Last Monday I emailed Hachette a big translation I had been working on for them. That is the last translation job I’m going to take.

I spent the last week grading exam papers, and, after giving a further round of exams this Wednesday, will grade another pile of papers and hand them in by Friday. And then I will be done at the university.

So next Monday, January 11, 2010, I will start my new career. As a writer. Excuse me while I do a little dance.

Ok, I’m done now. It feels funny to say, “I am a writer.” Pretentious even. It reminds me of one of my grad school classmates at the Courtauld Institute, who, the day after we got our M.A., had business cards printed up with his name and title: “Art Historian”. Yes, after two years at the hallowed institution, and the in-depth research theses we had to write, which were printed up into little hardcover books and stowed away somewhere in the murky depths of the underground school library where no one will ever see them again, I guess we could all have been considered Art Historians. But it’s not the kind of thing you go around telling people. At least until you’ve done something to really earn it.

And even then…

I feel weird changing my professional status to delete “translator” and “teacher” to just leave “writer” on my blog profile. In case whoever reads it is tempted to roll their eyes.

My friend Mags said, “Why can’t you just relax and enjoy your success?” Well, because 1.) the word “relax” is missing from my personal dictionary and 2.) I was not only raised with a Protestant work ethic, but my genes are coated in a double protein-wrap of Nazarene guilt on both sides of my bloodline. I’m doomed to a life of self-criticism and severe workaholism.

So as I angst over whether or not I deserve, or even dare, to call myself a writer, I am coming to grips with the fact that writing is what I am going to be doing from now on. Full time. For at least the next few years.

From what I’ve been told, in a couple of weeks I will receive what’s called the “editorial letter” from my editor, Tara. In it will be her thoughts and suggestions for changes to SLEEPWALKING. I will have around six weeks to make the changes. Then she reads back over it again, and will quite likely have one more round of changes. (She told me that two-rounds-of-changes is usually how she works.) The final draft has to be in by May 1.

Then The Machine takes over, and Sleepwalking will go through whatever processes a book goes through before it lands on the shelves around May 2011, one year later. All sorts of fun advertising things will be taking place in the meantime, apparently. I can’t wait to tell you about those, but will restrain myself until someone tells me I can.

But that’s all beside the point that my second book is scheduled to come out around May 2012, and the third a year later. Which means I have a lot of writing to do. And let me tell you…I am so raring to go. Which raises the practical question-of-the-moment: where, exactly, is it that I am raring to go to?

Although I might run away for a week after I get the editorial letter, just to think over things, I can’t spend the next two-and-a-half years holed up in Nicolas’s castle or Cassi’s apartment or one of my other secret hideouts. I have two kids, a husband, and a dog who, although they could probably survive without me, would notice if I were gone.

So Laurent and his dad have gotten to work on the Boulangerie, picking up where I left off: a shell of an office with electricity provided by an extension cords running across the lawn from my bedroom window. It’s perfect for summer, as long as I block up the pane-less window to keep birds from coming in and nesting in the ceiling. But in the winter I might as well be sitting in the yard with my laptop. So they are planning on installing a window and door, plugging up the chimney, and setting me up with a little fuel-run heater that my FIL has in his barn. As I type this, they’re out there doing the prep work: scraping the loose plaster from the stone walls and replacing decayed stones.

I will have my own little writer’s cottage, a book to polish and two to write, and several other ideas that are lurking in my brain just waiting around on the sidelines. And although I’m not going to go out and get t-shirts printed, or even business cards for that matter, after Monday, I might just get up the nerve to change my stated profession to “writer”.

“By Rachel Deahl — Publishers Weekly, 12/14/2009

HC Goes Undead in Paris

Tara Weikum at HarperCollins pre-empted world English rights, in a three-book deal, to a new zombie series by debut author Amy Plum. The first book, Sleepwalking, follows a 16-year-old who, after losing her parents, is cast off from her Brooklyn life to live with grandparents in Paris. There she meets, and falls for, a French teen named Vincent, who just happens to be a zombie. Dystel & Goderich’s Stacey Glick, who sold the book, said the series introduces a new kind of zombie mythology in which the undead are “re-animated humans”—they look just like us—and don’t feast on brains but, instead, carry out special missions. She said the Hollywood pitch for the book would be: “Twilight…in Paris…with zombies.” HC is planning Sleepwalking for summer 2011.”

Are you guys freaking out? Because I AM!!! Still…even after knowing for two weeks, I can’t wipe this huge smile off my face.

* You guys know me: I will definitely give you more details.
In fact, I’ll give you the whole story as soon as I find out
how much I’m allowed to tell!

