I’m not a very patient person. But even if I were, a year and a half is a long time to wait for something that you know is going to change your life.

The day before Thanksgiving last year I accepted HarperCollins offer for a 3-book deal. They told me that the first book would be published summer 2011. (The date has now been set as either May or June.) At that point, summer 2011 seemed SO FAR AWAY. It still does. Right now, eight months feels like forever. But, luckily, there have been little events along the way that have helped the wait.

The hard slog of editing Book 1 made the winter and spring months pass by. The title was chosen. Foreign rights deals came in little by little. I met with my agent and editors in New York and shot my train-wreck of a video. The book was copy edited. A mock-up was made of the book’s cover art. Then the model was chosen. Then the photo shoot took place. And just a couple of days ago I got to see an almost-done version of the cover that looks AMAZING.

I should be able to show you the cover end-October. And then, at some point this Autumn, the ARC (Advance Reading Copy) version will come out and we’ll get to see what the put-together book looks like.I would expect some reviews will begin to appear after that (*fear and trembling*) and then, at some point, the publicity junket will kick in and I’ll have to practice saying intelligent-sounding insightful things about my book so that I won’t choke when all eyes are focused on me.

In the meantime, I’ve written a rough draft of Book 2. I’m sending it to my editor today. So what comes next? Besides waiting, of course. I’m tempted to go ahead and dive into Book 3. I pretty much know what’s going to happen in it. However, it might be wiser to wait until the changes are made on Book 2, in case they alter the outcome. But, then again…I’ve never claimed wisdom as one of my assets.

I wanted to write background stories for each of DIE FOR ME’s characters, so I could launch into that. Or I could step out of that world altogether and pick back up another already-begun project—I have three or four sitting around, waiting for my attention. Waiting patiently. A lot more patiently than I am.

Before writing DIE FOR ME, the only young adult books I had read since I myself was a young adult, were the 4 tomes of the TWILIGHT series. Which, I won’t hesitate to confess, gave me the initial motivation to write my book. Not because I wanted to write something in the same vein as Meyer’s books. But because after finishing her last novel, all of that yummy hotness that was Rob…I mean Edward (I saw the movie first, so they were always merged in my mind) just ended. He might as well have been killed on the last page of Book 4. Because, for us readers it was the end of the series and there was nothing else to come. Unless, of course, I did something about it.

Now believe me, a crush on a vampire, no matter how hot he may be, is not enough motivation to write an entire book. (At least not for me!) Just enough to start it and continue on for around five or six pages. But after that, the hard work and imagination necessary to string out a story for hundreds of pages would finally make you think, “Edward is so not worth this!” And then you would stop writing and instead read the TWILIGHT series again and watch every Rob Pattinson film ever made. And then, feeling sated, you would ditch your five or six pages and go on with real life.

But, even if you take away that bronze-colored hair and perfect body and heart-throbby gallantry, there was something in those books that was worth writing about. A classic theme that Ms Meyer pegged so well with her story it even won over many who criticized the writing itself. If you can’t guess it immediately, let me make you wait a couple more paragraphs before spelling it out.

While I wrote the first book of DIE FOR ME, I wouldn’t let myself read any other YA novels. At what I considered a critically important stage of the process—the creation of my mythology and conception of my characters—I didn’t want anything else to influence me (besides, inevitably, my own reading history).

But once I finished it, and my editor sent me a stack of other YA books she had edited, I thought “what the heck” and dove right in. I read Aprilynne Pike’s WINGS series, the SOOKIE STACKHOUSE novels, Maggie Stiefvater’s SHIVER, Suzanne Collins’s HUNGER GAMES series, Kim Harrison’s ONCE DEAD, TWICE SHY, among others. Oh, and I watched all 144 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know…don’t even say it. I have no social life. But considering what’s on offer for entertainment in the middle-of-nowhere-France, my DVD evenings could be seen as pretty damned exciting.

ANYWAY…all of these books/bad ‘90s tv series/etc. had one thing in common: impossible—or at least very difficult—love. For most of them, if Impossible Love wasn’t the main theme, it was pretty central to the story. As it has been in stories dating back to the beginning of time. Lancelot and Guinevere, Maria and Captain von Trapp, Fern and Wilbur…factors of age, race, marital and social status, and species have been used to alternately break the reader’s heart and keep them breathlessly turning pages in the hope that things will turn out in the end.

