The big day is quickly approaching. It is 31 days until the U.S. release of DIE FOR ME, and a mere 26 until it is released in the U.K. And when I actually think about it, my brain explodes. So, to preserve my sanity—not to mention avoiding brain explosion clean-up time—I am trying to distract myself. Which isn’t too difficult at the moment.

Because in the last couple of months I have done 49 interviews. (And have a few more to work through on my “to do” list.) You wouldn’t think an interview would take much time. But you get to a question like, “What is on Kate’s bookshelf now, and what would be her nostalgic book picks from her childhood?” And then you find yourself going through your entire library and thinking book by book and what you should put on the list. Which is a teensy bit time consuming.

I know this is amazing practice, though. Because just under a year ago when I was shooting my author video and couldn’t even remember the name of my book (it had just been changed from SLEEPWALKING to DIE FOR ME), the questions I was asked really stumped me. I just hadn’t considered my book, the conception and writing of my book, and my life as an author from so many different angles.

Now, I’m ready. Ask me what inspired me to write DIE FOR ME, and I can blah blah blah at you for as short or as long as you wish, and tell the tale in a few different ways. Ask me when I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I can quote my poem printed in the school paper when I was in 1st grade. (Which starts, “There once was a turkey who lived on a farm.” I know. Genius. Pure unadulterated genius.)

Because I’ve looked these things up now. I’ve racked my memory and my files. And instead of being shut up in a dusty box in a forgotten corner of my mind, the answers are now living on the tip of my tongue. (Or the tips of my fingers, whichever format you prefer.)

I love learning. And acquiring new skills is one of the most satisfying things life has to offer, I feel. Whether it’s something major like learning to be a parent or minor like learning to stand up in front of a crowd of tourists and give a speech in French on 15th century architecture…without melting to the ground in a smoking heap of nerves.

I like to feel capable. Ready for anything. That’s why I memorized the entire Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette when I was a sixteen. I was getting ready to run (not walk…sprint) away from my situation in Birmingham, Alabama, as soon as legally possible. I knew I wanted to see the world, and with my sights set sky-high, I wanted to be ready for anything life could throw at me. I knew how to address an ambassador (a skill I have used) and what to give a nun as a present (a skill I have never used…but I’m prepared: cash, a television, or luggage).

There’s no Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Being an Author. Unfortunately. Or I would have memorized it too. Instead, I’m learning by watching others. And by plain old doing. By winging it. Learning by my mistakes is something I’m very good at. Especially the making mistakes part. And now, with this sparkly new challenge in front of me—being an author in the public eye—I’m faced with several new learning curves. But, thanks to the last few months, I can now happily say that interviewing is one skill I am on my way to achieving. Go ahead. Just ask me a question! ☺

*Title quote thanks to Napoleon Dynamite

When I made my first video for DIE FOR ME, I dedicated it to HarperTeen fans. And Little, Brown / Atom very politely told me that they enjoyed it, and then very rightly suggested that I make one for their fans too!

So I decided to read the first couple of pages of Chapter One. Please keep in mind that Actress was at the very bottom of my list of professions I thought I would be good at. And I have only ever read for my children, and let me tell you – picture book vocabulary ain’t that hard. With that in mind…I hope you enjoy the very beginning of my book!

Yesterday, Kari of A Good Addiction announced the newest of news in the DIE FOR ME publishing story. It seems that at this point, there’s something happening almost every day. But comparatively, this news is HUGE: a cover change. Or in the words of my editor, “A Jacket Switcheroo”.