**And for those of you who are saying, “What??? Zombies???”
They are not zombies. They are “revenants”, a new monster of
my own creation. And they don’t have “special missions” on earth.
They have one special mission. And you’re going to love it…
I promise!

Have you ever gone through a period of your life where it felt like you were sleepwalking? Like you were living in a dream…or accidentally stepped into an alternate universe? If you are human (and I’m assuming that most of you are) then I’m sure you have.

There are the negative sleepwalking periods: remember the break-up from your first true love? The deception you felt after you discovered that one of your heroes was not who you thought they were? The first time, as an adult, that someone close to you died?

I remember. And each time, the initial shock was followed by the dream days, days where I looked at everything around me like I was seeing it for the first time. Days where the air felt like water and I was swimming through the eternal minutes until I could (hopefully) drift off and away to a better place within my sleeping subconsciousness.

And then there is the flip side to the experience. The positive sleepwalking periods. Being handed the set of keys for your very first home that you’re not renting…that’s YOURS! Finding out that a war is over, or that after many dark political years, a corner has been turned and you are being handed a sliver of hope (by a really handsome black dude, no less!). The realization that that person you fancy like crazy feels the same about you. Getting the letter from the university or grad school you didn’t think would ever accept you telling you that you have a place in their hallowed institution. And how about that split second after you find out you are going to have a baby. (Ok, for some that might fall under the “negative”, but I’m speaking from the point of view of someone who REALLY REALLY wanted one.)

With the positive sleepwalking, on top of the wandering-around-in-a-dream feeling, you get that adrenaline rush that can last from minutes to days. And after that wears off, after your body forces you to calm down so you won’t blow a fuse, for weeks it still comes back to hit you like a lightening bolt every time it pushes its way to the forefront of your consciousness.

Did any of those examples work for you? Are you feeling any little twinges from your sleepwalking memories? Any little stabs or jolts flashing across your synapses? Good. Bundle them all up and try this on for size…

Let’s say there’s a dream you’ve had all of your life. Something you want to happen, or someone you want to become. You spend years dancing around it, not exactly avoiding it, but just living safely. Treating your desire like a hobby because who knows if it will actually work out, and, admit it…you’re no longer twenty years old with nothing to lose.

And then, one day, circumstances force you into a position where you are finally able to take a shot at your dream. (Say…if you leave your country, career, social circle, and former life and move somewhere where you have no friends, no job, no money, no sleep, no understanding of social norms and…no escape. Um, not that I would know, but let’s just say “if”.) You find yourself with time on your hands. And the need to communicate what you’re going through. You spend a few years moving closer to the dream…why not call it a swimming pool, just for the metaphor…still dancing around it, perhaps dipping your toe in the shallow end, but gradually creeping towards the water inch by inch.

And then, all of a sudden, you take the plunge. You dedicate yourself entirely (or at least every spare moment you can grab) to achieving your dream. You take a chance. You tell people that you’re doing it. You risk derision (either silent or spoken) from the naysayers: the people who care about you and feel your valuable time would be better spent in a job that has a secure pension instead of on a risky venture; or the elderly colleague who wonders aloud how you could possibly have anything interesting to write about at your age. You try to let their words slip past you like the water past your skin as you skim through the water, holding your breath. And, as tiny bubbles rise to the surface all around you, you wait to see where your efforts take you…if anywhere at all.

And then finally (for the sake of this story, let’s say it was a little over two weeks ago) you break the surface of the water, gulp in a blessed lungful of oxygen, and look Destiny (who just happens to be hanging out next to your swimming pool) in the eye. She smiles at you, hands you a towel, and informs you that your dreams have come true. In a way that exceeds your every expectation.

You step out of the pool in a daze, numb with shock, lightening bolts hitting you from all sides, your esophagus so constricted with emotion that you can barely breathe. You have gotten to where you wanted to be. You take the first step away from the water and onto the path that Destiny has pointed out. And you begin walking. For the first few days, you wake up in the morning wondering if it was all a dream, and then your eyes focus on the path ahead of you, and you get numb and shaky all over again.

Well, friends…I can’t stop smiling. And my feet haven’t yet come down to the ground. I’m still sleepwalking. And next Monday you will know why.

Things have been happening with my book.

I’m very happy to say that, as of last Thursday, I have representation for SLEEPWALKING, and spent the weekend making the revisions that my agent asked for. Which would normally seem like way too little time for this kind of task…except for the fact that she wants to send it to publishers THIS WEEK!

Talk about head-spinning! Do you remember how long it took for every little step with IN THE VINES? Well, instead of offering this one with all of the other books during the regular 3 x per year agency “push”, my agent wants to get it out to individual publishers before Thanksgiving.

