Zeno Literary Agency Ltd.

It’s been a busy time here at Zeno Towers, what with the recent Worldcon in Reno, the upcoming Fantasycon and World Fantasy Convention, plus one or two personal bits and bobs that JP and I have been catching up on… life, I think some people call it!

That notwithstanding, we’ve been beavering away and are delighted to announce a few deals that we’ve recently concluded…

• James P. Blaylock‘s first novel length Steampunk story in twenty years has sold to Titan in a world English deal negotiated by John Berlyne. THE AYLESFORD SKULL, which features further  gaslight adventures of Langdon St. Ives and his nemesis Ignatio Narbondo will be published by Titan late next year or early 2013. A limited edition is also planned. In addition to THE AYLESFORD SKULL, Titan will also be re-issueing two Blaylock steampunk classics, the 1988 Philip K Dick Award winning HOMUNCULUS and also LORD KELVIN’S MACHINE. Audio rights for all three novels went to Stacy Patton Anderson at Audible.
• Titan have also acquired world English rights (excluding India) to TURBULENCE and an UNTITLED sequel by Samit Basu. Publication is set for Feb 2012.
• Audible will release an audiobook edition of Ian R. MacLeod‘s WAKE UP AND DREAM along with two earlier MacLeod novels THE SUMMER ISLES and THE GREAT WHEEL.
• Audible also picked up audio rights to the third novel in Michael Cobley‘s HUMANITY’S FIRE series, THE ASCENDANT STARS. German rights for this title went to Heyne via Thomas Schluck.
• Sheila Gilbert at DAW Books has acquired World English rights to  Kari Sperring‘s THE GRASS KING’S CONCUBINE and an UNTITLED sequel in a nice  deal negotiated by John Parker.
• German rights to Freda Warrington’s ELFLAND sold to Carl Ueberreuter Verlag GMBH via Paul & Peter Fritz AG.
• French rights to the first three novels in Ben Aaronovitch‘s best selling RIVERS OF LONDON series went to J’ai lu via Lora Fountain. Orion have sold rights to the series in Poland, Hungary and Italy.
• Also via Lora Fountain, French rights to Ian McDonald‘s PLANESRUNNER sold to Gallimard Jeunesse.
• The Library of America will publish the Algis Budrys‘ classic SF work WHO? as part of a reissue series to be edited by Gary K. Wolfe.
• UK / British Commonwealth rights to a new graphic novel series by Charlaine Harris and Christopher Golden entitled CEMETERY GIRL went to Jo Fletcher at Jo Fletcher Books. Jo has also acquired three anthologies edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni P. Kelner.
• US rights to Iain Sinclair‘s GHOST MILK and AMERICAN SMOKE went to Mitzi Angel at Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
• UK /British  Commonwealth rights to two brand new titles in Elizabeth Moon‘s PALADIN’S LEGACY series sold to Orbit.

And there are plenty more things in the pipeline! More in due course.

Two Zeno clients have just been short listed for major genre awards …

First up, as previously announced here, Ian McDonald‘s novel THE DERVISH HOUSE has already been short-listed for the BSFA Award (which he won!) the Arthur C. Clarke award (which he didn’t) and the Hugo Award for best novel (which he still might).

Yesterday came the news that THE DERVISH HOUSE is one of those novels short-listed for this year’s John W. Campbell Award – a major industry award given annually in the US for the best SF novel and which was recently won (in 2009) by another Zeno client, Ian R. MacLeod.

Also announced yesterday was the short list for this years Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, given for the best short short in the genre in a given year. Many congratulations to Lavie Tidhar, whose story THE NIGHT TRAIN,  published at Strange Horizons, has deservedly  made it onto the short list. You can read the story by following the link above.

Winners will be announced for both awards in July at this year’s Campbell Conference Banquet in Lawrence, Kansas – further details can be found here.

It’s not too long (fingers and toes crossed) until we see Ian R. MacLeod‘s brand new novel, WAKE UP AND DREAM roll off the presses. To herald the coming of this event, PS Publishing have produced a short chapbook entitled HECTOR DOUGLAS MAKES A SALE, which is a kind of companion piece to the book and features a wonderfully insightful Afterword by the author.

