Amy Plum's Blog, page 42

2011 Book Tour Diary: Day 1

Sunday, June 6: Chicago

Recuperated from my France-to-Chicago flight at the beach with my best friend Kim and her family. At the end of the day, the taxi I ordered to take me to the Dark Days Tour hotel couldn't find me because apparently Lake Michigan is not a valid address. Listened to very amusing conversation between Kim and taxi booker that went like this:

"We're on Isabella and Lake Michigan. What do you mean Lake Michigan isn't in your GPS? It's the huge body of water right next to the city. It's the biggest monument in Chicago. How can your driver not find Lake Michigan?"

Once the driver found me—a half hour later—we sat in rush-hour traffic for another half-hour, and I got to the hotel with fifteen minutes to wash the sand out of my hair and get dressed for dinner. When faced with this type of situation, some people stay cool and collected and go about their business in a reasonable manner. I, however, am not "some people" and instead opted for tearing every item of clothing out of my suitcase and strewing it across the room in my attempt to find something to wear, speed-showering, and getting down to the lobby 10 minutes late with wet hair.

And there, waiting for me all curled up in a chair, typing into her cell phone and looking like nothing in the world could phase her, was Aprilynne Pike. Tara Hudson met us a few minutes later, and we proceeded into the hotel's restaurant—Aprilynne's pick since she had been there the year before.

Meeting the other authors felt like the first day of school. And having Aprilynne invite me to a pre-tour dinner was like having the head cheerleader ask me to sit at her table in the lunchroom. I kept looking around, waiting for someone to come up and tell me I needed to move to the geek table. But instead, Aprilynne did everything she could to make me and Tara, the two newbies, feel comfortable.

She answered all of my questions on, "So what exactly are we supposed to be doing on tour?" which then morphed into general questions about Writing and the Writing Life. And I kept waiting for her to roll her eyes at the inane questions or say, "Really, that's enough of an interrogation for one night," but she never did. Not only was she indefatigably gracious, but seemed to enjoy being the Bestower of Knowledge, telling us that another veteran writer had filled that role for her a couple of years before.

And finally, after three hours of chatting, the pure adrenaline I had been running on began to dwindle. Although it was only 10pm in Chicago, it was 5am in France, and I was starting to nod off. We left the restaurant for our rooms, and with an equal mix of nerves and fatigue, I fell asleep.

[Unfortunately there are no photos from the 1st night dinner, since I was still trying not to be a complete geek. Luckily, I gave up the next day and embraced my camera nerdhood. As you will see in tomorrow's post!]

2011 Book Tour (the prequel: a photojournal of my preparations)

T Minus 2 weeks: go shopping with friend, Cassi, who is a style editor living in Paris. Purchase clothes that I would never have dared buy by myself. Thank the fashion gods I have a friend like her, otherwise I probably would have chosen something like this:

T Minus 6 days: Send final manuscript of UNTIL I DIE to my editor at HarperCollins. Do happy dance. Begin packing in earnest.

T Minus 5 days: Send children off to beach with grandparents. Everyone looks happy because they're still too young to know what 2 weeks really means.

Still T minus 5 days: dog-sitters (a.k.a. friends Laila and Terry, with dog-daughter Freya) arrive to dogsit for Ella. Drive to Tours. Hop on plane to Marseille. (South of France.)

T minus 4 days: Attend friend's pre-wedding dinner in Grasse (in the south of France).

Me & Laurent, who won't smile for the camera.

T minus 3 days: Attend friend's actual wedding, during which we all sang a Beatles medley with the bride and groom. Here's a video:

Love 1

T minus 2 days: Leave hotel for airport: America, here I come!

Me at Nice airport, after 4 hours of sleep.

Did a flight change in London Heathrow, where I found this:

DIE FOR ME & STARCROSSED at W.H. Smith's, Heathrow

And arrived in Chicago, where I went directly to my best friend Kim's house. Kim is a chef. Her brownies were one of Oprah's Favorite Things. So, of course, I arrived to a huge spread of food, including fried green tomatoes and 2 sorts of Mexican salads. So tired I couldn't even stay up to chat.

