Amy Plum's Blog, page 25

Very first ARC contest!!

After getting this yesterday in the mail:

Box full of Kate-on-a-bridge ARCs

…I asked my FB followers to give me ideas for a contest for the very first signed Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of IF I SHOULD DIE. And my favorite response was Maddie Deane’s, who said:

“Maybe a visual response contest? As in, you create a visual response to the book series as a whole, which can be in any format (design, photography, writing etc). Then it caters to all parties, and requires a bit of effort and imagination.”

So I’m going to do just that: send me something that represents your response to the DIE FOR ME series. It can be in any format: photo, design, writing, film…whatever you want.

I’ll give you a little more time than usual. Let’s say until Friday at 9pm Paris time (so 3pm New York time). As usual, this is an international contest. And in order to keep your ideas a secret, send the finished product by email to katieloumercier at gmail dot com.

I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

A Christmas Offer to DIE FOR

Last year I had so much fun with my Revenant Christmas promotion, that I’ve decided to amp it up this year.

If you have book lovers on your Christmas list,
this is a gift idea that might just send them into
a frenzy of holiday joy!

1. For every copy that you buy of DIE FOR ME, I will send you one signed Amy Plum bookplate. (This one’s easy/cheaper for me, because my assistant in Idaho has a stock of them that she will mail.)

2. For every copy that you buy of UNTIL I DIE, I will send you one signed UNTIL I DIE bookmark. (Same with the above.)

3. For every copy that you pre-order of IF I SHOULD DIE, I will send you an Amy Plum bookplate that is signed and dedicated to the person of your choice, and mailed to them from France with my name on the envelope. (This is special because I have to personally take care of this gift.) If you wish, I can put in a note that says, “Amy Plum’s IF I SHOULD DIE has been pre-ordered for you, and will be delivered in May 2013.”

JUST TO MAKE IT MORE FUN…I can either have these gifts mailed to you so that you can wrap them up with the books. OR, I can have them mailed to the person of your choice, and across the back of the envelope will be written “A gift from [your name].”

And here’s the part where I get really crazy and might just regret this, but here goes…

4. For every 10 Amy Plum books you buy, I will make 1 video that I post to YouTube in which I say something like, “Hi, This is Amy Plum with special holiday greetings for [name] from your friend/aunt/mom/dog [name]. Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah/insert name of appropriate holiday!”

The rules: this can be hardback, paperback or e-Book, but it has to be a first-time buy (not a used book). This is an international offer, good for any translation of my books in any country. Email your receipt to katieloumercier@gmail.com. Offer runs from today (Nov. 5) to Dec. 22 (the day before I leave for Italy).

Want to see what your gift could look like?

And thank you all, in advance, for being enthusiastic enough about the DIE FOR ME world to want to spread revenant love for the holidays!

Batcave Antics, Part II

I’m on my  4th full day at the Performing Arts Foundation and am getting into the routine. People have come and gone. Besides the people I mentioned in the last post, I met an Estonian dancer writing his master’s thesis. And an artist from Canada just arrived this morning.

My room is to the left of the clock on the upper floor.

When packing for the week, I had no clue what to bring. At the last second I took dresses and boots out of my suitcase and replaced them with jeans and big sweaters. And boy am I glad I did. Saying it’s casual here is understating things a wee bit. The first day I looked nice. Second day I was still wearing my shoes downstairs. By yesterday, I was coming down to the kitchen to get tea in my pajamas and slippers.

PAF's gardens

Yesterday was my adventure-from-hell. Since Nov 1 is a holiday in France, stores close early, and though it looked like rain, I needed to get groceries. So I set off on one of the PAF bikes. (Seat too low=knees in my chest.) As soon as I got to the bottom of the first hill, it started pouring down rain. Two miles later I arrived at the grocery store dripping wet and with raccoon-eyes from smeared mascara. I bought my groceries, draped my bag over the handlebars, and began to ride the 2 miles uphill through the downpour.

just one of the dreaded hills that are all uphill when you come BACK from the grocery store

About halfway back I had one of those existential moments where I was thinking, “I am * old—” (*=insert age) “—and I am riding a freaking bike uphill for two miles in the pouring rain in November and my hands are so paralyzed from the cold that I can’t even let go of the handlebars.” Not really feeling sorry for myself, but wondering how many people had lost life, limb, or their fragile grasp on sanity in the same situation. And then I forced myself on and treated myself to a 15 minute sit-down in the hot shower when I arrived. (This is where you’re supposed to applaud.)

