UK Style - Presenting Megan McCafferty

It's Thursday, so you know what that means? Yep, it sure does, it's time for another of my UK style posts and this week I have the amazing Megan McCafferty author of the Jessica Darling series.  If you haven't read these books , I recommend them more than chocolate cake, they are really just that scrummy.  Without further ado, here is Megan:-

I am embarrassingly untraveled. Oh, I’ve been all over the United States, up and down both coasts and to many of the square states in between. I’ve ventured Northward to Canada and Southward to Mexico and have vacationed on several islands in the Caribbean. 

However, for reasons both circumstantial and financial, I’ve only crossed the Atlantic once and that was fifteen years ago, the summer before my senior year of college. I was in an a cappella singing group called the Clefhangers (don’t hold that pun against me) and we were somehow chosen to provide entertainment on the legendary QEII cruiseship on its journey from New York City to London. 

The Clefhangers’ (seriously, it wasn’t my idea) repertoire included “(Oh What a Night!) December ’63,” “Kiss Him Goodbye” and other cornball granny-pleasers. My group wasn’t the only entertainment for the five-day trip, of course. The star attraction on the vessel was the one and only Regis Philbin whom we never got to meet in person because he was put up in the posh, upper-class quarters above sea level while the college kids were kept down deep in steerage. If it had been the Titanic 1912, I’d be dead. On the upside, I became very familiar with a variety of aquatic species because our porthole was submerged underwater for the entire trip. 

After we docked, we had 48 hours in London, during which time I did every cheesy touristy thing imaginable before flying back to NYC on Virgin. To this day that was most pleasant flight I’ve ever taken, and reason enough to return.

Here are five more reasons I’d love to go back to the U.K.

1. Nearly every branch of my family tree has its roots in the U.K. If I followed the Latin American tradition of incorporating both maternal and paternal surnames, mine would be something like Megan Goodwin MacDonald Fitzmorris McCarthy McCafferty. Your people are my people.

2. Waaaaay less sunblock.

3. I’d get to see the best of the BBC--like The Office and Skins--as it airs and not have to wait a year for it to hit stateside. And I wouldn’t be all obnoxious about it when my American friends finally caught on, you know, like, “Ohh. I watched that series ages ago...

4. Temporarily relief from the embarrassment of living in the only industrialized nation without universal health care. 

5. Once in the U.K., I’d travel all throughout Europe. No more excuses for the pathetic neglect of my passport!

THANKS MEGAN

You can find out more about Megan on her website here and you can also follow her on Twitter right here.