October 2022

Hi everyone and welcome to my first newsletter – thanks so much for signing up. This will be a monthly rambling of the latest book news, including upcoming events, interviews and podcasts that I might be involved in. There might also be a few other tidbits, like if I’ve read or watched anything amazing recently and want to shout about it. Overall, though, it’s an easy way to stay apprised of what’s going on with me and it’s unlikely to take up a whole load of your time!

The Basic Rundown – Who Am I?

I live in Edinburgh at the moment, but I’ve not always been here. I was born in Singapore, grew up in Switzerland, and spent five years living in Hong Kong. While I was there, I wrote Professor Everywhere, which was short-listed for the Proverse Prize – a minor South-East Asian literary prize based in Hong Kong. It was there that I got my first taste of publication. After a bit of a weird niche book with a small independent press, I set my sights a little higher for the next one and ended up with Ascension. I’ll almost certainly do a newsletter at some point in the future about the ins-and-outs of getting an agent, going on submission, and all the other things a writer needs to do to get their book into the world, but for now I’ll just try to sum up the long and short of the outcome below:

The Book Sale

As you may already know, if you’re signed up to this newsletter, I sold Ascension’s UK & Commonwealth rights to Harper Voyager (HarperCollins) and US & Canadian rights to Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House). You might not know that it went to auction between some pretty major publishers here in the UK. You can read about that here.

Foreign Rights

I’m fortunate enough to be represented by the wonderful C&W Agency in London, who have an amazing foreign rights team. They got it in front of a bunch of the right people, and before I knew it we had offers coming in to publish the book in translation. This included a whole bunch of preempts (for non-publishing folk: this is when a publisher puts a big offer on the table for a limited time to get in before anyone else), and another auction in France! As it stands, we’ve sold rights to publishers in Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Romania, Hungary, Czechia, and Finland. As amazing as it is to be reaching all these new readers in different languages, I’m just so excited that, including the US & UK, I’m going to be getting at least TEN different covers. A literal dream come true.

You can already see the UK and US covers on my website. I’ve not seen all of the foreign covers yet, but will definitely share them with you all as soon as I’m allowed to!

As you all know, my US and UK publication dates are the 25th and 27th April respectively. I’ll do another post in the future about when exactly you can expect to see the foreign editions come out too, but safe to say they’ll be appearing at some point in 2023.

Film

The third place we had a competitive scenario was for the film & TV sub-rights, where multiple production companies ended up bidding for the rights. I’m not allowed to go into the details of it quite yet, but Ascension has been optioned for film by a pretty big studio – hopefully I’ll be allowed to share more on that front soon. Watch this space!

Events

Just a few days ago, we aired the Riverhead Variety Show, which was great fun. It’s Riverhead Books’ seasonal showcase of their big books coming out and an absolutely fantastic little way to find out more about the authors and their inspirations. I've got to say that their marketing and publicity team are fantastic and the show they put together was brilliant — it got me excited about my own book and about the other big books they've got coming up. As well as a Q&A with me, and a little mini-doc about my life and my inspirations, there are fun games like "Is it a line from the novel or a Taylor Swift lyric?" and others. If you missed it, you can see it here:

I'm in it all the way for the little games and chats, but the Q&A about me and about Ascension specifically starts at 26:30.

If you want to keep an eye out for the next thing I’m involved in, just check out the ‘News & Events’ on my website occasionally.

News - ARCs and Proofs!

The end of this month has also been the season of ARCs and proofs — with early reading copies of Ascension going out to bloggers, booksellers and authors. I've already got some great blurbs in from authors I love (like the inimitable Tade Thompson) which you can see on my website, and people have been really positive about it. I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks!

You have all, of course, been entered in the giveaway of three of those ARCs and I will send out an email to the winners in the next 24 hours! You'll only be notified if you won, and then I'll ask you for your address so I can post it your way.

Best Book I’ve Read Recently

It's just been shortlisted for Waterstones 'Book of the Year' so you've probably heard about this one, but my publishers sent me an ARC of RF Kuang’s Babel back in the summer, but I’ve only recently got round to reading it. I really thought it was really excellent. While the characters were engaging and the plot was fun, what really stood out to me was the concept behind it. Anyone who’s read Professor Everywhere knows my love of etymology and words, but Kuang takes it to a whole new level here.

The tagline is 'Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.' and the idea of translation runs deep in the book -- not just as literal translation, but as a vehicle with which to explore the shifting of one culture to another: what is gained, what is lost, and what is stolen. The idea of having the act of translation as not only the crux of her magic system, but also as a metaphor for the impact of cultural colonialism and the consequences of empire, was just genius – and that’s not a word I use lightly. As someone who has taught in international education, the implicit critique of this kind of westernisation was very close to home. While I enjoyed her Poppy War trilogy, I never quite loved them as much as others did. Babel really did it for me -- it's more mature, more complex and, in many ways, feels like the sort of book Kuang has always wanted to write. If you’re into language and linguistics and like books that make you think about history, society and culture in a new way, this one comes with my strongest recommendation.

Best Thing I've Watched Recently

iI've never been the biggest Star Wars fan in the world, even though I've loved the films and the lore around them. I've even read a few of the EU Books (The Thrawn Trilogy is a particular standout). But generally speaking I've been pretty disappointed with what Disney have done since their purchase of the mighty Star Wars IP — the new trilogy started well (I really liked The Force Awakens) and then wow did it go downhill from there. The TV shows have been a mixed bag with the recent Obi-Wan being a real mess, in my opinion. Honestly, it was that show that made me decide I wasn't really bothered with Star Wars anymore — it was played out, done, and a bit tired.

Well, colour me wrong. Based on multiple and continued recommendations from friends whose artistic sensibilities I trust, I gave the recent Disney+ Star Wars show Andor a go. Only 7 episodes have come out and I feel pretty comfortable saying that it's the best live-action SW content I've seen since The Empire Strikes Back.

iWhile it is extremely well-directed and acted, the difference for me is the writing. It's so much better than any of the other shows — it has direction, focus, it doesn't talk down to its audience. It lets moments sit rather than beating us over the head with them. The characters are complex and not one-dimensional. Naturally, I wanted to understand what made this show so different from previous SW iterations and I think the answer lies in the way it is written. I've been increasingly feeling like shows are suffering from bloated writing rooms where multiple staff writers contribute and vie for attention, all under the watchful eye of studio execs. It tends to create a show that feels, for the lack of a better word, soulless. They lack a sense of creative cohesiveness and unity (I'm looking at you 'The Rings of Power'.) It came as no surprise to me, then, that Andor is one of the first SW shows written by a single writer — Tony Gilroy (who wrote the legal thriller Michael Clayton) — rather than a writing room. You can really tell and I think it's such a testament to the power of a single creative vision rather than having too many cooks spoil the broth. Definitely go watch it!

See you next month

That's it from me! Next month, I'll go into a bit more detail about the road to publication and talk about some of the exciting upcoming things to do with Ascension, as well as sharing some more recommendations. If you've got any suggestions of things you'd like me to include in this newsletter, please do send them my way at [email protected]

Have a great November. Remember: don't start celebrating Christmas too early. It's unbecoming. ;-)