My Marrakech: and the amazing tale of a blog book deal with Artisan Books
Dear friends,
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time (okay really, it was late March 2008), there was a girl (okay really, a middle-aged woman) sitting in front of her computer writing a long-ish report. It was a day like others in her Marrakech olive grove. The skies were blue, the birds were chirping and, sigh, the landscaper still hadn't shown up. It was then that she received a message from a woman with an impressive sounding name, a certain Ingrid Abramovitch. The email went something like this: Hello Maryam. I read your blog, and I quite like it. I am a senior editor at Artisan Books and
The girl looked around the room but there was no one else there named Maryam. It seemed - amazingly - that the message was for her....
The weeks that followed were filled with book proposal scribblings and advice from angels. Literary agents stepped forward to represent her, and the girl finally signed Kneerim and Williams, which also represented all kinds of prize-winning authors. (Gulp. Please don't tell these Kneerim and Williams people that her vocabulary was limited to mostly two and three syllable words.) It felt very grownup to have a literary agent, and even more grownup to have two: the witty and savvy Jill Kneerim and the darling and smart Cara Krenn.
Artisan Books, which publishes only ten books a year, including the heart-stopping Flower, the gorgeous Fandango, the delicious French Laundry Cookbook and one of her favorites, Vicente Wolfe's fabulous Learning to See: Bringing the World Around You into Your Home. (Oh dear, she had already begun suffering from an inferiority complex...)
As for the girl's book-to-be -- part memoir and part Moroccan design treatise -- she would do her very best to make sure it was accessible (i.e. no hoity-toity-ness) and packed with plenty of inspiration. The book would not be a reprint of what was in this blog. Oh, no, no, no. It would go in a different (and super fun) direction and be filled with many special, beauty-saturated surprises....
The book would be all shiny and ready in 2010. Between now and then, the girl would be rolling up her sleeves and getting to work. But you would still see her on this blog as always:)
Today's pinch-me-but-it's-true tale will end with flowers - roses picked from the garden and offered with thanks from me to you. Thank you for your friendship and support on this little blog -- you are my inspiration for this book-to-be. Many thanks also are due to Artisan's lovely Ingrid Abramovitch and Ann Bramson for showing me that the universe is an enchanted place where magical things can happen - and do - each and every day.
With love and gratitude,
Maryam in Marrakech
