Perhaps three or four weeks ago, I received the Spring 2011 issue of the Beloit College Magazine. As an alum now, it’s remarkable how genuinely attached to my alma mater this made me feel – and now, with my freshman cohort graduating this spring, more than anything – it alerted me to the various and assorted successes of my (former) classmates.
Luckily, I’ve managed to keep abreast of Mr. Hartzell’s work, and indeed, his riotous “Squirrel” video was given a fairly substantial write-up in the magazine. There was, however, a full-page article (written by a former “Round Table” [Beloit’s Student Newspaper] editor-colleague of mine, Steven Jackson) about a one Madeleine Roux’s recent success in publishing.
During my time at Beloit, I was involved in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest with Madeleine (along with Ben Hartzell, and Sara Pace) – Madeleine was, that very semester, working on a novel as her Honor’s Term project – and was presenting it in a genuinely different sort of way.
Back in the day, novels were not the omnipresent, thick, bound stories that you read on the train, or in that comfy chair before the fireplace. Not at all. They were printed and serialized in newspapers or magazines – and chapter by chapter, an author’s work was disseminated to the masses. If a story was interesting, the paper would run it through to its conclusion; if not it would be dropped in favor of something with more punch, or more interesting subject matter. The Sherlock Holmes stories, for example, were printed in The Strand magazine, and many of Dickens’ more popular stories had their origin in newsprint. Point is: serialized fiction used to be the norm, and the publishing world has more or less moved away from that model (web comics and graphic novels probably being the only contemporary exception.)
Anywho, in 2009, Madeleine Roux was writing a novel – but she was also keeping a blog.
Allison Hewitt is Trapped was written (via blog) as a first-person account of a bookseller trapped in their shop during a zombie apocalypse. Eventually, our hero escapes, and manages to make it to a nearby community center, whereat even more strange hyjinks ensue as (via comments on Allison’s blog) we are elucidated as to the zombified-status of the world at large. And Allison did incredibly well. So incredibly well, in fact, the sheer volume of online readers caught the attention of an editor at St. Martin’s Griffin (a publishing house and imprint of Macmillan) – who contacted Madeleine, and offered her a book deal. A two-book deal. With translations.
Naturally, congratulations are in order (MASSIVE Congrats, Madeleine, if you’re reading this!) – but when I finished reading the article, I got to thinking. And I started pacing around. And then I suddenly stopped pacing, and a heavy, blunt, obsidian idea struck my brain.
If she could do it…