T minus 1 day: woke up to this breakfast, with my adorable goddaughter, Tizzy

and then, feeling extremely motivated, went to a dance class with Kim and then to the beach:

where, for fear of becoming lobster-red for the following day's Dark Days signing, I hid under an umbrella most of the time. Caught a taxi to my hotel and then…

IT BEGAN…

T minus 1 day, 7:12p.m. (I was 12 minutes late) I met Aprilynne Pike and Tara Hudson for dinner. And we talked for 3 hours, until I suddenly announced that I was about to keel over from jetlagged fatigue.

Which leaves us at T minus 12 hours or so, at which point Aprilynne, Tara, Ellen Schreiber, Veronica Roth & I will descend upon the Chicago Public Library at exactly 1p.m. and the DARK DAYS OF SUMMER WILL OFFICIALLY BEGIN!

Creating Mythology

As part of the DIE FOR ME blog tour, Kristin from Bookworming in the 21st Century asked me to write a guest post about creating mythology. Here it is!

I don't know if I'm the best person to ask about creating mythology, because I didn't do it in a very organized way.

With my revenants, I started with the idea of an undead being that died over and over again, coming back to life at his original death age. In my mind, a revenant was something between a god and a zombie. And after that I just had to ask myself all of the why, how and when questions and kind of wait for the rationale to come to me.

Little by little, as I wrote, clear rules started to crawl out of the primal sludge. And as each rule emerged, it gradually clarified what the revenants were in my mind. For example, at some point, I thought, "Well, if there are good revenants, there have to be evil ones too." And then I had to decide what they were and how they functioned.

It all came down to two things, I guess: equilibrium and truth.

In DIE FOR ME, when explaining the difference between the revenants and their enemies, Ambrose tells Kate, "The universe likes an equilibrium." Mythology also likes an equilibrium: between humans and immortals. Between good and evil. Between fate and chance. If a mythology is too lop-sided it doesn't seem real to me. So if you follow the equilibrium rule and write half of your mythology, by the default of equilibrium you've got the other half practically figured out for you.

And truth. No matter how wacko or out-of-this world a mythology is on the surface, if you read it and it sounds true, than the myth-maker has done her job. Every time I wrote a supernatural passage, I asked myself if it sounded true. And if it didn't, I worked on it until it did. Or scrapped it altogether.

I think truth comes from a story's connection with the real world and with other stories. If you can find links with history or with quirky but true aspects of the real world, you will have a firmer, more honest foundation to build from.

Beyond that is the scary (for me) step of making an actual hard-and-fast decision for your mythology that has nothing to do with equilibrium OR truth. Because sometimes you just have to decide that something is the way it is because YOU SAY SO. (I sound like my mom.)

For example, I got to this point in the book where I realized that I had to make my revenants impervious to bullets. The whole mythology needed it, even though there was no rational reason for it. So I just came out and said it in my text.

" We use guns when we' re expected to," answered Charlotte, " if we' re fighting alongside humans in the cases I mentioned . . . bodyguarding and the like. But bullets don' t kill revenants."

My editor came back and said, "Why? I don't get why bullets don't kill revenants."

So I put on my walking shoes and walked about five miles going over and over in my mind why revenants couldn't be killed by bullets. And the only thing I came up with was "because my mythology needs it to be like that."

At that moment I had this kind of revelation. I thought of all of the writers before me who had created the rules for vampires, werewolves, zombies and the like, and they ALL used the no-bullets rule. (Unless it was a special kind of hard- to-get bullet.) But I realized that they all must have gotten to the point as well where they said, "It just has to be this way or my story won't work." Which was kind of cool.

I went back to my desk and added on to Charlotte's sentence:

" But bullets don' t kill revenants" —she paused—" or others like us."

And with those last four words I linked my revenants to already-established monsters, making my decision legitimate by historical usage.

Mythmaking is hard-going. It makes you kind of obsessed, because even on your off-time, your brain is trying to figure out how things work. But when it all comes together, man does it feel great.

French Boys

When Brent from Naughty Book Kitties asked me to guest post about French boys, this is what I had to say:

Oh man. Where do I start?

Okay, first of all, it would be easy to throw a lot of stereotypes out there. But if I did the reverse—explained American boys to the French by talking about "jocks" or "nerds" or those Williamsburg hipster types with beards, glasses and tight jeans—that wouldn't even start to cover half of the American guys I know. So…I decided to give you some stories instead.

