John Jarrold

Ian Whates, publisher of NewCon Press, has acquired World English Rights in ROWANY DE VERE AND A FAIR DEGREE OF FROST, a novella by Chaz Brenchley set in his long-running Mars Imperial series.  The agent was John Jarrold.

 

Rowany de Vere: late of the Crater School, where she was a legendary Head Girl; recently graduated both from Oxford and from several unpublicised and unexpected schools across two worlds; home on Mars, working for an unnamed department of the Colonial Service. Some people call her a spy, or a spy-hunter, though she prefers “political agent”. None of those labels is sufficient to contain her, for she is sui generis.

 

This is the tale of her first independent mission, where she is tasked to extract a Russian defector from a disreputable hotel in Marsport. He is almost certainly under surveillance by the Okhrana, the Tsar’s infamous secret service; nevertheless, Rowany is tolerably confident that she can manage this. As, clearly, are her masters; why else would they have sent her in alone…?

 

Chaz Brenchley has been making a living as a writer since he was eighteen. He is the author of over five hundred short stories in various genres, nine thrillers, three fantasy series, and two urban fantasy series.

 

A British Fantasy Award winner, he has also published books for children. His time as crimewriter-in-residence on a sculpture project in Sunderland resulted in the collection BLOOD WATERS. His first play, A Cold Coming, was performed and then toured in 2007. He is a prizewinning ex-poet, and has been writer in residence at the University of Northumbria. He was Northern Writer of the Year 2000.

 

Chaz spent his childhood in Oxford, his adulthood in Newcastle, and now lives in California with his wife Karen, one troublesome cat, a turtle and a famous teddy bear.