Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

It’s been a while, but publishing has also been slow now that we’re in the doldrums of summer. Here are the latest deals.

This series has been selling like hotcakes. It keeps dropping off the USAT list only to pop on again the next week.
NYT bestselling authors PC Cast and Kristin Cast’s HOUSE OF NIGHT series, set in the school where young “marked” students train to become adult vampires, to Michael Birnbaum at Empire Pictures (JOHN TUCKER MUST DIE, BANDITS), by Sean Daily at Hotchkiss and Associates, on behalf of Meredith Bernstein at the Meredith Bernstein Literary Agency.

The James Patterson machine cranks out another money-maker.
James Patterson’s YA series MAXIMUM RIDE, to Columbia Pictures, with Avi Arad, Ari Arad and Steven Paul at Seaside Entertainment (Iron Man) producing, along with Steve Bowen and Leopoldo Gout at James Patterson Entertainment, and Don Payne (Fantastic Four) adapting.

12 huge books in the series. Surely they won’t all be crammed into one movie.
The late Robert Jordan’s THE WHEEL OF TIME series, to Universal in an outright buy, in a significant deal, by Joel Gotler of Intellectual Property Group, on behalf of Nat Sobel at Sobel Weber Associates.

A move back to historical. Interesting.
Anne …

Hope this isn’t the Running with Scissors type of book where the story is based on a real family who didn’t authorize such a story.
Canadian magazine editor and journalist Elizabeth Kelly’s APOLOGIZE, APOLOGIZE!, about a wild, brilliant, wealthy, crazy Massachusetts family, to Jonathan Karp at Twelve in a pre-empt, and to Diane Martin at Knopf Canada in a pre-empt, for publication in March 2009, by Molly Friedrich at the Friedrich Agency.

I love these titles, particularly the “On the Divinity of Second Chances.”
Kaya McLaren’s HOW I CAME TO SPARKLE AGAIN, to Kendra Harpster at Viking, for publication in summer 2009, plus reprint rights to Church of the Dog and On the Divinity of Second Chances, by Meg Ruley at the Jane Rotrosen Agency (NA).

This is a middle grade book and I hope that the tone is not too youthful as the plot sounds quite interesting.
Heather Mackey’s THE WOLVES AND THE WOOD, set in an alternate reality of the Pacific Northwest of the 1900’s, in which a girl must navigate her cousin’s world of frontier settlers as they clash with the indigenous people, the Lupine; and she must discover the mystery surrounding deadly attacks that appear to be the work of five …