Never mind that things will never turn out in the end. They can’t. As readers, we’re all hoping for something impossible: that love will conquer all. But even if the lovers get together in the end—unless they manage to get killed together or live eternally—one of them will eventually die and the other will end up heartbroken. In the one exception (they die together) you’d still cry as you turned the last page. In the other (they live eternally) you’d do worse than cry: you’d get bored.

That’s the thing about love stories—they are made of illusion. A temporal illusion of fulfillment. And it’s how the author spins the illusion—the environment and personalities and descriptions they use to wrap the love story up and deliver it to their readers—that makes their books merely good reads or mesmerizing take-a-sick-day-because-you-have-to-finish-the-book marvels.

That’s the challenge: taking the theme and making it great. Doing the theme justice. Vincent and Kate will never have as important a place in literary history as Romeo and Juliet. But if I can make my reader’s heart race…and ache…and rejoice…well, then I’ll feel like I’ve added something worthy to the genre of Impossible Love.

My office is a tiny 200+ year old building that used to be a bakery, standing across our yard from my house.

I wrote my first two books in bed. Not because I found it tiring or needed frequent naps in between chapters or anything. It’s just that there wasn’t a better place to do it. From time to time I would run away to a friend’s empty home and spend an intensive four or five days typing my fingers off. But usually it was me, propped up with my laptop in the upstairs guest bedroom, waving to my father-in-law and other construction workers through the glass panes in the door as they came and went doing renovations on our farmhouse. I could see them shaking their heads, wondering what the strange foreigner was doing acting like an invalid on her days off from teaching at the university.

And then I got published. And they stopped shaking their heads and got to work renovating a little house on our property for me to use as my writing hideout. The building served as the neighborhood bakery (boulangerie, in French) a couple of hundred years ago, and then was used as a shelter for seasonal field workers…and their horses. (Half of the floor is in earthen tiles, the other half is dirt, and embedded in the wall over the dirt part is a metal ring to tether a horse.) Then, for at least the last half-century, it was used as a storage shed.

I had to wait until a family of birds moved out and shoo away a lot of mice before it was even usable. But now I’ve got electricity and a wireless connection (beamed over from our house) and a wood-burning stove to keep the place reasonably warm – if I sit directly in front of it with my laptop on my lap – during the winter.

It is a haven for me. It is the place I come to conceive ideas. As well as carry them to term and give birth to them. (To push the metaphor right over the edge of acceptability, the two drawings to the left of my desk are me when I was pregnant, sketched by the amazing Chuck Bowdish.) It is a womblike place. Especially when I draw the black-out curtains over the door and window and get the fire roaring.

There is a book on writing that I really love entitled, appropriately, “On Writing” by Stephen King. I had read a couple of other guides to writing over the years, but found them either too worryingly melodramatic or transcendentally vague. Stephen King actually gives specific advice about how to write, where to write, how much to try to produce, and other concrete tips. He told me what I really wanted to know – facts that other writers either thought were too trivial or too personal to divulge.

And what he said about “place” really made sense to me. He suggests writing in the same place every day. “The space can be humble…and it really needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut.” He suggests no telephone, TV or video games in the room, and drawing the curtains or pulling the shades unless the window looks out at a blank wall. Check, check, and check.

I admit it would be nice to have a bathroom handy instead of having to run across the yard through the elements, but I’m not complaining because I am so grateful for what I already have.  King said he wrote his first two published novels “in the laundry room of a doublewide trailer, pounding away on my wife’s portable Olivetti typewriter and balancing a child’s desk on my thighs.” He says that John Cheever wrote in the basement of his Park Avenue apartment building, near the furnace. After those examples, a toilet doesn’t seen terribly important.

For me, it’s all about getting away from The Everyday. If I’m in our house, I’m going to find a million little things — besides writing — that I really should be doing. In The Boulangerie I can sit at my desk or lay on the floor or lounge on the couch – but these are my only choices – there are no other distractions. All I can do is sit and think and write.