You all know the original Kate-in-a-Boat cover. Here it is in all of its magnificent glory:

Well I got a note from my editor three weeks ago telling me that when the marketing people at Harper saw the British cover, they fell in love with it. And though everyone raved about the Kate-in-a-Boat cover, Kate-on-a-Roof seemed like a “bigger” cover to “people in positions of power”. So they got in touch with Little, Brown UK, got Atom’s jacket files, and tweaked them a little bit to create this…the NEW HarperTeen cover of DIE FOR ME:

HarperTeen's New DIE FOR ME Cover

Since the announcement yesterday, people have been writing me on Twitter asking, “But isn’t that the UK cover?” So I have used my amazing and highly advanced Photoshop skills to put one cover next to the other (below) in order to demonstrate the differences. ALERT: since these are images that have been emailed back and forth a dozen times, the colors might not be COMPLETELY ACCURATE. But this will at least give you an idea:

US cover on left, UK cover on right

I think they’re both gorgeous, and the small differences in font and hue make each distinctive.

BUT…as I said on Facebook yesterday, even though I love the new cover, I also loved the old one, so it is sad to say goodbye. And the saddest part of all is that we won’t have the lovely Michelle Cartwright gracing the cover. But Michelle – if you’re reading this, I want you to know that you will ALWAYS be Cover-Kate in my mind.

And on a happier note, a HUGE congratulations to Mark Ecob, the original cover designer, and Johanna Basford who calls herself Ink Evangelist, but who I call “Queen of Swirls”, for making a cover that was so beautiful it went global! And congratulations to me for having garnered the favor of the Cover Fairy*. I must have been Mother Theresa or someone of equal standing in a past life to have been granted such a stunning cover for my very first book!

*Thank you Atom. Thank you HarperTeen.
You both make kick-ass Cover Fairies!

The last time I was in New York—in June 2010—it was 100 degrees, I had two toddlers with me, as well as a husband who had a ton of work to get done, and I was staying in a not-very-nice neighborhood far from all subways. I blogged about the result (basically, me crying in a drag-queen bar after shooting a deer-in-headlights video for my book).

So when I took a trip to New York this January, I decided to do things differently. I went by myself. I stayed in a beautiful apartment that a friend lent me while she was away, in a neighborhood that I know like the back of my hand. Instead of a heatwave, there was snow. I love snow. Therefore, this time everything was different.

My one day of meetings  started with a leisurely trip to Rockefeller Plaza with my friend Kim. She had spent the night in order to watch certain films starring Robert Pattinson that we can both quote word-for-word, thus annoying anyone else in the room, which is why we only do it when we’re on our own.

In that excellent mood, we parted at the Rock Center Café, where I spied my editor, Tara Weikum sitting at a table waiting for me. I’ve only met Tara once (during the June heatwave), but we have talked on the phone a couple of times and communicate constantly by email. So it felt like a huge treat to actually sit down right there in front of her and have a real chat, where eye-contact and body language and all those good things are involved.

As we caught up on real-life stuff and watched the Zamboni smooth the skating rink just twenty feet away, my publicist Elyse Miller joined us. She’s one more person I had been dying to meet, but only knew through email. I was not surprised in the least that she was super-smart, funny and had so much energy she could generate enough power to keep a small city running for weeks.

We talked about ourselves for a little while, and then Elyse asked me how I had gotten my ideas for DIE FOR ME. I admitted that I hadn’t read much YA before writing it, and she and Tara asked me what kind of books I liked. And I didn’t know what to say, because the answer would be “not YA”, but I didn’t mean that I didn’t like YA, and I don’t know the names of literary categories, never having thought about it before.

So I said I loved Neil Gaiman (since I knew Elyse had seen him the day before) and that I loved books like A History of Love by Nicole Krauss. And then I was trying to remember her husband, Jonathan Safran Foer’s name. Or even his book’s name (Everything is Illuminated). But often when I am put on the spot, my brain kind of empties and I am left with a big fat blank. Because of that, I’ve gotten really good at changing subjects, so we launched upon the publicity planned for DIE FOR ME and then the book tour, and Elyse told me that she’d be sending me the books of the people I’d be traveling with and get us in touch in time to communicate about what we would be talking about.

At which point, I swallowed my croissant without chewing and must have gone all big-eyed because she said, “You did know that you’ll be doing a little Q&A between yourselves and answering questions from the audience?”

