In contract talks right now!
Yesterday I received a slew of very happy emails from my esteemed publisher, Abigail Samoun. Tricycle Press, the Young Adult imprint of Random House, has decided to publish Letter Off Dead in book form!
I’m supposed to have first round edits of this beast to them by the weekend (as in three days from now). A final edit is due by October 11. Hopefully some illustrations happen along the way (haven’t heard about that yet). Galleys by December. Then lots and lots of rounds of proofreading, line edits, etc. The book will finally come out in September of 2011.
I’m pretty excited and a bit overwhelmed at the moment. The basic story and characters will remain the same, but going from blog-friendly version to print-friendly version means some pretty drastic changes–nearly all for the better, I think.
Stay tuned!
Tom
Author’s Epilogue
What’s Up, Dear Readers?
Letter Off Dead, in its blog format, is officially done. Started on Trevor’s first day of seventh grade. Ended on his last day, as planned.
If you’re new to the site, you can go to this page and scroll to the bottom for Trevor’s first post.
It’s been a remarkable experience, not least because of the community of readers that followed this project and the challenging and encouraging feedback you all provided via facebook and blog comments. I only missed a few days of posts throughout the year. I’m tired but exhilarated.
Nothing is final yet (is anything ever final?), but I’m in discussions with the folks at Tricycle Press, a children and young adult imprint of Random House. The plan is to turn Letter Off Dead into a book.
I’ve always thought of this blog as a very rough, very live first draft. There’s power in the immediacy and roughness of its current form, but there are plenty of aspects about the current state that drive me a bit crazy. I long to give this thing a good scrubbing. It will almost certainly shrink a bit in the process. Apologies in advance if some of your favorite posts disappear in the process. I’m confident it will be a better final product.
The soonest possible release date is still more than a year away. In the meantime, I encourage you to (shameless sales pitch alert) buy The Tilting House, my first book, also published by Tricycle Press. And follow me on Twitter. I’ll post updates there and try hard not to be boring.
Thanks for playing along.
Tom
I’m starting to think Mrs. Henry is a nut.
Dear Dad,
I talked to Mrs. Henry again today, but I’m starting to think she is kind of a nut. Here’s a drawing of her I did in class when I should have been reading. I like it. I worked on it some more when I got home. Can you tell what I mean about her kind of ex-hippie style?
Mrs. Henry really believes this stuff about The Other and all her other kooky crap. I think she’s one of those people who probably thinks ghosts and angels and all that sort of thing are real.
Then again, who am I to talk? I’m writing letters to my dead dad.
I asked her if she’d tell me more about this idea of what she meant by a bargain. What kind of bargain could I make with a dead person that, like she said, God would honor?
“You’re a writer, aren’t you, Trevor?”
“Sort of.”
“You are. You’re someone who values words. Few people do, you know. We say, “God bless you” when someone sneezes without thinking what the words mean. Talk about taking the Lord’s name in vain. We pray at dinner. We say, “Bless this food to our bodies,” but if someone asked us what we meant, we wouldn’t know how to answer them. Our words might as well be grunts. But what if you made a real agreement—a verbal contract? What if you made an oath before God, say, to keep your room clean for a month? Would you do it?”
“I guess I would.”
“Would you or wouldn’t you?”
“I would.”
“Why?”
“Well, because I made a promise in front of God.”
“And God would hold you to it. God takes such oaths seriously. It is an oath of The Other. Such oaths transcend time and space. And such bargains are never to be entered into lightly.”
Mrs. Henry stared at me for a minute. I think she was wishing I would fall down in amazement at the brilliance of her words. I think teachers wish that a lot. I guess I was kind of amazed, though.
“But what do you mean by a bargain?”
“Oh, that part is simple. A bargain is simply an exchange of goods or services at a price. You get something in exchange for payment.
I still don’t really know what she meant, and Mrs. Henry wasn’t going to spell everything out for me. But there was something there. I could tell.
A little help here would be great, Dad. Any ideas?
Your son,
Tom
Filed under Letters from Son | Tags: adolescence, afterlife, book, fatherhood, God, junior high school, letter, middle school, purgatory, teacher, The Other, writing | Comment (0)