official PAF transport

The common language used here is English, although everyone tries out their French on Toothless Eric, the handyman. Last night when I was fixing my dinner, the Antwerp musician wandered into the kitchen and asked if I wanted to come help with English lessons. I followed him up to the media room, where a handful of villagers come every Thursday night to speak English with the Foundation’s artist guests. They brought flowers and home-baked goods and the Belgian musician and the Canadian writer and I sat around and played that game where someone else tapes the name of a celebrity to your forehead and you have to guess who it is. And then we talked about the American presidential campaign, which (embarrassingly) the villagers knew more about than I did.

Otherwise, dinner table conversations have ranged from Susan Sontag to internet dating to derivative vs original art to theaters set up in people’s living rooms in Croatia to who let the peacocks in yesterday.

peacocks holding vigil in front of the window

If I only had a peacock-to-human translator, I know they'd be saying, "Let us in the fricking house, already!" They are inspiring me to write a story about a flock of dreaded were-peacocks who terrorize a small French village while the blame is placed on the inhabitants of a nearby artist colony.

Meanwhile, I am juggling writing JUNEAU with a cutthroat coffee-drinking/snack-eating contest that I’m competing in against myself. Oh and writing blog posts…when I’m supposed to be writing 5000 words per day, but only have 2000 and it’s 4pm. Which is my cue to…

I call this composition "Deadline Desk"

Change of Batcave

As I mentioned on FB, I have a new batcave for the next 6 days. I’m at the Performing Arts Foundation about an hour and 1/2 outside of Paris, trying to make major headway with JUNEAU. If you don’t want to click through to see what it is, I’ll just say that PAF is this enormous convent school with hundreds of rooms that a Dutch guy named Jan bought and renovated so that artists/dancers/writers can stay there and work.

Seriously…hundreds of rooms. Or at least a hundred. I got lost today when I went exploring, and had to cross from the east wing to the west through the (wet) courtyard in my socks, coffee cup in hand.

When I got here last night, Jan announced that he was giving me the best room and not to expect the same one next time I visit. (The taxi driver from the tiny village train station told me that EVERYONE comes back.)

And when I explored this afternoon, I found that he was right. Most of the rooms are little clean, comfy cells with a single bed. He gave me this:

double bedroom with a bathroom in it (most share an outside bathroom) attached to this:

…my own study! With a cute fireplace that I dare not test out. Which means that I’ve been sitting next to that heater that you see on the left, and not at the desk. Which is FINE BY ME!!!

People I’ve met so far: British guy doing PhD in visual philosophy. New York woman doing mystery project. Swedish girl and Croatian guy choreographing a dance that is basically about what happens to your body in the ground after you’re dead. Guitarist from Antwerp. Novelist from Vancouver BC. Italian woman doing her PhD on dance/movement and healing of AIDS victims. And, of course, Jan, who slapped down the flyer for the week-long sold-out dance performance he danced in last week in Paris where everyone is naked with headphones on. (So yes, I have seen a picture of my host’s a**.)

These are the rules:

Rule #1: Don’t let the peacocks into the convent because they will poo and smell the place up. Even though they REALLY want to come in and sit by the windows and stare at you.

Rule #2: Everyone buys food and cooks for themselves. And the supermarket is two miles away downhill. And here’s a bike. (Which means 2 miles uphill with shopping bags hanging from your handlebars.)

Rule #3: Figure it out yourself. Hence my spending 5 minutes in front of a coffeemaker pressing buttons in a futile attempt at an espresso. Hence my solo tour through the premises, wandering up and down dark staircases, across long hallways, past the Swedish girl and Croatian guy huddled under a blanket watching an Italian film for dance inspiration.

Rule #4: Contribute. I got in late last night. Too late to ride a bike to the supermarket. PhD philosophy guy insisted on sharing his dinner with me. So tonight I made a huge batch of Brussels sprouts cooked in bacon grease and sauteed in chicken stock (with bacon then added back in at the end), and shared it with all of the meat eaters. (All the veggies were eating early, so I hid my bacon under a paper towel so as not to offend them.)