Produced essentially for private distribution and in support of the pending release of the novel, copies of this piece of collectable MacLeod ephemera were only available at Eastercon and are thus extremely scarce, but I managed to swipe a few for the Zeno archives – including one signed by Ian.

Zeno clients triumphed at the BSFA awards, which were held at this year’s Eastercon, at the Hilton Metropole in Birmingham over the Easter weekend.

First up was Aliette de Bodard, who was on hand to collect the award for Best Short Fiction for her story The Shipmaker, which appeared in Interzone issue #231. I managed to snap this pic of her being dwarfed by David Weber, who was on hand the present the award. (The homeless man to the rear is Paul Cornell prior to the removal of his comedy charity beard – for which he raised an impressive amount of money for, ironically, Shelter!)

No sooner had the applause for Aliette died down than our own Ian McDonald took to the stage to accept for the award for Best Novel for THE DERVISH HOUSE (not ‘The Dervish Nights’ as the convention newsletter later reported!), his 2010 novel published by Gollancz in the UK and by Pyr in the US.

A further layer of coolness was added to these wins when we later learned that both Ian and Aliette have been nominated for this year’s Hugo Awards – this news adding to Aliette’s previously reported Nebula nomination for the same story, and Ian’s Arthur C. Clarke Award nomination.

Huge congratulations to both authors.

There were lots of other Zeno authors at Eastercon – I got to meet our latest clients Anne Lyle and David Tallerman, albeit all too briefly, and the mass signing of Angry Robot authors at Waterstones in the centre of Birmingham was almost a mini ‘Zenocon’ of its own. Present were Aliette, Colin Harvey, John Meaney – or was it Thomas Blackthorn? – and, in a rare UK appearance, one Lavie Tidhar (pictured here next to a banner proclaiming his novels in all their steampunky glory.)

Elsewhere at the con, at readings, on panels and if truth must be told, in the bar, one could find Freda Warrington, Susan Boulton, Michael Cobley and last but by no means least Ian R. MacLeod.

I did a panel called ‘Writing 102: Finding an Agent‘, which was well attended and along with Gollancz Editorial Director Gillian Redfearn, Gollancz author Stephen Deas and author Martin Owton, we fielded a number of excellent questions from the audience. Hope those who were there found it helpful.

There are all sorts of exciting goings on around here at the moment… We’ve had the staggeringly wonderful news that Ben Aaronovitch‘s novel RIVERS OF LONDON (a.k.a. MIDNIGHT RIOT over in the US, where Del Rey have just published)  will appear at number eight in this week’s Sunday Times Bestseller list for hardcover fiction – a truly amazing achievement for Ben, who, we’re told, is the first début that Gollancz have ever had on this list. Extra big pats for our Ben!

No less vigorous pattage for Mister Ian McDonald, whose novel THE DERVISH HOUSE (also a Gollancz title – and Pyr in the States) has been nominated for the 2010 BSFA award for best novel. The shortlist is impressive, but Ian is widely regarded as a favourite. We’d be very surprised if this was only shortlist this wonderful novel makes this year. Also on the shortlist for the best short fiction is our own Aliette de Bodard, for her story The Shipmaker, which appeared in issue #231 of Interzone – congrats to both authors.

THE DERVISH HOUSE has also made this year’s LOCUS Recommended Reading List, which serves as a guide for the very best material our field has to offer. Here are the Zeno authors whose work has been listed…

Novels, Science Ficition – THE DERVISH HOUSE by Ian McDonald
Novels, Fantasy – THE DESERT SPEAR by Peter V Brett
Novels, Fantasy – HESPIRA by Matthew Hughes
First Novels – THE BOOKMAN by Lavie Tidhar
Collections – JOURNEYS by Ian MacLeod
Novellas – CLOUD PERMUTATIONS by Lavie Tidhar
Novellettes -BUTTERFLY AND THE BLIGHT AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD by Lavie Tidhar (Daily Science Fiction 9/3/10)
Short Stories – SECOND JOURNEY OF THE MAGUS by Ian R. MacLeod (Subterranean Winter ’10)
Short Stories – TONIGHT WE FLY by Ian McDonald (Masked)
Short Stories – THE NIGHT TRAIN by Lavie Tidhar (Strange Horizons 6/14/10)
Short Stories -THE SPONTANEOUS KNOTTING OF AN AGITATED STRING by Lavie Tidhar (Fantasy 5/17/10)

… a pretty good haul by anyone’s standards! More pats to all those who made the list, but particularly to Lavie Tidhar who scored a quite remarkable FIVE mentions!

