John Jarrold

Some very wise words here, entertainingly put across: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fc-crEFDw

Flora McMichael, Rights Manager at Quercus, has sold rights in the four-novel DEMI-MONDE series by UK novelist Rod Rees to Jota in the Czech Republic and Infodar in Bulgaria (the latter via Kalina Stefanova at ELST Agency).

World rights in Rod’s series were acquired pre-emptively by Quercus (who publish the first volume in January 2011) from agent John Jarrold for a major advance in 2009.  Rights have also been sold in the US, Germany, Russia, Poland and Italy.

THE DEMI-MONDE is set in a wonderfully imagined virtual world, the Demi-Monde of the title. Originally conceived by the US military as a training ground for their troops in the twenty-first century facing street fighting and enemies who use guerrilla tactics, rather than modern technology-based armies, the Demi-Monde was created by the world’s first quantum computer. Young singer Ella Thomas is sent there to rescue a VIP (she ticks all the boxes to blend into the world, which has a late-Victorian technology base) and discovers the world and its thirty million inhabitants, or ‘avatars’, are all too real. Especially those who run the world’s city-states, based on famous human monsters such as Reinhard Heydrich, Shaka Zulu, Empress Wu, Godfrey de Bouillon, Selim the Grim and Lavrentii Beria, with whom the world was seeded to make it more of a test, and that is only the beginning.  There is already a fascinating website at www.thedemi-monde.com

Julie Crisp, Editorial Director of Pan Macmillan in London, has concluded a World Rights deal for two further horror novels by British author Adam Nevill with agent John Jarrold, for a very good five-figure sum.

Adam Nevill’s novel APARTMENT 16 was published very successfully by Pan in May this year,  reprinting three times and spending many weeks as Amazon.co.uk’s bestselling horror title, and THE RITUAL will follow in 2011.  The two new books are, as yet, untitled.  They will be published by Macmillan in 2012 and 2013.

Adam Nevill said: ‘Since my early contact with books, no other kind of fiction has captivated me, or transported me, in the same way as supernatural horror. Many years ago, the idea of contributing to this great field of the weird tale became a dream.  To interpret my influences and to add something fresh, became my main purpose as a writer. The dream has been realised; the purpose continues. It’s genuinely a wondrous thing to receive another opportunity to create original works of disquiet, that will be given flight by the engines of a major publisher.’

Julie Crisp said: ‘Pan Macmillan has a tradition of publishing great British horror and so we’re thrilled to be working with Adam on his next two books. APARTMENT 16 and THE RITUAL were both terrifying and exciting adventures into the macabre and I can’t wait to see what nightmare scenarios he comes up with next to chill his readers.’

Here is a great interview from the Guardian newspaper with agency client Hannu Rajaniemi, whose SF debut THE QUANTUM THIEF is causing a major stir inside and outside the genre:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/09/hannu-rajaniemi-quantum-thief

Jonathan Oliver, commissioning editor of Solaris Books, has acquired BABYLON STEEL, the opening volume of a fast-moving fantasy series from debut novelist Gaie Sebold.  The agent was John Jarrold, and the deal was for UK/US rights. The book is due for publication late in 2011.

Babylon Steel, ex-sword-for-hire, ex…other things, runs the best brothel in Scalentine; city of many portals, two moons, and a wide variety of races, were-creatures, and religions, not to mention the occasional insane warlock. 

She’s not having a good week.  The Vessels of Purity are protesting against brothels, women in the trade are being attacked, it’s tax time, and there’s not enough money to pay the bill.  So when the mysterious Darask Fain offers her a job finding a missing girl, Babylon decides to take it.  But the missing girl is not what she seems, and neither is Darask Fain. In the meantime twomoon is approaching, and more than just a few night’s takings are at risk when Babylon’s hidden past reaches out to grab her by the throat. 

“I’m delighted for Gaie,” said John Jarrold.  “Her writing and story-telling are remarkable – and she is also outstandingly witty.  And it’s great to get another new novelist out there!”

“It’s terrifically exciting to discover a new fantasy author who is producing fresh, interesting and funny work that’s also so vastly inventive,” Jonathan Oliver said. “Readers will fall in love with Gaie’s world and her brilliant central character.”

Gaie Sebold works for a charity.  She has won a few awards for poetry  and has sold short stories to magazines including Black Gate, Legend and City Slab, the recent Under the Rose anthology (Norilana) and the forthcoming End of an Aeon anthology (Fairwood Press).  She is an occasional performance poet.  She was born in the US but has lived in the UK most of her life, currently in an ‘up and coming’ area of London which doesn’t appear to have got very high yet. She is a member of T Party Writers, a London-based genre critique group.  She has said this about the genesis of the book:

“The idea of having a heroine who was a Madam in a world where the clientele might be, shall we say, interesting, is one I have had in mind for several years.  But the story didn’t really coalesce until I started thinking about where some of those clientele, and indeed the Madam herself, might have come from, and then the city-state of Scalentine and Babylon started to develop together. 

“I wanted to write about people working in the Oldest Profession who were not necessarily villains or victims: but people doing a job, and taking pride in their work; and for sexual work to be part of celebrating and respecting sexuality, rather than something that diminishes or dirties it.  Though I’m not ignoring the ugly aspects of real-life sex work, that wasn’t what I wanted to deal with in this story.  After all, Scalentine is a fantasy city: dealing with possibilities that don’t exist, or barely exist, in our own world, is one of the things I think fantasy is for.

“I have also always been fascinated by the idea of different worlds that are only a mirror’s breadth away, and of different species living cheek by jowl.  For me Scalentine is rather like my own peculiar version of London; where lots of different people and cultures end up creating a fascinating if not always easy mix. 

“Also, of course, I just wanted to have fun: with Babylon and her crew, of whom I have become increasingly fond; and with Scalentine’s multiplicity of characters, races, species, portals and possibilities. Which I did.”