My couch with the horse-hook above it, black-out curtains and mat covering the dirt floor.

Pre-publication is a strange phase to be in. The expectation is hanging so thick in the air, you could cut it with a dull-edged plastic picnic knife.

I can’t wait to hold that printed copy of my book in my hand and flip through its pages. However, I might just have a heart attack and die right there on the spot, which would be a problem since I have a deal for two more books for the series.

I can’t wait for all of my friends and old blog readers to finally read it and tell me what they think. Of course, I’m already having mean-review nightmares, but would rather just hear it now because the apprehension is killing me!

I’ve already had a zombie fan say about my book (which, of course, he hasn’t read), “I wonder if zombies are attracted to codependent, emotionally retarded teenage girls as well?” Which I actually really enjoyed. Because maybe zombies are. But revenants prefer independent, self-aware, kick-ass teenage girls. So, I hope that means I’m ready for anything.

This makes it sound like I’m just waiting around twiddling my thumbs. I’m not. I’m doing my best to prepare. Got a few decent photos taken. And I’m following all of the “Social Networking 101” suggestions my editor sent me (even though I was already doing most of them): Author website (still in process – big big plans), Facebook page (check!), blog (closing up my old one and starting this new one from scratch), and I really really mean to get around to Twitter. Some day.

And there’s something else I’m forgetting. A real time-suck. Oh yeah – I’m on page 218 of Book 2! Never a dull second and yet — the waiting is killing me. May 2011 can’t come fast enough.

I sat perched on a stool in a studio, my back facing a green screen and my front facing a huge video camera flanked by blinding lights. To my right was a bag of clothes and shoes I had brought as options for my author interview. Erin, who was in charge of the HarperCollins shoot, had chosen the only non-black items in the bag, a plum-colored shell topped with a red wildly-patterned cardigan I hadn’t dared wear since I bought it a few months before in Rio. Since the shoot would be from waist-up the pants and shoes I had brought didn’t matter.

Erin touched up my makeup while she briefed me on procedure. “I’ll stand to the left of the camera,” she said, “and ask you the questions, but the viewer will only hear you answering them. Just look at me, don’t look into the camera.” She clipped a microphone to my top and then glanced towards Melissa, one of my editors, who was looking at a monitor in the tech booth.

“Looks good!” Melissa yelled.

“Can you freeze-frame what you see so I can come look?” I asked nervously. The last time someone else had done my makeup, I had ended up looking like a cross between an alien and Lady Gaga with a hangover.

“Trust us,” Melissa responded. “You look great.”

The cameraman, named “Scooter” or some other cameraman-appropriate name, called, “Rolling!” and Erin asked me the first question. I looked at her. I looked at the camera. And I didn’t have a clue what to say.

A week before, my editor Tara had written me saying, “Since you’re in the States, why don’t we go ahead and shoot your video.” I agreed, and she sent me some sample questions to look over. But since we were on vacation, staying in a one-bedroom apartment, and I was watching the kids full-time while Laurent visited his wine customers, I hadn’t had much time to look at them. I told myself that it was better anyway not to be too prepared – my answers would sound more natural.

Oh man, had I been wrong. I sat there in the blinding lights and my brain was completely empty, besides one thought: Where’s the emergency exit?

Erin prompted me again, “Tell us what you’re story’s about.”

I started a rambling answer, and then all of a sudden the Publisher’s Weekly article about my book sale popped into my head, and I quoted one of their well-crafted sentences word-for-word.

“Great!” Erin said.

Why oh why didn’t I memorize my answers? I thought, beginning to feel genuinely panicky.

“Tell us what attracts Kate and Vincent to each other,” Erin continued.

Good question, I thought. Why is anyone attracted to anyone else? And then, in my mind, I started getting all existential and couldn’t come up with an answer that didn’t sound either 1. like a science class on “survival of the species” (the peahen prefers the peacock with the most beautiful tail so that she can have bigger, stronger peahen babies) OR 2. totally cynical (they’re both so ridiculously beautiful that of course all they want to do is jump on each other).

