When One Of Your Most Wildest Dreams Is Coming True

Oh, hi guys! I have a super fun incredibly exciting post for you today.

Yes, I do. And it’s awesome. I will try to make it quick. No, no I won’t.

When I was 12, my BFF Donna and I would trade books back and forth like they were the most delicious drug of your life. We were two book-loving kindred spirits and it was lovely.

Anne of Green Gables, The BabySitter’s Club, Sweet Valley everything, Catcher In The Rye, Wuthering Heights. Basically, we were two badass kids living in an awful religious ~~commune~~ cult at the time and any decent book we could get our hands on was like…high inducing. I am not ashamed, WE WERE FREAKING CRAZY ABOUT THE BOOKS. (And also NKOTB bc duh!)

So. I read Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes. I loved it. I was inspired. I went from creating mini magazine parodies and drawing cartoons to giving my first actual novel a go. I wanted to write a book with all the feels too. Maybe I wasn’t your average twelve year old: My book was about a girl who watches her depressed friend shoot herself. Donna was my first reader. She was probably freaked out.

Lucky for her, it got tricky to write first person, present tense point-of-view and I gave up. I went back to making little magazines and improv-ing sketches on tape.

That was a long time ago. Since then, I’ve written hundreds of poems and songs, an unfinished screenplay, a short story. (You know, all the things that’ll never see the light of day). In 2008, I started a memoir-based novel. But I was also working a job that got kind of…

Then long story short I quit that job & decided to get all up in my book writing. I pulled out my one writing book, notebook, files, checked out and bought more writing books, cruised the internet, and learned a lot. I also ditched the memoir-based novel because my writing partner in crime (one of my high school BFFs) Laura said, “Let’s start something new and fun and just write!” So I opened up a new file, and was inspired by high-school, first love, good times, bad times, and of course some 90210 drama.

Wait. Not old school 90210, new 90210 with Matt Lanter.

I titled the new document PROM BITCH and just started writing. I kept writing and sharing chapters with Laura and also sent them to my non-writerly but gracious, awesome & supportive BFF Jen. These two were so awesome during this time because that first draft was a hundred drafts ago, you guys and was ~~shit~~ so, so rough but Jen & Laura were always like YAY! GO! THIS IS LIKE A REAL STORY! I LOVE IT!

And I queried and got an agent! Victoria Lowes believed in my book too. And then the revisions. I revised once more, then with Victoria, I revised two more times. And then I entered what most writers call “SUB HELL.” This is the time where it’s like querying, but instead of getting an agent to love your book enough to want to sell it, your agent pitches it to editors. Yes, it was hell, I suppose. But for me, it was also really, really exciting. Victoria really guided me with those revisions and I think we got a great book out there so the rejections were actually pretty easy to take. Also, it’s easy for me to say this now. I won’t even lie. Sometimes the process did feel like reliving my twenties. You know:

self-loathing

No leg shaving

and the Wait! What? Whyyyyyy?

& treats to ease the pain:

Ok Fine. Super Long Story. Wrapping it up. It wasn’t too long before Victoria emailed me with: CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU GET A CHANCE! : ) Right away I knew it was an offer. (because what kind of evil agent would email you something like that if it wasn’t right?!) So I started sweating. I was in Barnes & Noble. I bought my daughter a giant cookie and a toy, put her in her carseat and called Victoria from the parking lot.

I was right. Victoria said we had an offer! I was very:

So Victoria explained it. Someone wanted my book! An editor wanted it and then my book made it through the acquisitions process–YAY! So, after some ~~OMG hurry up you guys!~~ fun paperworky contract agent/publisher stuff and me having the worst time holding onto this secret…

I’m super thrilled and excited to announce that I HAVE A BOOK DEAL!

Kristin Kulsavage of SkyHorse Publishing/Sky Pony Press has bought PROM BITCH for release in Fall of 2015! Here’s the deal announcement in Publisher’s Marketplace:

In case you can’t read it, it says: “Debut author Ami Allen-Vath’s PROM BITCH, about a high school senior navigating prom season amidst panic attacks, a new boyfriend, & a suicide letter from the class outcast, to Kristin Kulsavage at Sky Pony Press, in a nice deal, for publication Fall 2015, by Victoria Lowes of The Bent Agency.”

You guys! YOU GUYS. My book will be something we can buy and hold and kiss and oh crap…READ, I guess! In Fall of 2015!?!? *kind of faints*

So huge thanks to everyone who has been with me so far. I am not going to name all the names yet bc how boring would the book’s acknowledgements be if you’d already read them here. But HUGE thank you to the guy who was like “Whoa you’re writing a book? We better go get you a real laptop.” and “You’re gonna ignore me on our anniversary vacation in Puerto Rico to finish writing a book called Prom Bitch? Sure!”

Yes, that’d be Justin, my amazing husband! (Who totally used to be a cop and totally thinks all my moves rock). Thanks Justin and thank YOU, supportive Family & Friends and Future Readers of my book!

xoxoAMI