kt literary

Lots more good news to share this week, starting with this announcement in today’s edition of Publisher’s Weekly:

Deneen Gets into the ‘Tunnel’

In a second deal coming out of St. Martin’s Press this week, Brendan Deneen bought world English rights to Susan Adrian’s debut, The Tunnel. The YA thriller, which Kate Schafer Testerman at kt literary sold, is set for a summer 2014 release. In the novel, a teenage boy who has a power he calls tunneling—he can decipher where anyone in the world is (and what they’re doing) by holding something they own—is brought to the attention of the U.S. government. Adrian, a former ballerina, lives in Montana.

Yay! Congrats to Susan, who blogged about the long road to publication here.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a Get to Know post featuring Susan, for all your Tunnel-related questions!

I’m thrilled to get back on track with my series of posts about my clients, after a brief hiatus. Today, I’ve got Tom Sniegoski answering my questions. Tom is the author of more than two dozen novels for adults, teens, and children. His New York Times bestselling teen fantasy YA series The Fallen was adapted into a trilogy of monstrously successful TV movies by ABC Family Channel. The Fallen 5: Armageddon, comes out from Simon & Schuster this August. His other books for teens include Sleeper Code, Sleeper Agenda, Legacy, and Force Majeure, as well as the series The Brimstone Network. The author’s adult novel, A Kiss Before the Apocalypse, developed into a series of novels about the character Remy Chandler. The latest Remy Chandler mystery, Walking in the Midst of Fire, also comes out from ROC/Penguin in August 2013.

Sniegoski’s work for younger readers includes the Billy Hooten: Owlboy series and the fantasy quartet Magic Zero, which he co-authored with Christopher Golden. Magic Zero is in development as a film at Universal. Sniegoski and Golden have also collaborated on the adult dark fantasy series The Menagerie, and multiple creator-owned comic book series, including The Sisterhood, which is being prepped for a feature film by InterMedia, and Talent, currently in development at Universal after a major bidding war.

As a comic book writer, Sniegoski’s work includes Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails, a prequel miniseries to international hit Bone. Sniegoski has also written the Bone: Quest for the Spark novels. Sniegoski collaborated with Bone creator Jeff Smith on the prequel, making him the only writer Smith has ever asked to work on those characters. Sniegoski and Golden also wrote the graphic novel BPRD: Hollow Earth, a spinoff from Hellboy.

Sniegoski was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his wife LeeAnne and their dog, Kirby.

Take it away, Tom!

What are you working on now?
I’ve just wrapped up the last of The Fallen series, The Fallen 5: ARMAGEDDON, and am working on a cool project with Marvel writer/artist Frank Cho, and gearing up to start writing the newest Remy Chandler novel.

What was your favorite book as a child/teen?
When I was a child it was a toss up between Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and Where The Wild Things Are. As a teen I was really into the reprints of the old Doc Savage pulp novels, and a series of extremely violent adventure books called The Destroyer.

What are you reading now?
Right now I’m reading Unholy Night by Seth Grahame-Smith.

Do you work with a critique group/partner?
There are some amazing fans out there that I often send my first drafts to for initial feedback.

Are you a pantser or a plotter?
I’m a little of both. If I have the time, I love to really plot things out, beat by beat . . . but these days, the deadlines come upon me so quickly that I often find myself kind of making it up as I go. It makes me feel very uncomfortable.

What’s your memory of how we started working together? How did our first submission go, etc.?
Hmmm. It was Christopher Golden that recommended you to me, and I think we talked very shortly after that. We’re working together, so I think our conversation must have gone well. I think the first submission that we worked on was for, at the time, the newest entry in The Fallen series, and it went very well.

What other hobbies to you have?
I’m a HUGE comic book geek, as well as a movie buff, and movie soundtrack guy. And I also buy too many books.

What’s a random weird fact about you?
That even after thirty something books, I still think that I don’t know what I’m doing, that my writing is crap, and that my career will be over shortly.