I finally spit out something about Kate looking for someone to help her escape her grief after her parents’ death. She is self-aware enough to know she’s using Vincent as an emotional crutch, but decides that that’s okay. Vincent, however, doesn’t understand why he is falling for Kate. “You know…because he’s a guy,” I say, thinking out loud, “and guys are so clueless.” I gasped and looked straight into the camera lens at Scooter – “Except for you of course, Scooter! I’m sure you’re not clueless.” I groaned, and yelled, “Cut!”

And the rest of the interview continued in the same confused deer-in-the-headlights vein. Finally Erin said, “Okay, I think we’re done.”

“But didn’t you want to go back to that first question that I couldn’t answer?” I asked, suddenly worried that there wasn’t one usable thing on tape.

“No, that’s fine,” she said. “I think we’ve got enough to work with. Our film editors will be able to take out the pauses and ‘ums’ and make it look fabulous. They’re geniuses, trust me.”

“Genius isn’t good enough. They’ll have to be gods,” I muttered, unclipping my microphone.

“Wait!” Erin said. “We need to tape a few clips. Now, I need you to look straight into the camera and say, ‘Hi Barnes and Noble customers. I’m Amy Plum, author of DIE FOR ME.’”

“What?” I gasped, confused. “What for?”

“The booksellers put it on their websites so customers can ‘meet’ the author.”

“Okay,” I said. And, feeling completely ridiculous, I looked straight into the camera and said, “Hi Barnes and Nobles customers. I’m Amy…” I had to think for a second. I had never said my pen name out loud. And I had been thinking about my book as SLEEPWALKING for so long that I couldn’t remember the new title.

“It’s Barnes and Noble,” Erin corrected, “Noble with no ‘s’, not Nobles”.

“Oh, right. Hi Barnes and Noble customer. I’m…”

“Customers…plural,” she said, “Barnes and Noble customers”.

My face felt like plastic as I smiled and looked into the lights and said my new name and book title over and over for the customers of Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Borders. On my way out Melissa, Erin and Scooter did their best to convince me the shooting hadn’t been a total train wreck. I was grateful, but didn’t believe them for a second.

Standing outside the building, I wondered what to do next. I didn’t want to go back to Laurent and my kids just yet. I would be a nervous wreck. What I really needed was a shoulder to cry on.

I pulled out my phone. “Lawrence? It’s me. I’m at 53rd and Madison. Are you anywhere nearby?” Fifteen minutes later, I was backstage at a drag queen bar called Lips, crying to an old friend as he transformed into his alter-ego, “Evangeline”. He listened to my story while he applied false eyelashes and donned a cherry-print dress for his Katie Perry number in that night’s show.

“It can’t have been that bad,” he said, squeezing me tightly against his bedazzled corset. “It was worse,” I moaned. “I looked as wooden as a dummy – might have well had someone’s hand up my back making my mouth move…blah…blah…blah.”

“Oh honey,” said Frankie Cocktail, Lips’s long-time bartender, straightening his foot-high wig. He held out a Kleenex in sympathy. “I hate being in front of a camera. Being on stage is hard enough, but knowing that your every move is being immortalized for posterity, ugh – I just blank out every time.”

“A drag queen who hates cameras,” I sniffled, smiling.

“I know,” he said. “We all have our little foibles.” He patted my hand, and went back to the bar, while Lawrence/Evangeline — now looking strikingly Katie Perry-ish — leaned in for a hug. “Well, I think you’re wonderful,” he said, “even if you did screw up your one and only chance to make a good impression on your fans.”

“Lawrence!” I yelled.

“Just kidding, sweetie. You’ve always been too hard on yourself. I’m sure you were fine.” He left a cherry-red lipstick mark on my cheek and began laying out dresses and wigs for his costume changes. My phone rang.

It was Laurent calling from Brooklyn. “Lucia just dropped a huge rock on her big toe. It might be broken. There’s blood everywhere, and she’s crying for you.” I hung up and made my way outside to look for a taxi.

Back to real life, I thought. Kids, naptimes and skirmishes over eating vegetables. No boardrooms, no interviews, and NO cameras. At that moment, standing on a street corner in the middle of New York City, “real life” had never sounded so good.