Carol Plum-Ucci Success Story Interview – Body of Christopher Creed

During this insider interview on our literary agent blog, Carol Plum-Ucci, author of more than half a dozen young adult novels published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in hardcover and paperback, including The Body of Christopher Creed, shares advice for authors of all genres about how to write, publish, and/or promote their books. During this interview, Carol also talks about how she worked with Mark Malatesta (a former literary agent and former AAR member turned author coach) to launch and develop her career with Harcourt (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Scroll below now to: 1) Listen to the audio interview, 2) Read Carol’s success story, and 3) See a description and excerpt from Carol’s book. Click here now to get a copy of The Body of Christopher Creed and click here to visit Carol‘s website.

Audio Interview with Carol Plum-Ucci
Author of The Body of Christopher Creed

Press the play button below now to listen or click here to download the file (left-click or right-click the link, then select “Save Link As”). This recording is 68 minutes.

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“Mark, when you called to tell me about the publishing offer you got me with Harcourt, I was in my office and it was a snow day, which means me and 3 other people were in the office. I slammed down the phone on you and I ran into the secretary’s office and I threw myself down on the floor and said… ‘I got a deal!’

They sat there and held my hands for about 10 minutes.

I was speechless.

Every day I would start crying all over again.

I was so stupid back then and didn’t even know to ask if that sale was paperback or hardback. I went home that night and my husband, Rick, took me to dinner at the Crab Shack. I’ve never ever been that happy in my life.

On my wedding day I wasn’t that happy.

Getting married and having children are wonderful experiences, especially in these times where people feel they must say ‘My children are the greatest thing that ever happened to me’ but I didn’t work to get my children.

Even cows can get laid.

I remember when I got pregnant with my daughter Abbey, I was trying so hard to get published. Then I suddenly had a multi-book deal. People were coming up and pumping my hands and saying congratulations. Then there is that moment when you get the first galley copy of your first book in your hand.

It’s a great moment.

I originally found you when you were still a literary agent. You were listed in Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents. I made a list of 15 agents I thought would work for me. It was December so that list was my Christmas list.

I already knew that I didn’t want a way famous agent. I thought I would always be at the bottom of their pile. I wanted someone who would treat my manuscript like it might be their ticket, too. I was looking for someone young and hip who could get the job done. Your agency came up at the top of my list and you were the first agent I contacted.

I liked what you had to say in the Jeff Herman book – you sounded friendly and you said: ‘I’ll get back to you in 2 weeks.’ I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s bull$h*t!’ But then you responded to my query within 48 hours and called me on a weekend.

It was really, really cool.

I was with 2 big name, famous agencies before I worked with you and they didn’t really need me. I was with them a total of 4 years and nothing ever happened. I never got a book deal.

When I found out that my second agent dropped me like a hot potato, I was depressed. I didn’t get out of my bathrobe that whole weekend. I sat on the couch, researching agents. Hearing back from you so quickly was a big pick-me-up. The only reservation I had was that you were down in South Florida somewhere, instead of New York.

It was such a big deal when you got me that first multi-book deal with Harcourt, and it wasn’t just the money. I’d known that I wanted to be an author since I was young, but I’d had a lot of setback in my life. I was starting to think I might be one of those people who have a big dream and never get it.

I’ve always, always been grateful.”

Carol Plum-Ucci
Award-winning author of The Body of Christopher Creed
and many other novels for young adults
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

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Book Description – The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci

Chris Creed grew up as the class freak, the bullies’ punching bag. After he vanished, the weirdness that had once surrounded him began spreading. And it tore the town apart. Sixteen-year-old Torey Adams’s search for answers opens his eyes to the lies, pain, and need to blame someone when tragedy strikes, and his once-safe world comes crashing down around him.