And, of course: favorite pair of shoes?
It’s all about the black sneakers.

Plus, bonus lightning round!
Dog or cat? Anybody who knows me knows me, or reads my work knows that answer to that one . . . DOG!
Coffee or tea? Tea. About eight cups a day.
Coke or Pepsi? Don’t really drink all that much soda, but I’d say, Pepsi.
Wheat or White? I like white, but know that Wheat is better for me.
MG or YA? YA
Morning or night? Morning. Up just about every day at 5:00am.
Star Wars or Star Trek? Star Wars (but I LOVED the J.J. Abrams reinvention of the Trek franchise.)
Hogwarts or Narnia? Hogwarts.

And finally, six word memoir. Go!
Suddenly realizing how lucky I am.

Thanks, Tom!

I’m so thrilled to share the news that was revealed in Publishers Weekly this morning:

Author of the popular blog Mother.Write.(Repeat.) (www.motherwrite.blogspot.com), Krista Van Dolzer, sold her debut novel, The Regenerated Man, to Shauna Rossano at Putnam. Agent Kate Schafer Testerman at kt literary handled the North American rights deal, and the book is scheduled for winter 2015. The middle grade novel is set in postwar California and, Testerman said, has elements of science fiction, as it follows a young girl who becomes the sole defender of “a bio-engineered Japanese soldier.”

Krista has further details of the process up on her blog, and I invite you to stop by, read the whole thing, and congratulate her:

Steve, otherwise known as THE REGENERATED MAN for the uninitiated, has had a bumpy road. When they say publishing slows down (read: comes to a standstill) in the summer, they mean it, so by the time fall rolled around last year, I was already feeling down and out. We’d given Steve a college try (whatever that means). Maybe it was time to pack it in and concentrate on the next manuscript.

Thank goodness Kate doesn’t move on as easily as I do.

Hooray, hooray, hooray!

I love when people ask my advice, which I’m more than happy to share here on the blog. So thanks, Callie, who emailed me with this question:

I’ve recently been working with a new critique partner who has a style of writing I haven’t previously come across. Basically, she separates her dialogue from any action or dialogue tags. She always puts dialogue on its own line. To give an example:

Jake scratched his hand.
“I can’t believe I have this rash.”
Joe smiled.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have been rolling around in the grass.”

My CP says that this is a way of keeping the focus on the dialogue rather than the action preceding it. Is that true? Because I’ve never seen anyone else use this method. As an agent, I’m assuming you’ve seen about every writing style there is, so I hoped you might be able to answer me.

Thanks very much for your help with this.

Personally, I think the quotes do more than enough to keep the focus on the dialogue, and I know more than one agent and editor who would say pulling out the dialogue tags like the example above just highlights an overuse of everything but the basic “said.”

But if I have to get all Shrunk-and-White on her ass, I think it’s just WRONG. It reminds me of the authors who query me without following a single submission guideline, just because they want their work to stand out. It does, but not in the way they want.

The best idea is to use standard formatting, grammar, and punctuation, and let the story and your writing be the stand-out factor.

Photo above is by Flickr user Royce Bair, of The Stock Solution, and is used under a Creative Commons license

I do! And sometimes I even post on it. Not recently, I grant you, but sometimes. I’m cuing up a fun new series of Get to Know My Clients posts, and finalizing some exciting new deals, but there’s nothing quite yet to talk about. Soon, though!

In the meantime, are you following my Tumblr? I am slightly better about posting there recently, if only because it’s somewhat easier to share a short snippet of information and a link, rather than write up a full post here. Which I’m finding to be an interesting trend across the board — I mean, yes, there are some authors who blog exclusively (and extensively) on their Tumblrs, but it certainly seems, for the most part, that they’re more often used for longer-than-Twitter, shorter-than-blog posts. Is that your experience? Plus, pictures. Like this shot from the PenguinTeen tumblr account, of great promotional buttons they made to celebrate Stephanie Perkins‘ three titles.