“Uh, no. I thought a signing meant just sitting there and signing books.”

She and Tara laughed in a nice way, while throwing each other a little concerned look. And I felt like saying, “I have been doing my homework.” And I have. It’s just that I’m starting from zero. Put me in the middle of a Sotheby’s auction with $20,000 of Winona Ryder’s money and a bidding paddle, and I’ll know exactly what to do. (True story.) Or throw me in the middle of a medieval castle with forty French tourists asking me questions about the heraldry woven into a tapestry and I won’t bat an eye. (Also true.) But ship me off to Anderson’s Bookstore in Naperville, Illinois, with a pen and few illustrious authors and a crowd of book fans and I won’t have a freaking clue what to do.

So I calmed my choking fit with a glass of water and nodded and tried to look like the whole thing was very funny while thinking in my mind, “Oh shazam. What am I going to do?”

Elyse then went on to tell me about the Beach Bag giveaway that Harper would be doing for the Dark Days of Summer authors, and how she was sending books out to reviewers and when and all of those details that I’m so glad someone competent and knowledgeable is handing for me.

After breakfast we walked the few blocks back to the HarperCollins monolith and I met Christina and Kristina in marketing whose boss was also named Christina, which must have been terribly confusing for everyone involved.

And then came the meeting—the real reason I was there. I wanted to talk to Tara and Melissa, DIE FOR ME’s assistant editor, about Book 2. I had sent them an outline—okay a 300-page rapidly-written draft—in September and they had gotten back to me with their thoughts on it. Based on that I had formulated a plan for the three books, with a back-story that I thought could tie the three together.

I had practiced my presentation on both Kim and my friend and beta-reader Claudia during the two previous days. I’m a kazillion times better at writing than I am at speaking, so I wanted it to be clear, make sense, and not drag on too long. Even so, it took me about twenty minutes just to explain the basics to my patient editors. And right in the middle of it there was a fire drill. To my great relief, they tiptoed over to the door, shut it, and in quiet voices we continued.

And oh, how great it was to get immediate feedback. To be able to talk without that annoying speakerphone shell-sound muddying the conversation. To see that little flash pass between them and be able to say, “I can see you guys don’t feel very comfortable with that idea.” And then listen to their reasoning and be able to respond so that, in the end, we were all on the same page. I wish all of our meetings could be like that, but because of one small hurdle (called the Atlantic Ocean), face-to-face meetings will be few and far between.

And as I walked down Madison Avenue after the meeting, I wished I had a hat so that I could throw it up in the air Mary-Tyler-Moore style and do a little joyful spin. Instead, with a smile that wouldn’t fade for the rest of the day, I went back to my apartment, put my head down, and got back to work.

See my previous Literary Lunacy posts here:
Literary Lunacy: A Multi-Post Story, Part 1
Literary Lunacy: A Multi-Post Story, Part 2
Literary Lunacy: A Multi-Post Story, Part 3
Literary Lunacy: A Multi-Post Story, Part 4

Booklist Issue: March 1, 2011

Die for Me. Plum, Amy (Author)

May 2011. 352 p. HarperTeen, hardcover, $16.99. (9780062004017).

Move over, Bella and Edward. Zombies replace vampires in this well-crafted paranormal romance. After the tragic death of their parents, Kate and her older sister, Georgia, move to Paris. Georgia fits into the party scene immediately, but Kate continues to grieve and brood until she meets the dashingly handsome Vincent. Although their attraction is immediate and intense, Kate is uneasy, even wary. Through a narrative that alternates between romance and violence, Kate and the reader are introduced not only to contemporary Paris but to a war-torn netherworld populated by zombies who save people from death and other beings who plot to kill them. In her debut novel, Plum deftly navigates the real world and the fantastical. Her characters are authentic, and their romances are believable. Plum introduces a world and a story that are sure to intrigue teen readers and will easily attract fans of the Twilight series.

— Frances Bradburn