French Boy Story #1

I was living in Paris, and had just broken up with a British guy I was seeing. I met this French guy named Sebastien—a friend of a friend—who was an artist. He was tall and lanky with disheveled dark hair…totally my type. He would drive me around Paris on his old dilapidated Vespa to art exhibitions, or to a pile of old stones that he had read were part of a Roman wall, or to an out-of-the-way park for a picnic. I liked him, but wasn't ready to jump into another relationship after English Guy.

Soon afterward, another French guy named Laurent—who I had had a crush on for about two years, while we were both dating other people—began asking me out. He dropped by my apartment one afternoon, and saw the flowers and bottle of wine that Sebastien had brought the night before when he had come over for a movie. Laurent asked who they were from, and I told him, "a friend," using the masculine word "un ami."

The next night Laurent showed up with a much bigger bouquet of flowers and a bottle of champagne. And as we left my house to go for a walk down by the river, he took my hand and held it firmly—a little bit possessively. I had kind of been avoiding that because, again…I wasn't sure if I was ready to date someone again, but he reached down and appropriated my hand. That's the best word for it.

He never asked me any questions about Sebastien. The topic of the "other guy" was never broached. But he silently decided to try to beat his competitor.

French Boy Quality #1: an understated, quiet confidence that I find totally sexy.

(Oh, and…by the way…I married Laurent a couple years later.)

French Boy Story #2

One of my husband's friends from childhood had a pretty rough life. To say he's been a bit messed up for a long time would be putting it lightly. My husband hadn't seen him for years. But when he passed through our region a few weeks ago, he asked if he could come spend the night. I was scrambling to finish a manuscript, but threw together a decent dinner, fixed up a bedroom, and welcomed him as best as I could while juggling kids, dinner and work.

I knew he had been an addict, and had briefly met him over a decade ago, but didn't know what to expect when he arrived. He was emaciated. He seemed sad. But he was polite, helped with everything he could see to help with, played with the kids, and went outside to smoke without me asking him to. When he went into town the next day to "do some shopping" he asked if I needed any groceries. And when he came back, it was with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers.

A day later, I got a thank you note from him in a beautifully-written French (my translation's not going to do it justice): "A quick weekend in Touraine (our region) with just the basics: friends, a sumptuous home, and a few glasses of wine. I couldn't have asked for more. Lolo & Amy, congratulations on your exemplary achievements. Thank you and bravo."

French Boy Quality #2: gallantry and poetry when you'd least expect it.

French Boy Story #3

I'm standing in the train station at the Paris airport wrangling my kids and luggage as we wait for the train to take us home after an exhausting trip to New York. I notice a man taking photos in my direction and figure he must be a railroad enthusiast or something. Until I notice him moving to the other side of me and shooting from another angle.

I wave over my husband, who's off studying train times, and tell him I think the guy is taking pictures of me. Laurent takes a good look at me and his eyebrows shoot up. "Your dress is totally see-through in this light," he says. "What? It's black! I looked in the mirror, it's fine!" "Not here in this light, it's not," he replies. So we move the kids and luggage and I sit down with my back to pervie camera guy.

Ten minutes later, the guy has come around and is standing in front of me, a ways away, taking photos of me again. And at the same moment I notice him, I see my husband walk up to him and they start to talk.

I don't like tough macho guys. I especially don't like guys that get in fights. My husband has never been in a fight in his life, and as I watched him, I was kind of surprised that he had confronted the guy. They exchanged words in a polite manner, and then the man turned and walked away, not to be seen again. As Laurent sat down next to me, I asked him what he had said. "I told him that if he took another picture of my wife I would break his camera and then break his face," Laurent said calmly.

"What!?" I gasped.

Laurent did that cool French-guy shrug and said, "C'est normal." (e.g. "What else would I do?")

French Boy Quality #3: born into a culture that's been around for thousands of years, they've got the whole "this is how things work" figured out.

French Boy Story #4

One of my father-in-law's best friends is this guy named Claude, who has these enormous white moustaches that curve up on the sides. He's old-school French, complains about the government no matter who's in power, has all of these conspiracy theories about banks and the minorities living in France, and is mildly but annoyingly sexist in that "they're another generation and just don't get it" kind of way.

YET…when I was pregnant he brought over tons of clippings from his lilac trees because he knew how much I loved the smell. We had a long conversation about using apple seeds to firm up fruit jam (this was during my thinking-I-actually-fit-in-in-the-countryside phase), after which he brought me sample jars of several different types he had made that year. And he joins my father-in-law in clipping sour cherries from my FIL's tree with scissors, gathering them in cute little baskets, and making this kick-ass moonshine-style cherry liquor from them.