Which would make me really excited except that I have learned from my last experience that things never go as planned. So I’m trying to be extremely cool, collected and … are you kidding??? AHHHHH!!!!!

Thanks again, readers, for being so supportive. Without you, I wouldn’t have even dared write my memoir, much less attempt a novel. Light a candle for me, stand on your head, visit your shaman, shuffle some prayer beads and inhale some incense, pray to the Goddess or Jehovah or whatever deity you follow, or, in the absence of any religion, do a little dance and send good vibes for me in the direction of New York City (where most of the publishers are).

Merci to you all!
Amy

I’m back! Here I am, four months after wrapping my blog up in a few layers of Saran Wrap and sticking it in deep-freeze.

There is so much to say that I don’t know where to start. You’ve been writing me emails asking about the book, the kids, and the existence of my vital signs, and trying to answer everything at once seems overwhelming. So I’m going to break it up into a few separate helpings and serve it up French style – course by course, instead of putting everything including the frozen fruit salad on the same plate, like we did in Alabama.

So Course #1, your hors d’oeuvres… The Writing…the reason I ditched you all for a 7’x10′ room in the Boulangerie furnished with a desk and a chair and powered by an extension cord running across the yard from my bedroom window.

Let me start with my twelve-step introduction. Hello, my name is Amy, and I am a blogging junkie. Um, yeah. I had a bit of a withdrawal after leaving you guys high and dry. It took me a couple of months to get over that nagging feeling that I needed to get a post out soon or…or what? My fingers would explode?

Every time a bunch of farmers drove a motorcade of tractors up and down the streets of town pulling a miniature house decorated with vines behind them on a trailer bed and honking their horns like they were in a parade, I ran for my camera so I could show you, only to remember “Oh yeah, I’m on a break.”

Long after the fact, here it is. And no, I have no clue what they were doing.

But I soon discovered that with the same amount of time I spent writing the blog I could write a few pages of a short story. And the mental space I used every day thinking, “I wonder how I could tell this on the blog?” was easily repopulated with plots and characters and dialogue.

So I launched into the first thing that came to mind – a short-story that turned out to be extremely dark and creepy and Rosemary’s Baby-ish, and when I finished it I thought, “Where the hell did that come from?” I spent a few days brushing it up in case I ever found anything to do with it and just as I was finishing, I came up with another idea.

I spent the next few months writing it into a 315-page young adult novel that I entitled “Sleepwalking”. And the hardest part of writing the book was not being able to stop every few pages, show it to a thousand-or-so people, and have a few of them write back within seconds to tell me what they thought about it.

It was another symptom of my blogging junkiehood: the need for immediate feedback. Sound ridiculous? Well, that need to expose what I wrote on an everyday basis was SO STRONG that I had to find an outlet. So every day at lunch, I sat down in front of Laurent and read him what I had written the day before. (I know. Poor Laurent. I’m going to write the Pope and request his canonization: Saint Laurent of the Bleeding Ears. After all of his pain and suffering, he deserves it.)

But the only problem with that solution was that Laurent doesn’t talk very much. So I had to pull feedback out of him like an particularly intransigent tapeworm. Usually when I was done reading, he would just nod, put his plate in the sink, and go take his after-lunch nap. I finally decided that I needed a better solution than listening to myself read for a half-hour every day. So I enlisted Claudia.

Claudia is married to Bill, a friend I made while working at Sotheby’s in a much more glamorous past-life. She is a librarian, loves books at least as much as I do, and also happens to be in love with the same twenty-three year old British actor with whom I am annoyingly and embarrassingly infatuated. (We trade shirtless photos of him over Facebook. It’s really sad.)

Claudia agreed to read what I wrote. Fifteen pages. Every day. (Except the week I spent in my friend Nicolas’s castle, when, in a productive frenzy I sometimes wrote more than twenty a day.) And she told me what she thought of each and every installment. And, just to prove her mettle, she then offered to read my re-write: three chapters a day. So thanks to Laurent’s and Claudia’s support, I got through the writing and rewriting of a novel in four months.

Now I’m on the final rewrite, having had a few other people read and give their opinions along the way. The feedback has been good. And I’m glad for that. As for What Comes Next, I have another book idea. I can’t begin now – the semester at the university just started and I am up to my neck in lesson plans. So we shall see how things develop.

All of that to say, today I feel like I’m facing Door #1, Door #2, and Door #3. [Insert Destiny into Monty Hall’s shoes and hand her his microphone.] The only problem is that those curtains all take SO DAMN LONG to swing open. Anything could happen. But it won’t happen right away – not without more slogging and waiting and uncertainty. The only booby prize would be nothing happening at all. And I’d like to think that it’s too late for that.