That is the epistle of my first day at PAF. I can only imagine that it will get more colorful the more I explore. And of course, I will post it all here.

VAMPIRE EMPIRE: ‘What Scares Us’ Blog Tour & Giveaway

Today I’m hosting Clay and Susan Griffith’s “What Scares Us” blog tour and giveaway celebrating the release of Book 3 in their Vampire Empire series: THE KINGMAKERS.

I met Clay and Susan while standing in registration line at the RT Conference last year, and then later discovered that their books are published by my good friend Lou Anders (of Pyr Books), who I used to play D&D with in Alabama when I was 12. Small world, no? Try miniscule.

So when Clay and Susan asked me to join their blog tour and offered me a few choices of scary things to write about, I leaped at “Scariest Monster.”

First Clay and Susan will share their scariest monsters with us, then I’ll reveal mine, and then I’ll tell you about their awesome giveaway.

Scariest Monster

Susan

The scariest monsters for me are zombies, which is odd because I love graveyards. Maybe it’s because I have this innate ability to make my rational brain protect me while I stroll through the old and broken tombstones, reading the faint and blackened etchings. I know that nothing undead will attack me because zombies aren’t real. I know that dead is dead, and nothing will push up from the ground.

However, if I have to read about them or watch them on television, suddenly my rational brain goes into shutdown mode. Thank you very much. Zombies terrify me. There is something about zombies, be it that they are disgusting, they want to eat you alive, or they could be someone you love and lost. Needless to say zombies are like being eaten alive by like your crazy Aunt Matilda that died ten years ago. What the hell!?! Nothing is scarier or more disturbing than that.

Clay

I’ve always been fascinated by giant monsters. Humongous apes. Radioactive bugs. Blobs. The King: Godzilla. These giants are usually very scary, although in the original Gojira, there are some really atmospheric shots of the big guy wading through Tokyo Bay and encountering power lines. Grainy black and white Godzilla is very eerie and powerful.

That leads me to my weird scary monster #1. It’s King Kong. But I’m not talking about the original 1933 Kong. And not 1976 Kong. Not even 2005 Kong. I’m talking about the Kong from Godzilla vs. King Kong (1962). This is a movie that represents Toho Studios at their cheesiest, but there is something about the peculiar Kong that unnerved me when I was a kid. It’s just a guy in a suit, and a bad suit at that. It doesn’t look so much like a gorilla as a weird wild man. But he moved really fast. I think that’s what disturbed me. Giant monsters are supposed to lumber across the tiny landscape, but this King Kong was crazed, leaping and jumping, throwing his arms around like a 200-foot lunatic. When I was a kid, he scared me with his lack of control and dignity.

Now here is weird scary monster #2. In Ray Harryhausen’s classic Jason and the Argonauts, there’s a scene where the short-skirted Greek heroes find a huge temple that has an equally huge bronze statue kneeling on top. This gigantic monument is named Talos. When dumbass Hercules decides to take some riches from the temple, bad things happen. We see Talos, from a lowly human point-of-view, turn his colossal head with a terrible metallic screech and look down at the men. Holy Crap that moment scared me. Talos was so large and so solid. And, unlike Japanese Kong, he moved slowly, with reserve, showing just how powerful he was. And the sound he made. Like twisting steel girders. It was brilliant, even better for me than the fantastic skeleton army later in the movie. Harryhausen is a genius.

Amy

My scariest monsters are in my head. Or at least they were. I stopped having terrifying nightmares when I left home to go to university. (My home life included violence and religion. Go figure.)

But up until then I had visions of evil spirits like green mists that I couldn’t get away from (during elementary school), Satanists in long robes with hoods and glowing red eyes who would chase me through a haunted house and finally find me and murder me with a knife (junior high).

And in high school, around 16, my nightmares became waking terrors. I would lie in my bed at night and literally sweat with fear at all of the monsters my brain was creating. We lived in this old, Antebellum home for a couple of years, and it was super creepy. There was a bathroom attached to my bedroom, and I just KNEW there was this skinned dead guy waiting behind the shower curtain for when I fell asleep, at which point he would slink…ooze, rather…into my room and kill me.

