite, then so be it! The people from Glamour were actually wonderful. They sent me a wonderful gift package to make up for the confusion and chaos of the trip. And even though I wasn't prepared to see a gigantic picture of myself in Glamour magazine (with no Maine coastline in sight, oddly enough), it was a thrilling experience that I may never get to go through again.

Most of the time we end up looking back on things and laughing. So, isn't it better to laugh your way through life as you go? Makes things much easier, I think.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for inviting me to join this amazing group of talented writers. I am so honored to be here.

xoxo

Megan

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