Six months ’til LA9, only one month out of SD25, and we got mucho good “muse” to report. ZOVA Books has signed Jessica Therrien for her debut novel The Descendants after discovering her in workshop at our February event. A boutique publisher representing such acclaimed authors as Dances With Wolves novelist and Academy Award winning screenwriter Michael Blake, as well as Pulitzer nominated bestselling author of Sacagawea, Anna Lee Waldo, the deal with Jessica marks a significant expansion of their catalog into the young adult readership. Release is slated for February, 2012.
Also just in, SD21 Outstanding Fiction Award winning conferee Laurence O’Brien — who traveled from Dublin, Ireland to join us — reports, “Just thought you would like to know that I have been offered a 3-book publishing contract with Harper Collins UK with world rights to follow and a January 2012 launch of my first book, The Istanbul Puzzle, to be followed in January 2013 by The Jerusalem Puzzle.” Workshop leader and freelance editor Jean Jenkins can take a lot of the credit for that.
Overall, been a great many months for past SCWC conferees. Among the most recently published: Raul Ramos y Sanchez (House Divided), Claudia Whitsitt (The Wrong Guy), John Rosenberg (The Healthy Edit), Jenny Hilborne (Madness and Murder), T.B. Smith (The Sticking Place), Julie Ann Weinstein (Flashes from the Other World), E. Scott Menter and Kelly Thacker (Hummingbird Review), and Pam Goldstein (Chicken Soup for the Empty Nester, along with her first play, The Interview, which premieres April).
We’ll begin rolling out staff announcements for our September event over the next several weeks. As with the San Diego conference, we’re keeping up to speed on digital innovations impacting the industry, and all that every writer needs to know to flourish in this new Age of the Entrepreneurial Author. In the meantime, register before June 1st to take advantage of the $75 Early “Bard” Discount. You’ve earned it!