Around this time someone in my church gave me this bootleg tape that they claimed was from a tape recorder left recording in an empty church, on which you could hear angels singing. I brought my Walkman to bed and listened to the weird high pure voices singing. And did it comfort me? Not in the least. Instead of the skinned guy, I now had this red angel dripping with blood hovering above my bed, ready to grab me and fly away with me to hell or wherever bloody red angels come from.

Know what’s funny? I sat in bed those nights, paralyzed with fear, thinking, I hope I remember these monsters when I’m older, because if I wrote them down I could be the next Steven King. And guess what? I’m writing about dead guys, who I once described as “guardian angels with OCD.” Who knows…maybe my next book will be horror.

You

Now it’s your turn. I want to know what YOUR scariest monster is. Leave it below in the comments!

Contest

And now for the goodies. Clay and Susan will pick one winner to receive an autographed VAMPIRE EMPIRE trilogy, as well as THIS awesome piece of steampunk-themed jewelry from London Particulars. Yes, the winner will get 3 books AND this lovely, mysterious trinket.

The winner will be chosen at midnight on Oct. 31st…TRICK OR TREAT! Enter here: a Rafflecopter giveaway

And don’t forget to check out Clay and Susan’s books here!

And the novella will be…

I can’t even tell you how fun this has been to present you with your choices for a DIE FOR ME novella and then watch you vote and comment!

Epic Reads has counted your votes. And there was a clear winner. Since it received a whopping 66% of votes, I will be writing DIE FOR HER!!!

DIE FOR HER will be available as an eBook in April 2013…just weeks before IF I SHOULD DIE is released in May.

A recap of that story:

1. “DIE FOR HER”

When Kate Mercier walks into the lives of Paris’s revenants, Vincent Delacroix isn’t the only one whose world turns upside down. Jules Marchenoir has spent the last century flirting his way through Paris, enjoying his life as an immortal bachelor. But when he meets Kate and realizes that he and his best friend are in love with the same girl, he is forced to choose between love and friendship.

But you know what? THE ART OF DYING came in second, with 10%.

2. “THE ART OF DYING”

Sixteen-year-old art prodigy Jules Marchenoir moves to Paris to join the biggest figures of the European art world in the wildest setting imaginable: turn-of-the-century Montmartre. But his career is cut short when he sacrifices his life to save fellow artist Fernand Leger in the first World War. After animating as a revenant he is forced to hide from the art world where his career was flourishing, avoid any love affair that threatens to expose him, and learn to fight murderous enemies out to destroy his kind.

I read all of your comments on the Epic Reads site, and one in particular caught my eye. Jessica Ann McQueen said that she would  like to see a mix of the two Jules stories.

Well…I think I can arrange that. I have to think about it, but I’m sure I can find some way of bringing a little bit of Jules’s past into his present. Maybe a flashback or two Who knows?

I want to thank everyone who voted in the DIE FOR ME novella poll. Epic Reads will be choosing a winner for the enchanted Lalique frog, so check their site later today!

And now…gotta get writing!

SO TELL ME…WHO IS YOUR JULES?

Who is your Jules? (Camille Lacourt)

Who is your Jules? (Gaspard Ulliel)

Who is your Jules?

IF I SHOULD DIE U.S. cover reveal

The HarperTeen U.S. cover for IF I SHOULD DIE

And here it is in all of its copper and gold and sunrise colored magnificence. The last book in the series. I’m getting a little bit teary-eyed.

I can’t WAIT for you to read it. There are so many fun surprises in the book. So, once again, here is the flap copy—now updated so as not to give a Book 2 spoiler!!!

I will not lose another person I love. I will not let history repeat itself.

Vincent waited lifetimes to find me, but in an instant our future together was shattered. He was betrayed by someone we both called a friend, and I lost him. Now our enemy is determined to rule over France’s immortals, and is willing to wage a war to get what they want.

It shouldn’t be possible, none of it should be, but this is my reality. I know Vincent is somewhere out there, I know he’s not completely gone, and I will do anything to save him.

After what we’ve already fought to achieve, a life without Vincent is unimaginable. He once swore to avoid dying—to go against his nature and forsake sacrificing himself for others—so that we could be together. How can I not risk everything to bring my love back to me?

Vote on Novella POV & Win Magic Frog

I’ve got a little secret I’d like to share with you. I have been asked by HarperTeen to write either a novella or short story based on the DIE FOR ME universe. It will be available in eBook format next spring—just before IF I SHOULD DIE is released.