Audible have acquired world English Audio rights for Ian R. MacLeod’s 2009 Arthur C. Clark Award winning novel SONG OF TIME. Originally published as a limited edition by PS Publishing, SONG OF TIME was described by Paul Billinger, chair of the Clarke  judges as ‘… a rich and subtle novel that couples themes of memory and identity with well crafted and all too human characters.‘

Audible have also acquired world rights to Michael Cobley‘s epic Space Opera series HUMANITIES FIRE, comprising  SEEDS OF EARTH, ORPHANED WORDS and THE ASCENDANT STARS. Published in the UK by Orbit and in Germany by Heyne, this series has been widely acclaimed by reviewers and reader alike.

No word yet as to who will narrate either of these acquisitions nor on when we can expect their release, but we’ll let you know as and when we’re told.

Following their wonderful success with Ian R. MacLeod‘s 2009  Campbell and Arthur C. Clarke award winning novel SONG OF TIME, Peter Crowther at PS Publishing has acquired limited edition rights from John Berlyne at the Zeno Agency for MacLeod’s brand new novel WAKE UP AND DREAM and will publish in the latter part of 2010. The PS edition will feature cover art by Dirk Berger.

“Hollywood, 1940. It’s the Golden Age of the Feelies. All one-time actor and unlicensed matrimonial private eye Clark Gable has to do is impersonate a wealthy scriptwriter for a few hours, and sign the contract for the biopic of the inventor of a device which has changed entertainment forever. What could go wrong? Already, he’s seeing ghosts — but that’s nothing unusual. Europe is devastated by war and America is sleep-walking into Fascism — but what’s that got to do with him? By turns wry and romantic, but always gripping, multi-award winning writer Ian R MacLeod’s latest novel is a dazzling collision of science, fantasy and history. Like the feelies themselves, WAKE UP AND DREAM is film noir with Technicolor wraiths.”

Peter Crowther says ‘After the wonderful smorgasbord of emotion that was the multiple-award-winning SONG OF TIME, Ian Macleod could have gone two ways: the familiar and workmanlike approach of not taking any chances, or the bold sweeping-clean of the planning table in order to come up with something set to blow readers totally out of the water. Well, WAKE UP AND DREAM is that latter…  in spades. It’s alternate reality Hollywood steeped in film noir, Dick meets Hammett…  a truly mesmerising word-trip that melds science, history and fantasy in  equal parts — and you know, you just can’t see the joins. We’re thrilled that Ian has allowed us to publish it — it’s a book that will take the genre’s readers by storm.’

There’s some great bits of free online fiction by Zeno clients to be found out there. Check out the following…

• Ian R. MacLeod: Multi-award winner Ian R. Macleod’s story Second Journey of the Magus is the main featured fiction in the Winter 2010 issue of Subterranean Online.

• Elizabeth Moon: A long excerpt from SHEEPFARMER’S DAUGHTER (the prologue and first two chapters, no less!) the first in the DEED OF PAKSENARRION series, is available at the Orbit web site, promoting their recently released omnibus edition (see this previous post).

• Lavie Tidhar: The Feb 2010 #41 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine has Lavie’s brand new story The Language of the Whirlwind. There are also back issue links to two other stories by Lavie, The Dying World and 304 Adolph Hitler Strasse. And if you want more by Lavie, check out this link at Free Speculative Fiction Online, which should keep you going for a bit!

• Aliette De Bodard: Aliette has a page on her website with a fistful of links to stories she has dotted about the internet. Well worth the effort.

