Tuesday

My first event is at 11:30. I have plenty of time to spare, so decide to venture forth in search of shoes, since in my usual state of spaciness I packed only high-heels and flip flops and nothing in between. I wander around town until I find some black ballerinas, stick my flip flops in my purse, and make my way to the event only to find that I have missed it because I was looking at my carefully-typed-out itinerary for the wrong day.

3pm I return to Charlotte’s Square for my next event, after checking my schedule a kazillion times to make sure I’m on the right day. (I have a problem with time, if you haven’t noticed. I don’t feel it passing. It’s all just numbers to me, and numbers and I are not friends.)

This event is with two new writers, Kerry Hudson and Lisa O’Donnell. They are both Scottish writers, but Lisa lives in L.A. and Kerry in London, and I enjoy listening to them read excerpts of their books and talk about topics familiar to me like how the titles were chosen, what they felt about the covers, their writing processes, and all of the questions I’m always asked when interviewed.

Kerry Hudson and Lisa O'Donnell (with moderator in center)

Afterward, I go to their signing table, buy both books, and introduce myself. And then I do something I like to do in new cities: I walk for two hours, having no clue where I am going. One friendly woman joins me for a few blocks, tells me all about her babydaddy disappearing, and then goes her own way. And finally I find my way back to the festival thanking the shoe gods for those ballerinas. I never would have made it that many miles in my flip flops.

Graveyard I wandered by in Edinburgh

I go to the Authors’ Yurt and grab a water and sit down next to someone and force myself to chat. It’s the girl who is organizing the UNBOUND event for the next night, and I promise her to come. And then I spot Lisa sitting across from us and tell her that I enjoyed her talk from earlier. “I’m about to do another one,” she says. “I’m about to go to another one,” I say, and take out my ticket and discover that I have signed up to see her once again, but this time she’s talking about screenwriting.

Jonathan Ley and Lisa O'Donnell

7pm I sit in the audience and find myself laughing because everyone is there to learn about screenwriting and Lisa is basically telling everyone that it’s a crap business and that they’re crazy to want to do it. The moderator, Jonathan Ley, tries to diffuse the situation, urging her to talk more about screenwriting, but she’s adamant that she’s much happier writing novels. Her honesty is refreshing and the confused reaction of the audience is priceless and I find myself smiling broadly because it’s all so comic.

8pm I book it out of the tent back to the Authors’ Yurt because I have the first organized meeting of my trip: Keren David, who my British editor had introduced me to by email.  Keren has written several YA novels, and has a few more coming soon, so we chat about that and when I admit I don’t know anyone at the festival she grabs a passing woman and introduces her as Linda Strachen, author of over 60 children’s books. “Linda knows EVERYONE,” Keren says. We trade cards and they run off to another event.

8:30pm I wander past the bookstore and see Lisa sitting there at the signing table with her moderator Jonathan. I sweep them off to the Authors’ Yurt and we go outside and sit and talk all evening with a wandering writer from Mexico. And when it gets too cold to sit outside in my dress and ballerinas, I walk back to my hotel and watch the fireworks explode above the castle from my window.

Monday

Wander across Edinburgh from my hotel past this:

to Charlotte Square, where the festival is being held.

3pm Excellent talk by Colm Toibin on “New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families,” a book he wrote on writers and their families. Especially memorable, the story about Yeats and his father, a frustrated writer who sent his son his work to receive only…silence. (Good article on this.)

6:30pm Attend V. Campbell’s talk about her middle-grade book VIKING GOLD for which she brought lots of props like a replica Viking sword and helmet. I wonder what kind of props I could bring to a talk about DIE FOR ME: A replica Eiffel Tower? A beret? A box of macarons? A hot dead guy?

The festival tradition is that after each talk, the author goes immediately to the festival bookstore and signs books. I buy V. Campbell’s book and have her sign it for my son, who can’t read yet, but I’m hoping he’ll love it some day. (It has Vikings and mysteries and swordfights, so why not?)

8pm I pocket my copy of VIKING GOLD and jump straight into the line for Neil Gaiman’s event. I watch him and Chris Riddell talk about the 10^th anniversary of CORALINE, and am completely enchanted. It is my first time to see Neil, and I realize why everyone I know who has met him has raved about it. He’s as amazing as I imagined him to be. Better.

One of my favorite parts of the event is when Neil reads a section from CORALINE and Chris does a simultaneous illustration on an overhead projector. Such talent with both the art and writing, I am swept away in the pleasure of pure creativity.

I had joked online about getting a picture taken with Neil, but hadn’t actually taken myself seriously. And when he announces to the audience that he has a family emergency and is flying off right after the talk and can’t sign books I give up all hope of meeting him. Following the crowd out of the tent and into the night, I head toward the festival exit.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse Chris Riddell leaving the Author’s Yurt, and a sudden thought flashes through my mind. Could He possibly be there?

I slip my Author’s badge over my head and make my way into the Yurt. And there he is: Neil Gaiman, waiting for a taxi to take him to the airport. There are four or five people standing around, talking to him about logistics for his trip back. I stand there and nod as if I’m supposed to be there.