When my editor asked me which of DIE FOR ME’s characters I wanted to write about, I immediately thought of you, my readers. I asked if you could be allowed to choose the story you want to read.

So…we’re leaving it up to you, dear readers. Click here to place your vote on Epic Reads for one of the following pieces.

Voting will automatically enter you in a contest to win THE ENCHANTED LALIQUE FROG. This Lalique crystal frog—sent to you straight from France—is guaranteed to transform the boy you’re thinking of into his TRUE FORM. So beware and choose only a strong, trustworthy prince. Otherwise you risk having a slimy toad on your hands.

The Enchanted Lalique Frog

1. “DIE FOR HER”

When Kate Mercier walks into the lives of Paris’s revenants, Vincent Delacroix isn’t the only one whose world turns upside down. Jules Marchenoir has spent the last century flirting his way through Paris, enjoying his life as an immortal bachelor. But when he meets Kate and realizes that he and his best friend are in love with the same girl, he is forced to choose between love and friendship.

2. “THE ART OF DYING”

Sixteen-year-old art prodigy Jules Marchenoir moves to Paris to join the biggest figures of the European art world in the wildest setting imaginable: turn-of-the-century Montmartre. But his career is cut short when he sacrifices his life to save fellow artist Fernand Leger in the first World War. After animating as a revenant he is forced to hide from the art world where his career was flourishing, avoid any love affair that threatens to expose him, and learn to fight murderous enemies out to destroy his kind.

3. “TILL DEATH US DO PART”

It is 1943, and twenty seven-year-old Geneviève Lefaucheux is killed by firing squad after she is discovered smuggling food to detainees of the Drancy concentration camp, near Paris. Philippe, her husband of three years, is devastated until—a few weeks after her death—Geneviève walks in through their front door alive, uninjured…and immortal.

4. “FOREVER YOURS”

Fifteen year-old Charlotte Lorieux and her twin brother Charles are shot to death after hiding Jewish classmates during World War Two. But, for them, death is not the end. Animated as revenants, the siblings join Paris’s bardia in their war against the evil numa, and the protection of the city becomes Charlotte’s sole focus. Until the day she finds that she has fallen hopelessly in love with a fellow revenant who has already given his heart to another.

5. “A DIFFERENT KIND OF DEATH”

Charles Lorieux is fifteen when he is killed for his involvement in the Paris Resistance. Soon after animating as a revenant, Charles falls in love with a human. But seeing the impossibility of a human-revenant relationship, he breaks it off and spends the next half-century hiding his bitterness at his fate. The day that Vincent brings Kate, his human girlfriend, into the revenants’ world, Charles’s anger reaches a boiling point and he begins to search for a way to escape his destiny.

6. “EVERWAKING”

Ambrose Bates is sent from Oxford, Mississippi to France to fight in World War Two. After receiving a letter from his girlfriend that she has found someone else, he decides to sacrifice himself for the members of his battalion who still have loved ones waiting at home. But what he thought was the end is only the beginning, and Ambrose begins his life as an undead American in Paris.

I can’t wait to see what you choose!

IF I SHOULD DIE flap copy

You’ve all been asking me for a summary of IF I SHOULD DIE, and although that isn’t ready yet, I can share with you the flap copy. (Which means the text that is printed on the book cover.)

Are you ready? From IF I SHOULD DIE, to be released May 2013…

I will not lose another person I love. I will not let history repeat itself.

Vincent waited lifetimes to find me, but in an instant our future together was shattered. He was betrayed by Violette, someone we both called a friend, and I lost him. Now Violette is determined to rule over France’s immortals, and she’s willing to wage a war to get what she wants.

It shouldn’t be possible, none of it should be, but this is my reality. I know Vincent is somewhere out there, I know he’s not completely gone, and I will do anything to save him.

After what we’ve already fought to achieve, a life without Vincent is unimaginable. He once swore to avoid dying—to go against his nature and forsake sacrificing himself for others—so that we could be together. How can I not risk everything to bring my love back to me?

So…does that answer some of your questions?

(p.s. You can already pre-order in the US through Barnes and Noble and in the UK from Amazon and Book Depository!!!)

Q&A with Josie Angelini, Tessa Gratton, Anna Carey & Me for New Ulm Library reading group