• Zeno clients Aliette De Bodard and John Meaney (also known as Thomas Blackthorn) will be signing, respectively, SERVANTS OF THE UNDERWORLD and EDGE - their novels published (soon to be published in the case of Mister Meaney / Blackthorn) by Angry Robot. You’ll be able to meet both authors on Friday February 12th at 6pm at the flagship Forbidden Planet megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue.

• And be sure to check out this 5 Star review of Aliette’s novel, posted recently at www.sciencefictionandfantasy.co.uk.

• Prior to the above, John will be one of the participating authors at the SFX Weekender – a two day Sciffy fest taking place on the 5th and 6th of February at Camber Sands – see their web site (link above)  for details. Note that fellow Zeno client Justina Robson will also be in attendance.

• Still with John Meaney, those of you hungrily awaiting the arrival of his brand new space opera ABSORPTION, will, alas, no have to wait a little while long, as publisher Gollancz has had to reschedule the release date – you’ll be able to get hold of it from May 20th.

• And still with John M, he will be attending this year’s Eastercon (over Easter weekend of course) along with other Zeno clients, Susan Boulton, Aliette De Bodard, Michael Cobley, Freda Warrington, Ian R. Macleod and Colin Harvey.  John B will also be there and John P will be there for at least one day. Other clients are still to confirm.

Further to our post of June 10th, we’re delighted to announce that Ian MacLeod’s extraordinary novel SONG OF TIME has won this year’s John W. Campbell Award, tying for the prize with Cory Doctorow’s LITTLE BROTHER – only the third time in its 35 year history that the award has had joint winners.

Ian adds this honour to the Arthur C. Clarke Award that he won for SONG OF TIME in April. The Campbell Award will be presented at this year’s Campbell Conference, which is taking place July 10 – 12, 2009 in Lawrence, Kansas and we understand that the author will be on hand to receive the award in person.

• Offical KU Press Release announcing the winner.

Having already scooped the 2009 Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel – “the most prestigious award for science fiction in Britain” – Ian MacLeod‘s SONG OF TIME deservedly marches on towards further possible honours.

The LOCUS web site has just announced the nominees for the John W. Campbell Award and SONG OF TIME once more does literary battle with the mighty ANATHEM by Neal Stephenson. Also nominated are Cory Doctorow’s LITTLE BROTHER, James Morrow’s THE PHILOSOPHER’S APPRENTICE, CITY AT THE EDGE OF TIME by Greg Egan and VALLEY OF DAY-GLO, but Nick Di Chario – the only author on the list whose work is new to me.

It’s a tough shortlist certainly, but we at Zeno have our fingers crossed!  Best of luck Ian.

Amazon.com’s Omnivoracious blog has just added a feature interview with our newest client (and recipient of this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award) Ian R. Macleod.

Conducted by Jeff Vandermeer, the interview has Ian discussing his work in general, Song of Time in particular and even mentions his work in progress, entitled Wake Up and Dream…

“It’s set in an alternate version of Golden Age Hollywood. The main character is a seedy unlicensed matrimonial private eye called Clark Gable. Forget the talkies — this is about the feelies.”

More about this in due course!

Zeno is delighted to announce that multi-award winning author Ian R. MacLeod has joined us as a client and we will henceforth be acting as his primary agent.

Ian has, of course, been in the news recently having scooped the coveted Arthur C. Clarke Award last month for his wonderful novel Song of Time, published by PS Publishing. His superb backlist is also no stranger when it comes to receiving gongs – he has twice received both the World Fantasy and the Sidewise awards and has also been placed first in the Asimov readers poll and won the LOCUS award for best first novel. In addition to all this, he has made the short-lists for the Hugo, the Nebula, the BSF, the Sturgeon, the John W. Campbell and the Tiptree awards!

John Berlyne says “I’ve been a fan of Ian’s for years! He is a truly exceptional talent and one-man showcase for all that shines in British science fiction. John Parker and I are looking forward hugely to working with him.”

• Ian’s client page on the Zeno site
• Ian R. MacLeod’s home page