National and International Awards – Carol Plum-Ucci

• Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award, winner, American Library Association, YALSA, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2001
• Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award, nominee, American Library Association, YALSA, What Happened to Lani Garver, 2003
• Edgar Allan Poe Awards, Mystery Writers of America, finalist, The Night My Sister Went Missing, 2007
• Edgar Allan Poe Awards, Mystery Writers of America; finalist, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2001
• Amazon Editors’#1 Choice in Young Adult Literature; winner, What Happened to Lani Garver, 2002
• Junior Library Guild Premier Selection, honoree, Streams of Babel, 2008
• Junior Library Guild Premier Selection, honoree, Fire will Fall, 2010
• Children’s Choice List, Readers International; honoree, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2001
• Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, American Library Association, YALSA, honoree, What Happened to Lani Garver, 2003
• Best Books for Young Adults, American Library Association, YALSA,, honoree, The Body of Christopher Creed,2001
• Best Books for Young Adults, American Library Association, YALSA, honoree, What Happened to Lani Garver, 2002
• Quik Piks for Reluctant Readers, American Library Association, YALSA, honoree, The Night My Sister Went Missing, 2007
• Most Popular Paperbacks, American Library Association, YALSA, honoree, What Happened to Lani Garver, 2005
• Most Popular Paperbacks, American Library Association, YALSA, honoree, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2004
• Best Books for Young Adults, American Library Association, YALSA, nominee, The She, 2003
• Best Books for Young Adults, American Library Association, YALSA, nominee, Streams of Babel, 2008

State Awards – Carol Plum-Ucci

• Black-Eyed Susan Award, Maryland Association of School Librarians, nominee, Streams of Babel, 2009
• Rhode Island Teen Book Award, Rhode Island Educational Media Association (RIEMA); nominee, Streams of Babel, 2009
• Book of the Year Award, South Carolina Association of High School Libraries, winner, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2005
• Gateway Reader’s Award, Missouri Association of School Librarians, honoree, What Happened to Lani Garver, 2004-2005
• One Book New Jersey, New Jersey Library Association, young adult winner, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2004
• Iowa Teen Book Awards List, selected annually by Iowa students grades 6-9; honoree, What Happened to Lani Garver, 2002-2003
• Gateway Teen Readers’ Award, Missouri Association of School Librarians; second place, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2002-2003
• Top Ten Books for Young Readers, High School Level, Virginia State Reading Association (VSRA); honoree, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2002
• Rhode Island Teen Book Award, Rhode Island Educational Media Association (RIEMA); finalist, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2001
• Evergreen Award for Young Adult Literature, Washington State Library Association; winner, The Body of Christopher Creed, 2001
• Best of the Best List,Missouri Library Association’s Young Adult Services Interest Group (YASIG); honoree, The Body of Christopher Creed, 1999-2000

REVIEW – The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci

“First-novelist Plum-Ucci wraps a well-crafted mystery around a topical issue: the effect teenage intolerance can have on misfits. When class freak Chris Creed suddenly disappears, his fellow students are not so much worried but abuzz with speculation: Is he a runaway, a suicide, a crime victim? Through a complicated but believable turn of events, narrator Torey Adams, a popular 16-year-old, starts to feel some concern and resolves to find the truth. His unlikely allies are two kids of dubious social status: Ali, who is Chris’s neighbor, and Ali’s boyfriend, Bo, a “boon” (shorthand for boondocks) with a juvenile record. Convinced Chris’s mother is to blame for Chris’s disappearance, they plan to break into his house to steal his hidden diary in hopes of finding evidence. The plan backfires: Bo is caught, Torey is implicated and all three are the subject of malicious gossip that proves to have dangerous consequences. Told as a flashback, the novel drags slightly at the beginning. Plum-Ucci, however, picks up the pace and builds to a fever pitch near the conclusion, vividly describing Torey’s late-night hunt for Chris’s body in a nearby Indian burial ground. Readers will likely be enthralled by the mystery, and, even more, they will be moved by Torey’s hard-won realization that everyone deserves compassion.”

From Publishers Weekly

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The Body of Christopher Creed

Chapter One

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     I had hoped that a new start away from Steepleton would make my junior year seem like a hundred years ago, rather than just one.

     Granted, senior year is not a great year to be switching schools, especially if you played football, baseball, had a decent blues band going in your basement, and had known the same kids since forever. I kept telling myself at first, Hey, going to boarding school will be like leaving for college a year early. It’s cool. But that’s a hard argument to hold on to when you’re looking at people whose average age is fifteen, and when we’re still living under a 10:00 P.M. weekend curfew in the dorm. At first it was a weird change. But staying in Steepleton after all that had happened would have been weirder.