Plus, I just adopted a puppy, appropriately named Book. So, you know, lots going on!

More news soon, though, so watch this space.

Photo above by Flickr user Lauren Tucker Photography, used under a Creative Commons license.

I hope to tweet and tumblr a bit while I’m gone, and while this blog may lie a bit dormant, I hope you’ll follow me @DaphneUn or on the ktlit Tumblr. See you in April!

Hooray, hooray, hooray!

Victoria Wells Arms at Bloomsbury Children’s Books has acquired the tentatively titled Arcadia Falls, the third YA novel by Trish Doller, author of the NPR finalist for Best Teen Books of All Time and an IndieBound New Voices Pick Something Like Normal and the forthcoming Where the Stars Still Shine. The new book features a small-town Florida girl who impulsively agrees to join a pair of boys on a road trip that goes tragically wrong. Publication is set for September 2014. Kate Testerman of KT Literary did the deal for world English rights.

I’m so thrilled to share this great news for Trish. And trust me, if you liked Travis, you’re going to LOVE Cadie. More details on Trish’s site.

Aside from a few queries Renee and I are looking at more closely, we’ve answered all queries sent prior to March 10th. While I’m traveling to New York and Bologna, Renee will keep up the hard work of reading queries. If you sent a query prior to March 10th, and you don’t hear from us today (Monday the 18th), you can resend your query to the usual queries@ktliterary.com address, and copy Renee at renee@ktliterary.com. Thanks!

Besides awesome first initials, that is? We are all expecting adorable babies later this year!

So let this be your early warning that I will close to queries probably in August or so, for a few months.

I’ve already spoken to my clients about my upcoming downtime, and how thrilled I am that I have a great team here to support me and them — between Awesome Renee Nyen in the office, the fabulous Deb Shapiro on the marketing and PR front, and the brilliant Paula Breen on contracts, I know we’ll be well covered if anything unexpected pops up while I’m nuzzling my new intern.

In the meantime, I have work to do!

Photo above of great Think Geek tee that I will likely be sporting at ComicCon this summer.

Lots of big changes happening around the KT Literary offices lately. I already mentioned that Renee is joining me as my new assistant, but I’m soon also going to be sharing my home office space with the Web Monkey permanently, which is necessitating a major reorganization of our space, as well as, and perhaps most importantly, our bookshelves. Now, we have exciting plans to get EVEN MORE BOOKCASES (We love Ikea!), but for now, I have several healthy piles of books to give away. If I did this book by book, we’d be here all year, so here’s what I’m ideally looking for – a couple of places that can take multiple copies of books, such as for a classroom or library. Here’s what I have:

THE DEAD GENTLEMAN by Matthew Cody — 2 HC, 2 TPB
POWERLESS by Matthew Cody — 1 HC
DEVILISH by Maureen Johnson — 2 TPB
THE NAME OF THE STAR by Maureen Johnson — 5 HC
SCARLETT FEVER by Maureen Johnson — 2 HC, 7 TPB
VACATIONS FROM HELL by Maureen Johnson and others — 2 HC
ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS by Stephanie Perkins — 3 HC
A HUNDRED WORDS FOR HATE by Tom Sniegoski — 2 TPB, 4 MMPB
IN THE HOUSE OF THE WICKED by Tom Sniegoski — 2 TPB
PINK by Lili Wilkinson — 4 HC

In addition, I have some galleys — 18 copies of LOLA AND THE BOY NEXT DOOR by Stephanie Perkins, 1 copy of SCARLETT FEVER by Maureen Johnson, and 3 copies of XVI by Julia Karr.

So here’s what I’m asking for! Please leave a comment below if you can take a large number of these books. I’m not going to send them out in drips and drabs. I’m ideally looking to send one, maybe two or three large boxes to someone who can make a home for multiples. Is it you?

And just to sweeten the deal, I will add a sticker set from the pre-order campaign of THE MADNESS UNDERNEATH with each box of books sent. Limited time offer! Act now!