And then, as Neil is about to walk further into the yurt to where Amanda Palmer waits for him, I walk up and stick my hand out. “I’m Amy Plum. I write for HarperCollins,” I say, knowing that he too is a Harper author. Amanda leans her head around the corner to see who I am. (Can I just say…she’s so stunning – photos don’t even get close.)

Neil gives me this huge smile and says something and I say something back but I am so starstruck that I couldn’t tell you now what we said even if you hung me by my toenails over a barrel of piranhas. I ask if I can take my picture with him, and he agrees. And then he makes a joke about how he always has red-eye in pictures, and I promise to Photoshop it out.

And that is it. I thank him and walk out into the Edinburgh night, back to my hotel room, smiling because my Day 1 of the festival ended with a beautiful little dream coming true.

Um…yeah. Just my hero and all.

Me & Neil Gaiman

That’s my spiffy ready-for-Tweeting photo, but I thought you’d enjoy the real one pre-being-cropped:

Yes, that’s Amanda F. Palmer in the background! (And do you like the sign?)

And then, a little while later, because Neil’s just that nice I saw this… *faints*

That’s birthday and Christmas all put together for me this year!

Plummy Update #1

Tomorrow I’m going to EDINBURGH!!! HURRAY!!!

(Can you tell I’m just a teensy bit excited?)

This is what happened: I was invited to speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival. I’m doing a talk on the 27th, which you can buy tickets for here, and then a panel with KJ Wignall which you can’t buy tickets for unless you’re a Scottish school child, in which case you’re coming with your class.

So I was all excited about it and decided to extend my stay a few days so that I could see some other authors talk. And then I got the program for the 3-week festival and decided to lump a whole extra week on. I’ll be there the first and third weeks of the festival, just basically hanging out and attending about a kagillion events.

BUT…if you are at the Edinburgh Festival and want to find me to say hello or have me sign something, I will probably be at UNBOUND every night in the Guardian Spiegeltent from 9pm-11pm. The days I’m there: August 12-17 and 24-28.

And now for the real reason I am attending Week 1 of the Festival. Two words: Neal Gaiman.

I love him. I love him in the same way that I love Gene Wilder, who I fell madly in love with the first time I saw his frizzy hair sticking out from underneath that velvet top hat. (I was nine.) I, however, have never written Gene Wilder an embarrassing gushy fan letter and will certainly never meet him. Thankfully, I wrote Neal’s letter using my real name, so his bodyguards won’t have “Amy Plum” on their stalker alert list.

The event was sold out before I could even get my Author Ticket Request Form in, but I pleaded my case with a few key festival organizers, and they gifted me with a Director’s ticket. Who knows what that means, but if I am back stage, you will be sure that I will have a photo of Neil & me up here as fast as you can say Twitter.

Plummy Update #2

I turned in my copyedits for IF I SHOULD DIE today. Which means I get to start work on JUNEAU, my HarperTeen book that will be coming out in 2014! I can’t even tell you how excited I am about that. I’m bringing my notes along to Edinburgh for any down-time I have, since I’m thinking that with all of those authors in one place, inspiration is going to be drifting around like a thick fog. I’ll just have to breathe it in, and I’ll be writing magical prose.

Plummy Update #3

I never know what I’m going to be asked to do in my job. Take part in a “who has the hottest protag” contest, tell some interviewer what kind of undies Vincent wears, or send birthday greetings to someone’s friend halfway across the world. Yesterday I got a new one: a Tweeter asked me and 2 other authors to come up with a name for their rescue cat, who happened to have a peculiar genetic deformation. I was happy to oblige. My perfect name for a 12-toed cat? “The Duke of Dozen.”

Plummy Update #4

I passed a Paris clothes shop called “Jules” the other day and saw these posters in the window.

So I knew I had to take a photo for you. And it wasn’t until I took the group-shot that I saw what was printed on the one in the front:

Um…yeah. Weird, right?

Plummy Update #5 (which is not really an update)

And finally, my favorite recent quote:

“I love him, I love him, I’m so sorry.”

If you guess who this is, you win…nothing. Except the knowledge that you too were once a Twihard. And Twihards never die. They just spend the rest of eternity skipping around Forks in a peasant dress.

I’m popping out of my Batcave, where I am busily working on copyedits to IF I SHOULD DIE, to remind you that the summer YA Scavenger Hunt starts in 2 days (August 1)!

As I promised you all, my special content this time is a Point-of-View piece that Jules wrote near the beginning of UNTIL I DIE. And to whip you into a frenzy of Hunt madness, I’m giving you these two teasers…the first and last lines of the POV.

“I’m in love with a girl who’s not mine to love.”

and

“My heart is sore with wanting her.”

Is that enough inspiration to join the hunt? 🙂 If so, prepare yourselves by checking out the Hunt Homepage!

Back to the Batcave, which I’ve moved this week to a top-secret location…

Appropriate place for a batcave, non?

(I jumped on a train to see an old friend, so brought my work with me!) If you want more photos of my top-secret hideout, I’m letting people guess where I am on Twitter at @AmyPlumOhLaLa.

As Christian would say…”Laters, baby!”*

*A hint to what I read on the train…cover carefully hidden.