     Mostly Rothborne has been good. It wasn’t more than a couple months before I could actually concentrate in class and get decent grades again. I could spot guys from the dorm as I walked into the dining hall, and I could pull up a seat next to them and goof around. I asked a girl to the movies once, and she said yes. Nobody stares at me here. Nobody is suspicious of me. That part is gone.

     I’m not saying that life has been perfect. There’s the roommate thing. Cartright is pretty cool—he’s a crew maniac who also loves pranks, embellishing his own girl stories, and shooting the bull late at night with me. But he’s got his own set of ideas—like when to finally nod off and put out the light. And if you have nightmares, flashbacks, and other sleep screwups, it’s not easy lying awake in the dark.

     While I had many days of cracking into campus trees from zero sleep during the fall, this spring I’ve only had a couple. In some ways I’m just your basic guy again. I do have a ponytail, and most guys around here have nubs, which is more the style, if there is a style these days. Around Easter I took to adding little goofy things to it. A seagull feather, a clamshell on a suede leash, a rabbit’s foot. Some girl asked me last week if I was running a dead-animal farm. I felt my face turn all red, but deep inside I was kind of happy about that remark. She was the first person at Rothborne to take my meaning. Well, sort of. I like animals and all, but I’m not obsessed with animals.

     I don’t let myself get too crazy when people start asking questions, like, “So why’d you come as a senior?” or, “You could pass for a model if you’d cut that hair, so why don’t you?” It’s always the girls who ask the stuff. Most guys are content to accept you just because you’re cool and don’t make waves.

     But about a week ago this guy down the hall from me, Leo, barged into my room when I had the door shut. People sort of avoid Leo, though it’s kind of hard to explain why. He’s a tall guy with brown hair who looks like everybody else. He likes to hang out in the union and shoot the bull. He’s just a little “sideways,” if I had to describe him. He always talks about girls, but he stares at guys.

     He came into my room without knocking, and I clicked out of my screen without even looking to see who was there. I should have known it was him, because most people would knock if your door was totally shut, but Leo never cared.

     “You wanna go to dinner, Torey?” I could feel him looking, though I was watching my screen, scared to death my latest letter would fly back up there, just because I didn’t want him to see it, and then my secrets of Steepleton would get air-waved to the entire student body. Only Cartright knew bits and pieces.

     “No, I’m . . . doing something. Thanks.”

     He wandered in and landed on Cartright’s bed, and his look turned into that stare that some guys don’t like.

     “Nobody wants to go to dinner,” he said, picking up Cartright’s naked-lady alarm clock, which Cartright insists helps him concentrate on his physics.

     “Go by yourself,” I said, faking a stretch to counter my thumping heart. “Or ask Burke or Melefanti. They’d eat five times a day, if they could.”

     I wanted to flip a game up on the screen but was scared of my spastic streak. I knew that letter would come flying back if I touched anything.

     “You play that guitar pretty good.” He jerked his head toward my Ovation.

     “Thanks.”

     Bunch of kids got to ogling about my guitar playing this spring, when I finally started playing for other people again. That shocked me, because my friends in Steepleton had been used to it and didn’t usually make a big deal. My music teacher here asked to record a couple songs I wrote. At first I thought he was being nice, but then I would hear the stuff other kids in my music class wrote and I would think, Puke, that’s so . . . doofus and normal. But my songs were too wrapped up in Steepleton. I wasn’t ready for it if someone happened to see through all my symbolism.

     I could feel Leo staring.

     “Somebody said you used to play football,” he said.

     “Yeah.”

     “You don’t look like a football player. What’d you do to lose all that weight? Get sick?”

     I wondered who told him about football. Sometimes Cartright said I mumbled in my sleep. Maybe I had made football commands in my sleep.

     “Yeah, I got sick,” I mumbled. “Something like that.”

     “I hear your dad owns a huge engineering firm and your mom’s a lawyer.”