French Boy Quality #4: there is a completely different view of what is masculine and feminine, and even the old guys can be seen as embracing their femininity. (Just don't tell them that.)

Parisian Cafés, Pastries & Other Goodies (w/DIE FOR ME outtake)

As part of my blog tour, I did this guest post for The Serpentine Library on Parisian cafes. Maria's question was: Certain cities make me think of food: Rome, Florence, Paris, even Athens. I have this picture in my head of Paris – maybe I've read too many books or seen too many movies set there – of sitting at an outdoor cafe drinking coffee and eating a decadent dessert. For someone who has never been to Paris where would be the best places to this and do some people watching too?

And here is my answer:

You are absolutely right about Parisians sitting outside in cafés, drinking coffee and watching people. As for the decadent desserts, when I first moved to Paris, I too thought that was part of a Parisian's daily routine. So every day, on my way home from work, I would pick up one of the amazing looking pastries at our neighborhood pastry shop. After gaining ten pounds in just a couple of months, I asked a local how everyone stayed so thin if they ate such amazing desserts all of the time. And the response was: they they don't eat them all of the time. They eat them at the most once a week, usually for Sunday dinner. So there goes that stereotype down the drain. However, if you are visiting Paris as a tourist, I feel you are obliged to eat one of every pastry you see.

Some of my favorite cafés for people watching are along the Boulevard St. Germain. Like Les Deux Magots, where Vincent takes Kate for hot chocolate, which is super-touristy but still fun. There's a little café looking out onto the Place Saint Sulpice, facing one of Paris's most beautiful fountains (with lion sculptures around it), which makes for fun gazing. I like the Place Saint Catherine and the Place des Vosges in the Marais. But every neighborhood has its own character, and every neighborhood has a great café to sit and watch people. So wherever you go, if you find a place that is nicely decorated (for example, wooden or wicker chairs instead of plastic) and is near a Metro (subway), you will probably luck out with the good coffee and people watching!

And just to show you how right-on your question was regarding DIE FOR ME's setting, here is an out-take from DIE FOR ME: a few paragraphs that were cut to avoid slowing down the pace with too much description. (Which is like pulling teeth for me because I LOVE descriptions!) This is from Kate's point of view:

"I've always thought of Parisian cafés as their own universes: little islands of civility and warmth dotted throughout the big city. People go there for three main reasons: to eat, drink and gawk at other people. Besides an occasional glass of wine at dinner with Mom and Dad, I didn't drink. But drinking in Paris isn't like drinking in the States. American teenagers seem to drink with the express purpose of getting drunk. They don't do that in France. "Drunk" is an extreme, and the French don't like extremes. Nothing too cold or too hot – it ruins the taste, they say. Your Coke is served slightly chilled, but without ice. And you'll never get a tongue-scalding cup of coffee.

So the typical café-goer will slowly sip a glass of wine or beer, ordering a second one if they decide to stay for a while. The coffee cups all look like they were stolen from a child's tea-set, but people sit there and nurse them for an hour.

And then there's the people-watching. It isn't considered rude in France to stare. So people do. You can't walk past a café without everyone sitting at the outside tables giving you at least a two-second looking-over. That's why you never leave your front door dressed in a ratty old sweatsuit or anything else you mind being judged in.

My black jeans, green t-shirt and Converse tennis shoes guaranteed me invisibility in this land of beautiful people wearing stylish clothes. I passed the minimum level of appearance-acceptability, while simultaneously accomplishing inconspicuousness."

Naming DIE FOR ME's Characters

The month-long DIE FOR ME blog tour is over, and for those of you who didn't get the chance to follow along, I thought I would post some of the highlights on my own blog. One favorite guest post that I did was for YA Bliss. You can see the original article , where I explained how I came up with the characters' names in DIE FOR ME.

———————–

Naming characters is one of the most fun parts of writing a story. And with DIE FOR ME's names, I really had a blast. But from the very first draft of DIE FOR ME until the version I submitted to my agent several of the characters' names changed at least once. These are the five ways my characters ended up with their names.

