Livin' the dream.
Even though it's just a throwaway line, that's exactly what Libby Cudmore is doing.
The 2001 Cobleskill-Richmondville grad recently had her first novel, The Big Rewind, purchased by major publisher William Morrow.
Having her book accepted completes the circle that started when Ms. Cudmore was at C-R's Aker School.
"I always wanted to write ever since fifth grade," said Ms. Cudmore, 32. "That's when I dreamt I had written a book."
A combination of murder and a young woman coming of age, The Big Rewind is due out in early February. The book's release will be the culmination of a process that started well more than a year ago, though Ms. Cudmore's writing career began long before.
She published her first short piece for the magazine Cosmo Girl as a senior in high school.
Still pursuing her goal, Ms. Cudmore earned a bachelor's degree in creative writing from SUNY Binghamton and a master's in popular fiction and creative non-fiction from the University of Southern Maine.
Prolific since then, Ms. Cudmore's had short stories appear in PANK, the Stoneslide Corrective, the Big Click and Big Lucks.
But the first novel was her foremost ambition, and Ms. Cudmore had a general idea of what it was to be.
The Big Rewind's main character, Jett Bennett, receives a mix tape, which was intended to go to a neighbor, in her mail. When Jett takes the tape to her neighbor's apartment, she finds her friend murdered. From there, Jett uses the tape to work on the crime.
It all sounds so simple, yet each writer has his or her own style, and Ms. Cudmore's is unique.
She starts writing by hand--"that way, if I don't like something, I just turn the page of the notebook and don't have to look at it"--and polishes it on the computer.
And she doesn't start at Chapter One and plow ahead to The End.
"I write scenes, sometimes out of order, and then connect them," Ms. Cudmore said. "I get a general idea, and then I put flesh on those bones."
The scenes are key to her character development, "mostly dialogue, to tell how a character would act and react," Ms. Cudmore said.
Sometimes, she writes the scenes only to define a character. The scene may not end up in the book, but it serves to give the person depth and personality.
She began writing The Big Rewind while commuting on the bus from her home in Oneonta to Cooperstown, where she's been a reporter for The Freeman's Journal and Hometown Oneonta for six years.
Being a reporter helped.
"I love working with people," Ms. Cudmore said. "I want my characters to live in an active neighborhood like I do. I want them to breathe on the page."
It took her eight months to finish the first draft. That part finished--or nearly so--Ms. Cudmore sought an agent.
Several turned her down, and she thought Jim McCarthy, an agent in New York City, might do the same.
"I had sent him three chapters, and when I didn't hear from him, I finally emailed," Ms. Cudmore said. "He said, 'Send me the rest.' He loved it."
Further rejections came from publishers until The Big Rewind clicked with an editor at William Morrow.
Well, almost everything clicked. Both the agent and the editor didn't like the book's original title, No Awkward Goodbyes, which was a nod to The Long Goodbye, a classic by her favorite author, Raymond Chandler.
"It was kind of a clumsy title," Ms. Cudmore said of her first title, "but I fought for it. I must have come up with 50 others before The Big Rewind."
Ms. Cudmore received a five figure advance and will receive royalties after the advance sale.
Although the money's important--obviously--the notion that a publisher will eagerly pay for her work is heady stuff for a writer.
Ms. Cudmore cites Chandler, the mystery-writing great, as her chief inspiration.
"His prose is so beautiful. . .achingly beautiful," Ms. Cudmore said.
But she also points to her parents, longtime local reporter Dana Cudmore, and Nancy Feldman.
"My father's been a writer his whole life, and my mom's a great storyteller," she said.
Ms. Cudmore's work isn't finished; marketing is next. She'll have a blog tour in early winter and a launch party in February.

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Ms. Cudmore and Ian Austin, a photographer with The Freeman's Journal, recently married. They're now honeymooning in the South and Southwest.