     He watched me, and I tried not to squirm. If I let on that he’d miffed me, I would at least have to let fly with the fact that everyday questions miffed me. But I was starting to realize that I was sort of an unusual case. Lots of kids had lived with only one parent, and if they did have both, usually it was just one who had the great job.

     “Your house is, like, three hundred years old, right?” he asked.

     “Right. I think Melefanti’s in his room . . .”

     He didn’t take the hint, and I watched him turn Cartright’s clock over and over in his hands. Cartright would kill Leo if he saw him handling his naked-lady clock. Leo put it down and stood up, moved toward the window. He lifted my guitar case, spinning it this way and that.

     I could feel an ache shoot into my knuckles, remembering . . . Set of nostrils, huge grin, dual streams of blood closing the space between them, grin collapsing over red teeth. This aging memory that somehow crept up on me every couple months still hadn’t lost its zip. In one sense Cartright was a great roommate for an only child like me, because he didn’t normally touch my stuff. But somebody around here was bound to pick up one of my guitars without asking.

     “You can play it if you want,” I said, but my voice cracked.

     I saw the case slowly sink down until it sat on one of his sneakers. He was smiling, watching me big-time.

     “You’re just saying that. You look like you don’t want anybody touching this guitar. Why not?”

     People didn’t like Leo. I guessed he pried into some guys like this, and stared, and it got them thinking he was gay. Not that gayness had to be a hot issue around here. There were two other gay guys in our dorm. But they were, like, Hey, I’m gay, so, like, deal with it. So there wasn’t much to deal with. But you could sense that Leo was struggling with something, and it made you struggle, too.

     His watching me—it did something to my insides. I wanted to get up and hug him, something. I didn’t. I just watched him back, wondering about myself, these twitches. Maybe you’re gay, Torey. Maybe you’re gay, and Leo is gay, and that’s what’s bothering you.

     I couldn’t think if I’d ever had a gay thought before. But all of a sudden it was me staring at him, and he was looking away. He slowly put the guitar case down where he’d found it, and stared at the wallpaper on my screen.

     “What were you doing before I came in here?”

     “You ask a lot of questions,” I muttered, gripping the mouse in my lap. “Do people ever tell you that?”

     “Yeah. All the time.”

     “So why do you ask so many questions, then?”

     I watched him shrug, staring at my screen like there was something infatuating about it.

     “People used to say I was weird,” he said. “I used to care. But I don’t anymore. People shouldn’t care, people shouldn’t use words like weird once you hit junior year. Everyone’s weird. That’s the way I look at it.”

     I watched him. Something about being weird had made me switch schools. His words got ahold of something inside of me, and all of a sudden I wasn’t so terrified of him. He came toward me, and I didn’t move, didn’t think about what he was going to do. But he didn’t touch me, and when he didn’t, I gathered it was a good thing. Somehow I knew down deep inside what was up.

     He reminded me a lot of Chris Creed. I hadn’t said more than two words to Chris Creed since I punched him out in sixth grade. But when a kid sits behind you every day since kindergarten, sits across from you in Sunday school, belongs to your pool, annoys you in Cub Scouts, and throws a thousand balls over your head in Little League, you don’t have to like him in order to love him. Sometimes I thought I would give anything to hear from Creed again. It was Chris’s and Leo’s similarities that were making me tingle, not anything about sex.

     But this tingle, it was making me wish I could rip out my memory bank just so I could connect with people, without the stupid thoughts weaving my stomach into a hellhole, like someone out here would actually ask me some insane question, So, you fell on a guy’s decaying body in the woods?

     It’s not Chris standing here, it’s Leo, I told myself, but in a real sense he was Creed. He was an out-there type of guy who could make you uncomfortable, make you want to avoid him. He was hitting ALT+ESC, so he could see for himself what I was up to.

     I hit the OFF button before I had a chance to try out my spastic streak in an ALT+ESC fight with him. He just looked at me again, like there wasn’t the slightest little thing wrong with what he had just done.

     “Leo, let me explain something to you,” I heard myself say. “When you go into a room, you knock first. If you start asking people questions and they start tilting back in their chairs, it means they don’t want to talk about it. It means if you look at something on their computer screens, they’re likely to knock your brains out with a baseball bat.”

