Roaring Brook Press is entering the graphic novel game (really, at this point, who isn’t?). Mark Siegel will be working on the imprint. We understand this will be a mainstream imprint, though Roaring Brook is traditionally targeted toward the children’s market. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (Roaring Brook’s parent company)
Bethany Brown, formerly of Adams Media, has joined the editorial staff at Sourcebooks. Sourcebooks is an independent publisher with a commitment to its authors. Though known primarily for non-fiction works, they are also acquiring fiction (agented submissions only). Sourcebooks, Inc.
A busy, busy week in the world o’ publishing. So many updates this week, it makes us wonder if it was Get A New Job Week. We made every attempt to pay careful attention, and believe we got everybody. If you moved and we didn’t get your change-of-address card, we apologize (next time, copy us on your “It’s been fun working with everybody” email!). So, to start: word on the street is that Sam Bell is leaving Red Dress Ink. Bell manned the Red Dress London beat. She’s moving into freelance editing. Red Dress Ink – UK
We are continually fascinated with the New York Post. The all-caps headlines creating a sense of looming death and destruction. The unabashed political bent. Even the recent lack of, um, properly sourcing stories tickles us. Probably because we’ve always been a bit fascinated by stories about William Randolph Hearst and yellow journalism. So it was with delight that we read Sara Nelson’s column on Tom Wolfe’s new book I Am Charlotte Simmons, a novel set in the wild and crazy world of higher education. Astute observers of the literary world will recall that Wolfe himself hinted at the, as Nelson
We’ve encountered this story twice — and fretted twice. So we thought we’d share the love with our friends and have a worry party. Maybe it’s because, once or twice, to escape hassle we have said “vacation” instead of “business” when traveling (it was a long time ago and we score a lot of sightseeing, so it wasn’t a complete lie). A journalist arrives in the United States with the proper visas — she’s thrown in jail. Now, she could have lied, but she, in her ignorance, told the truth. And went to jail. We realize things have changed in
Why does the Wall Street Journal keep so much content under lock and key? Why does The Washington Post have a such a complex registration process? And, why would Michel Dansel (The Train to Nowhwere) write 233 pages without a verb? According to Publisher’s Lunch, an author in France has done just this. We’d love to start our day with answers to at least our final question, but really don’t want to hassle with the WSJ. We really want to understand why we would want to suffer this for so long: In that carriage, between the grumpy woman oozing vulgarity
Another one via Sarah Weinman (we can only believe it’s much cooler where she is — lots of cool stuff on her site this week). As mentioned, oh, a billion times, we love meaty author interviews. When the author sets aside any pretense of political correctness and tells the truth. In this interview, Loren D. Estleman is refreshingly honest about his talent (well, honest and confident — both were cool to read about) and his work. Since Sarah nabbed the killer (no pun intended) quote, we’ll add a few that caught our attention. Estleman on writing to formula: Of course,
Sarah Weinman has posted a full list of nominees for the 2003 Barry Awards, to be announced at this year’s Boucheron (which we’ve always wanted to attend just to hear how many different ways the word can be pronounced). It’s hot, we’re lazy, and Sarah’s reproduced the full list, so follow the link below. We’re quite excited by at least one finalist. Darn it, we’re not as lazy as we hoped — we dropped by the Deadly Pleasures website…what an interesting approach they took in the nominating process. Nominees from the previous year cannot be nominated in the current year.
We don’t get the concept of a beach or summer read. We live in Southern California — we’ve never quite pinpointed when this so-called summer begins (though we know it’s sometime between awards season and the ever-growing Christmas season). We normally pass by these reading lists, not because we don’t like lists (we’re big on lists, actually), but because we’re not sure they’re meant for us. So we were ever-so-unaware of Australian author John Birmingham’s inclusion on a list of trashy novels to read this summer. We like his style, and couldn’t resist this quote: “The people that do well
We’ve held back for several years now. But with yet another article on this crazy new phenomenon, chicklit, we feel we must speak out. No, not about the fact that San Luis has just discovered the genre — it’s a sleepy town with easy access to wineries…who has time to focus on the latest thing in books? Our rant is about the wonderful The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing. We have never once, despite being told constantly that it’s so, believed this book to be chicklit. The only thing we can conceive is that it had the misfortune of
