Lauren Myracle is 38 going on 15, and fluent in the instant-message lingua franca of the tweens and teens who've made her the literary equivalent of a rock star.
Her novel ttyl - e-shorthand for "talk to you later" - was written in the form of instant messages, composed at the Fort Collins Starbucks that's become Myracle's de facto office.
Along with companion volumes ttfn ("ta-ta for now") and L8r, g8r ("Later, gator"), that book launched a white-hot career arc that's still curving up, trailing Myracle, who seems a little stunned.
"It's so silly!" she says happily.
Wide-eyed, with sassy hair, Myracle punctuates her sentences with exclamation points in print and aloud, waving pink-glitter fingernails for extra emphasis.
She has a vine tattooed on her upper arm, an adornment that shocked her mother's upper-crust Atlanta friends when they spotted it at Myracle's wedding.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
"That's not permanent, is it?" they whispered, appalled - a reaction that explains why Myracle lives in northern Colorado, instead of the white-glove South.
"I'm a Southern girl and that's important to me, but I see the South as a native who's now an outsider," she said.
"Georgia is the land of pastels and ladies who lunch. I'm writing a story about growing up in the South. You know, the South where in Charleston, they ask you who your people are; in Macon, they ask where you go to church; in Savannah, they ask what do you drink; and in Atlanta, they ask where you live."
The level of candor in her novels still shocks Myracle's sister, who also is a writer, and Myracle's mother, who often reviews her manuscripts.
Her mother's insight into How to Be Bad, a book written with two other authors and scheduled for release in May, led Myracle to dramatically tone down her contribution to the conclusion.
Finding the ability to accept advice coincided with her success as an author, she said.
She ignored criticism of her first five books, all roundly rejected by publishers. Her sixth, Kissing Kate, a novel about a lesbian high school girl and her uncertain girlfriend, sold.
It was a modest success, but nothing like the ttyl series that followed. Myracle's editor suggested the concept of writing a novel entirely in instant messages.
"These books just caught on with girls," said Sidney Jackson, a bookseller at the Tattered Cover in Denver. "They're all in dialogue, which probably appeals to kids, and it makes them more authentic - that these are girls talking to each other, really saying things out of their hearts. It's light reading, but everyone needs to read something fun once in a while."
The hectic hues of the covers and the format, snags the attention of browsers, Jackson said.
The simple, bright graphic design invokes the riotous colors popular on teenagers' MySpace and other social networking pages that gave rise to the ttyl trilogy.
"My editor is about my age, and we went to high school in the 1980s, when it was so different from now," Myracle said.
"I remember we thought we were so high-tech when we had three-way phone calls about who was crushing on who. How different that is today for girls who come home and get on the computer to do e-mail, instant-message, update their blog, talk on the phone, and do homework, usually with the TV on, doing all this multitasking. Before ttyl, I didn't have any Internet presence."
Well, she does now.
Myracle's MySpace page lists more than 2,500 "friends," something she once considered so inconceivable that one of her novels makes an eyeball-rolling reference to a girl trawling so earnestly for MySpace friends that she ends up with 1,000.
"In the book, the Winsome Threesome (the three girls whose instant messages constitute ttyl, ttfn and l8r, g8r) are, like, 'Who has 1,000 MySpace friends?' But it wasn't long after that I had 1,500 friends, and then 2,000," Myracle said.
On the other hand, she's quite liberal about "friending" people, accepting most requests to add a name to her MySpace friends list.
She checks the requester's MySpace page and accepts nearly anyone who looks like a teenager, and rejects everyone she describes as "someone who looks like a porn star."
"I'm not really me on MySpace - I'm the author of books for younger teens," she said.
"My son will say, 'Mom, you're famous!' And I do get a lot of teens and tweens writing to me. It's awesome. I'm kind of in the role of a big sister who likes them unconditionally and tells them that their job is not to try to fit in, and no, they don't have to kiss a guy just because he's popular, and other advice I wish someone had given me when I was their age.
"The danger is that some of them think I really am their friend, which I'm not. Sometimes they can be more intimate with me than they need to be, in terms of sharing things."
Girls send e-mails to Myracle to consult her thoughts on whether they should sleep with their boyfriends - a trusting naivete that makes her shake her head. (She counsels them to go immediately to their mothers, and cautions them that "this is a big deal, and not to be entered into lightly.")
One girl was 11 when she initiated an e-mail correspondence that lasted well into her teens. In time, the e-mails grew darker and darker. The girl confided that she thought seriously about suicide. Then she sent Myracle a "farewell" e-mail.
"It scared the crap out of me," Myracle said.
"I had no contact information for her, other than that e-mail address. I wrote her and said, 'Don't! Here's my number. Call me!'
"Then I got onto MySpace and went to different friends, explaining who I was and why I was asking for her number. One girl sent me her number and I called, and I said, 'Hey, this is Lauren Myracle,' and she answered, and she was floored."
Myracle exacted the girl's promise to get help, and today feels optimistic about her outlook.
"It's that tricky thing of wanting to be human, and do the best job you can ... ," Myracle said.
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