     “Jesus . . .” He stared at me for all he was worth. “I just wanted to see what you were up to, that’s all.”

     “Don’t give me this I’m-so-innocent routine,” I muttered. “You know you bug people. You’ve probably been beaten on your whole life. And you’ve probably been letting yourself off the hook lately by saying that once you got to be a junior it wouldn’t matter. Well, you’re a senior, Leo. It does matter. You’re in my personal space, so get out of it. Get out of my room. And next time you come in, knock first, got it?”

     He backed up, looking all astonished and giving me a few more Jesus Christs. I didn’t let my eyes wander off of him, though it was hard. I had to keep telling myself that Dr. Fahdi would have said that it’s okay, it’s healthy, it’s good for me. I told myself that people like Leo need you to get tough, or they don’t get it. Once the door was shut and he was gone, I told myself the truth, which was that I had been talking to Leo but seeing Creed. And Leo wasn’t nearly as bad. I had just treated another person like shit.

     Torey, you leave home to escape some stupid thing that makes zero sense. Jesus Christ, are you ever going to get over this? My fingers were still shaking as I hit the ON button and watched the computer go through its steps until the “document recovered” bar flashed on the screen. I relaxed some and looked over the letter, making sure none of the characters had been wiped out.

     Dear Alex Healy,

     There was a kid in my town named Chris Creed. I wrote the attachment about his disappearance. If the name Chris Creed doesn’t mean anything to you, then forget I even bothered you. You can hit “delete” right now. Or if you’re into reading stories about people’s lives, I don’t have anything to hide and you might get into it. It’s about everyone you know.

     I dragged my eyes out of the middle of the letter and moved the mouse slowly up to the message window and clicked on “attach document.” I saw it there—Creed.doc—and the mouse crept down to highlight the file I had not looked at in a year.

     Are you ready to go back, Torey? Two years ago you were happy and innocent and oh-so-fucking normal. Are you ready to find the point where you got crushed, look it in the eye, and understand?

     “Creed.doc” was still highlighted. Writing it was supposed to bring me some quote-unquote healing, at least that’s what Dr. Fahdi had said. Maybe it did; who knows? I got a load off my chest. But I was looking for other things, more important things, like the peace you get when things make sense and life seems fair. I never got that peace. Some nights I would remember and write and remember and write, and I was sure I was just being Dr. Frankenstein, trying to re-create a dead human. The dead never come back like they were. Some nights I got convinced I was creating a monster.

     I took it in for Dr. Fahdi when I was finished, and I remember him holding all those pages and pretending his arm was weighed down—or maybe it actually was weighed down. And I remember he said to me, “That’s an amazing amount of writing for a young man your age, Torey.” And I said, “Yeah, well, I got a load off my chest.” It wasn’t like I had a whole lot of other stuff to do.

     But you finish something like that, and the truth strikes you. I knew then that laying out the truth for a shrink wasn’t enough. I had to get out of Steepleton. You can’t find your life, or your peace, in the middle of a bezillion eyes staring at you.

     Creed.doc had been sent across the Internet about eighty times, but the last time I actually looked at the file was when I ran it through the spell-checker before handing it over to Dr. Fahdi. Maybe I hadn’t needed to look at it since. Maybe I used to remember every single word. Maybe, finally, I was starting to forget.

     I arrowed up and shut the window. The letter bobbed around in front of me, all hazy and floating.

     Alex Healy, what I’m hoping is that the name Chris Creed does mean something to you. That probably means that, somehow, I have struck gold.

     There’s nothing unusual about a runaway these days. There’s also not much original about a suicide or a murder. The weirdest fact about Chris Creed’s disappearance was that he was just plain gone. There was no trail of blood, not even a drop of blood. No piece of clothing on the side of the road. No runaway bus-ticket stub. No money missing from his bank account. No empty bottle that had been filled with pills the day before he disappeared. No missing razor blades. No nothing. The only thing we knew was that Chris Creed was not abducted compulsively by a stranger—because there was a note, which was written at least twenty-four hours before he turned up missing.

