After growing up in Dearborn, and earning a degree in English at the University of Michigan (’00), journalist/author Camille Noe Pagan —whose debut novel, “The Art of Forgetting,” is now hitting bookstore shelves— made for the East Coast.

Specifically, the 6-week Radcliffe Publishing Course at Harvard University (famous as a publishing industry boot camp), followed by a stint, for the better part of a decade, in Brooklyn, working for various magazines (Fitness, Glamour, O, the Oprah Magazine, Women’s Health, etc.) as a free-lance health/nutrition writer.

“I never thought I’d move back (to Michigan),” said Pagan, who relocated to Ann Arbor with her family last August. “But when I was working on my novel, … I knew I wanted it set part of it in Ann Arbor. So I’d come back to Michigan with my husband, and while visiting with family, we would also visit Ann Arbor, and we realized more and more how much we liked it. …

"We were going to places like Cafe Zola and Zingerman’s, all in the name of research for my book, but while doing that, we also talked about what a great place it would be to raise kids. We knew we couldn’t stay in Brooklyn much longer—we have 2 kids now, and we had been in a 700-foot apartment. … So one weekend, while we were here, we just decided to make the move.”

A couple of years earlier, though, Pagan had a magazine article assignment that required her to research traumatic brain injury. She was so fascinated by what she found that not only did she go above and beyond the call of duty, research-wise, but she also was inspired to construct the basic plot for a novel—a writing ambition she’d harbored for years.

“(Writing fiction) felt like a relief, once I settled on a book idea,” said Pagan. “As a journalist, … I was used to dealing with facts all day long, and triple checking everything. … So the chance to just make up things about characters’ lives was fun. My daughter was just a baby then, so every night, when she went to bed, I’d work on my novel. And the way I looked forward to that time each day really surprised me.”

With so much discipline working in her favor, Pagan pounded out “Forgetting”’s first draft in about 4 months.

The novel tells the story of two longtime friends—Julia and Marissa—who live and work in New York City. When Julia’s hit by a car, she sustains a brain injury that changes her in ways both subtle and profound (and returns with her parents to Ann Arbor while in recovery). This leaves Marissa in a tricky situation—What’s her role, now that her best friend isn’t the person she’s always known?—that’s complicated further when she learns that Julia’s been in a contact with an “off limits” man from their past.

Some elements in “Forgetting”’s plot evolved while Pagan was writing, but she’d at least envisioned the basic layout before getting to work, writing a 1-2 page synopsis (which she also did for the new novel she’s currently working on).

“I do that just to see if there’s enough of a story there,” said Pagan. “I’ve tried the whole seat-of-your-pants style of writing before, but the things always turn out to be so crappy. It’s too much like ‘Choose Your Own Adventure.’ And I know that method works for lot of people, but I’m someone who needs to know where the story is going. In the case of ‘Forgetting,’ I wrote the last scene first, and I was just in tears writing this scene. … So I knew how it was going to end, and that really helped me.”

Pagan compulsively researched traumatic brain injury throughout the time she spent writing and revising “Forgetting,” but she finally had to stop herself.

“I finally had to say to myself, ‘Camille, get a grip. Don’t introduce new things to the plot that don’t need to be there,’” said Pagan. “At some point, the research can get in the way, and I had to remind myself that not everything that could possibly happen to (Julia) should happen to her.”

Pagan counts herself as a big fan of novels about female friendships (including Leah Stewart’s “The Myth of You and Me” and Emily Giffin’s “Something Borrowed”), so it’s not surprising that she gravitated toward the topic for her first novel. She expects her novel’s audience to be women, and yet her novel’s cover—an overhead shot of a ballet dancer seated on the floor—handily sidesteps "chick lit" cliches (think electric pink cover, a picture/illustration of shoes, cake, etc.).

“I bristle at the idea,” said Pagan. “When I was writing the book, I wasn’t thinking about marketing it to women in their 20s and 30s. I was thinking, ‘What would I like to read that’s not out there right now?’ And that’s what I set out to write.”

One of the biggest hurdles for a debut novelist—landing an agent—happened relatively quickly for Pagan, when she queried a friend’s agent (Elisabeth Weed) after researching and contacting only a handful of others.

And something that might have grabbed Weed’s attention at first was the fact that the book starts with a bang—namely, Julia’s accident.

“It was a hard choice to make, but I like books where you’re immediately dropped into the action,” said Pagan. “I don’t like getting tons of back story first, partly because, as a harried mom, I need something that gets my attention right away.”

Pagan and her agent sold the book to Dutton (part of Penguin Group) in December, 2009, and her long-term goal is to leave magazine writing behind to focus solely on writing fiction. For now, however, seeing her novel in hardcover for the first time has been a thrill.

“It’s really and truly amazing,” said Pagan. “Even now, I have a couple of hardcover copies on my bookshelf, and I can’t believe they belong to me. … I’ve seen my name in print for years, but this is so different. It’s a little bit like the way I felt when I saw my first magazine byline—like I’ve accomplished this thing that I’ve wanted for so long.”

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.