User:Juliana Reeves/Joëlle Écormier

30 jours à tuer
Back in Réunion and living from that point on in La Montagne, a neighborhood of the capital, Saint-Denis, she again became a homemaker when she participated in an original literary project launched by the book club France Loisirs in the course of 1998: the writing of a novel whose preliminary chapter was endorsed by the writer Yann Queffélec, while other authors were chosen from the messages sent from anonymous Internet users. In their proposal, these authors had to develop their plot in the same way that it was begun by the author of The Savage Wedding, Goncourt Prize laureate in 1985. But Queffélec, inspired by a recent event in the United States, imagined the story of Clara Turner, a young American who, condemned to death for having killed her viola professor, is granted by the State governor a 30-day sentence. What she will do with these thirty days must be the subject of the novel, whose first chapter is published on the France Loisirs website.

In the text that she submitted for the second chapter, Joëlle Écormier gave life to the character of the lawyer, Clara, M. Hopeking. Écormier conjured up the strategy that the young woman puts in place in order to escape her death, which is scheduled a month later. Convinced, the jury adopted Écormier's text, which from then on became the official version from which the Internet users must create, proposing a third chapter. After her, the jury holds onto the proposal from Marceline Breton, editor and free-lance designer working in Hanover, as well as those of Patrice Sickerson, technical head at French Télécom living in metropolitan Verrières-le-Buisson; Christophe Tissier, website creator living in Antony; Louis-Olivier Dupin, a local of Grenoble working as a supervisory staff agent in a transportation company; and finally, Christophe Sancy, publicist in Tervuren, Belgium. Trente jours à tuer, termed the "first novel created on the internet," appeared in 1999 after some changes were made to the different chapter for the purpose of increasing coherence between the written works of the seven authors. The circulation is guaranteed, exclusively, by France Loisirs. Encouraged by this experience, Écormier started up in the career of author.

First novels written alone
After having been rejected by numerous publishers, who considered that the novel did not correspond to the format of their collections, the first novel written by Écormier only appeared in 2000 in the Azalea Publishers, a Réunion publishing house. Entitled Le Grand Tamarinier (The Grand Tamarind), it is about the history of a small boy called Louis who, beaten by his alcoholic father, finds the strength to rebel in order to embark upon a trip to the borders of the imaginary. Lending to the story, and readable by all audiences, the plot puts him in contact with a tree, a tamarind near which he is able to start afresh. Guided by the counsel of this tree, the hero leaves in search of the secret that will allow him to finally find the peace of childhood. In the meantime, he encounters numerous animals of Réunion bestiary: among others, a turtle, a chameleon, a papangue, a rat, a dolphin or a Phaethon that teaches him to fly. According to Eva Baguey, author of the doctoral thesis on childhood literature and Réunion youth, this fact is relatively important because Békali allows the heroes, from a metamorphic point of view, to pass from the world of childhood to adulthood. The work is illustrated with photos that stage the son of Écormier as the hero. They were taken by her husband Gilles.

The same year, still at the same editor, the author published a children's story, "La Petite Fleur et le soleil". This time, she illustrated with drawings by her ten-year-old daughter, Marie. A question her daughter expressed when she was no more than four yeas of age is at the beginning of the work: "And if one day that sun didn't rise?" The story that takes place in Réunion, and told by an old sunflower, is about the adventures of a little, pure flower that is trying to find how to make the sun, who decided one morning to no longer get up, leave his bed. The work is only distributed by direct sales on the island of Réunion. In fact, the author felt obliged to write the end in Réunion creole to be able to publish it. In any case, a year after its release, the story was adapted into a musical by the author herself and Michèle Millasseau. They wrote seven original songs together. The show was played at the Phillippe-Vinson de La Montagne school on June 30, 2000.

The second novel by Écormier appeared in 2003, the year after which she was put in charge of promoting writing at the library in Saint-Denis, the François-Mitterrand House of Communication. This lead her to facilitate writing workshops in the academic realm. In Plus léger que l'air, the main character is Joséphine, a pretty publisher on the verge of getting married when a letter from Réunion constrains her to return to her native island to settle an estate. On this trip, she is confronted with people from her childhood. The work is part of a few rare titles of Reunion literature cited under the corresponding section of English tour guide books that Lonely Planet sanctions, in Maurice and in Seychelles in 2004 and 2007. It benefited from the participation of Andy Le Sauce, a freediver author with numerous world records who has lived on the island for many years.