     Steepleton could have dealt with a runaway, a suicide, an abduction, or even a murder. Other towns survive them. But there are two things our town couldn’t cope with, the first being a very strange mess that occurs when the weirdest kid in town suddenly disappears. He’s gone, but his weirdness seems to linger. It grabs at the most normal and happy kids, like some sort of sick joke. And then it’s those people who are acting weird. The other thing the town can’t face up to is the black hole itself—the thing that comes out of nowhere and eats a kid alive and doesn’t leave a hair from his head.

     You can’t have a funeral, because there’s no body and no evidence that he actually died. But to push for some big-time Unsolved Mysteries hunt, a town has to feel sorry for how they mistreated the weird guy who’s gone. To feel genuinely sorry, you have to be honest. And Steepleton needs its lies like a toad needs bugs.

     To hear some people tell it, I saw Creed dead. I saw him dead, and it made me crazy. There are other people who add to that version of the story—that I actually helped kill him. They say I can’t face what I saw, or what I did, depending on who’s telling the story. They would all say I’m on this giant denial trip if they ever guessed I was trying to find him. Or they’d say that I’m trying to prove my innocence with a search that I know won’t lead anywhere. I am looking for Creed, and I admit my bolts were not screwed in so tight for a while there. But I’ve never told myself any lies about it. And I’m sure Chris Creed is alive.

     I guess it’s up to you to decide whether I’m nuts or normal, and since this is just the Internet, I don’t give a rip what strangers think. It’s bad enough to put up with what some of my neighbors think. Steepleton is like most other small towns out there, I guess. Small-town people live up each other’s butts, and some people will tell stories about who stinks the worst. I wonder if small towns are America’s final kick in the ass insofar as prejudice and judgment are concerned. There are black families in Steepleton, a Japanese family, a couple Saudis, one family of rich Pakistanis. It’s not a racial thing like my mom coped with, growing up there. But it’s there, part of the little-town mentality, that thing that makes people want to sniff out neighbors who are weird or less fortunate, and talk about those people’s bad luck to establish their own goodness. There are also some people who are very sympathetic about what happened to me, and they have been pretty cool.

     So when I left, it wasn’t entirely to get away from small-town smell-my-butts. I left to get away from death and the fear of ghosts. Small towns grow out of the woods, and the woods are dark and scary. I did see death, and I have seen a ghost. But neither of them was Creed. I will swear to that until I die, though there will always be those feebs who don’t believe me. It’s their problem, not mine.

     Alex Healy, if you are who I think you are, everything I have said in this letter and everything you’re going to read in this story will make perfect sense. If it makes no sense, then just write me off as another Internet loony who’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. That part has been medically established.

     Three people will bear up to the truth in this attachment. My mother—not that a mom counts for much while standing in her kid’s defense. There’s a girl, too, who’s got a reputation as being, well, not so upright. And then there’s the town’s chief of police, an African American who walked the beat in Atlantic City for fourteen years before becoming chief in Steepleton. His name is Douglas Rye, and he became chief about two weeks after Chris Creed disappeared. He read this story and will vouch for every word.

     I dropped the window down again, took a breath of cool air, and hit “attach.” I stared at the name Creed.doc. It was like the door to a tomb. All I had to do was hit “restore,” double click, and the stone could get rolled away. Rereading it away from Steepleton might do a lot for me, but it wasn’t as important as finding Chris Creed. I decided, Attach now, read later. You will find your peace when you find Creed out there somewhere.

     But I knew later was no further off than when I hit “send.” I was ready to go back to death in the woods. It had taken me a year of being away, but I felt my sympathy rising for myself at sixteen, back when I hadn’t written much more than a book report and a few dumb songs. I had to see what I was like back then.

     Alex Healy, I swear the following account contains no lies. It is one-hundred-percent accurate. People can love their lies, tell their lies, believe their own lies until hell pays a visit. But this whole story is true. That’s the point of it.

     Victor “Torey” Adams,
     Formerly Mr. All-American Football Kicker,
     Blond Geeky Haircut for Little League
     and All That, Formerly of Steepleton,
     Southern New Jersey

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