1. I started with one name, but swapped it for another because it didn't fit the character's personality. In my first draft, Kate's name was Tallulah. I love the name Tallulah. It's my daughter's middle name. But as I wrote the first few chapters, shortening it to "Lula" as I went, it just didn't seem right. I asked a group of friends to for advice, and they suggested some cool, contemporary sounding names that would fit perfectly in a romance novel. But none of those sounded right either.

I wanted a name that sounded both feminine and powerful. And one-syllable "Kate" did that for me. I asked my name-squad and they unanimously approved it.

2. I started with one name, but changed it because it was too hard to pronounce for English speakers. Vincent started out Aurelien. When my name-squad told me that was too weird of a name to their American-reader ears, I tried a few others out on them: Amaury, Julien, Florian, Theo…and Vincent. The girls jumped at Vincent, and so did I.

Charles and Charlotte were Aurelien (I REALLY wanted to use that name!) and Violaine. I stuck with those names for a long time, and it wasn't until a late draft that I decided to choose names that would be easier in English. Naming twins similarly seemed like something a mom from the 1920s would do—like dressing them the same. I love the name Charlotte, so Charles was drawn from her name, and Violaine and Aurelien became their middle names.

3. Some names I got right the very first time. Georgia is a Georgia. She just is. No questions asked. And it was after I had named her that I decided that that's where her mother was born.

J ules was always Jules. It's a gorgeous, old name in France that's just come back into style. Pronounced "Zhool". Like a jewel. Which is exactly what he is. Gaspard couldn't be anything but Gaspard. It fits his personality. Full stop.

4. And some names I had to search for. I haven't yet told you Ambrose's past (in Book 1 or Book 2), so I will only say that I looked at a historical document and chose a first and a last name from two separate people on that list.

Lucien's character was based on Philippe Henriot, the Vichy regime's Minister of Information and Propaganda (known as "the French Goebbels"). I didn't want to name him the same thing, however, because I didn't know if Philippe Henriot still had surviving family in France who would come after me for making their ancestor an even more evil monster than he was in real life. So Lucien's middle names are Philippe Henri, even though no one will ever know that. (Except you!)

For Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Balthazar Grimod de La Reynière, I went down a list of aristocratic names from the 18th century and picked and chose the ones I liked!

5. And then there are the "homage" names. Kate's last name—Mercier—is an homage to a friend of mine, Nicolas Mercier, a screenwriter here in France. He was one of the people who encouraged me the most with my writing, told me I had talent, and invited me to come write with him. He and his boyfriend lent me their various homes when I needed writing getaways, and naming my main character for him was the best way I could think of thanking him.

And for all of the French characters' last names, I used the names of the people who live in my village. None of them know this, however, so if they do pick up my book they'll be in for a surprise!

Is Paris the Make-Out Capital of the World?

How romantic is Paris? Up to you to decide. My friend Etienne sent me these photos today, claiming to have spotted Kate and Vincent around town. 

Kissing on the Carrousel Bridge

Sunset on the Quai

As much bodily contact as publicly acceptable in the Luxembourg Gardens

Lying in the sun at the Luxembourg Gardens

A little park bench action.

Make out and butt grope in front of Notre Dame.

I REST MY CASE.

BOOK BIRTHDAY!!! DIE FOR ME's US Release

Today—May 10—DIE FOR ME is being officially released by HarperTeen.

I can't even tell you how excited I am. But I can show you:

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And I have already written all of the wonderful people who blogged their reviews and interviews of the book. But I wanted to say to the rest of you…thank you.

You have all contributed—with your reviews, ratings, and recommendations on-web and off—to making this a HUGE occasion. I couldn't have ever imagined the excitement that has built up around DIE FOR ME, and it is in a very big part thanks to you.

It feels like the publication of DIE FOR ME is the happy conclusion of a huge group effort. You're a part of it – all of you. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Now…LET'S ALL EAT SOME CAKE!!!

DIE FOR ME's Australian Release

As promised, to celebrate DIE FOR ME's May 10 release by Little, Brown/Atom Australia, I tried Vegemite…for the very first time. To see it going down, watch here:

DIE FOR ME's UK Book Release

On the MONUMENTAL occasion of DIE FOR ME's UK book release by Little, Brown / Atom, I filmed this celebratory video. WARNING: contains Paris and macaroons.

(Thank you to my friend Amy Reverdy for the top notch cinematography. You can see her reflection in the mirror.)