September 28, 2005

Publishers Marketplace: Recent Deals: “Parents of Terri Schiavo Mary Schindler and Robert Schindler and siblings Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo and Bobby Schindler’s untitled memoir, promising to ’share their love and sorrow, joy and pain, and some shocking revelations as they honor Terri’s life, mourn her death, and finally tell the whole story,’ to Jamie Raab at Warner, with Colin Fox editing, for publication in March 2006 on the one year anniversary of Schiavo’s death, by Joni Evans of the William Morris Agency. The authors are donating proceeds to The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, Inc.”

My heart goes out to the parents and to Terry Schiavo, but this is another snoozefest. Pro-life partisans should help it earn back its advance.

Publishers Marketplace: Recent Deals: ” Timothy Good’s A NEED TO KNOW, a look at the new evidence supporting the existence of UFOs, by a leading authority in the field who has spoken on the subject at the Pentagon, to Claiborne Hancock at Pegasus, in a nice deal, “

Spoken on the subject at the Pentagon … uh huh.

Publishers Marketplace: Recent Deals: “Joseph Minton Amann and Tom Breuer’s SWEET JESUS, I HATE BILL O’REILLY, based on the popular website of the same title, with a foreword by Al Franken, to Carl Bromley at Nation Books, in a nice deal, for publication in spring 2006, by Matthew Carnicelli at Carnicelli Literary Management”

Like shooting fish in a barrel. No degree of difficulty points for this title.

Publishers Marketplace: The Latest Deals: “Author of February House Sherill Tippins’ INSIDE THE DREAM PALACE, a history of New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel, to Deanne Urmy at Houghton Mifflin, for publication in fall 2007, by Gail Ross at the Gail Ross Literary Agency (world English)”

Can there possibly be enough people outside New York City who care about the Chelsea Hotel to earn this advance back? I doubt it.

Update: For a diametrically opposite view, see the CHelsea Hotel blog …

Publishers Marketplace: The Latest Deals: “Salon.com journalist and anti-globalization activist Marisa Handler’s TALES FROM THE GLOBAL JUSTICE FRONTLINES, offering a coming-of-age memoir and eye-opening insights into what’s really going on inside the global justice movement, to Johanna Vondeling at Berrett-Koehler (world).”

What a snoozefest. I bet she’s not going to write “a bunch of whiny liberals are complaining about globalization while 3.2 billion new capitalists are coming on-line.”

Publishers Marketplace: The Latest Deals: “Bestselling author of THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR Martha Stout PhD’s THE PARANOIA SWITCH: The Psychology of Trauma and The Politics of Fear, on what terror and fear politics have done to our minds, and to the very biology of our brains, to Sarah Crichton at Sarah Crichton Books, in a significant deal, in a pre-empt, by Susan Lee Cohen at Riverside Literary Agency (world English).”

This is an important subject.

A significant deal in the Publishers Marketplace lexicon is a lot of money (251-499K).

Update: a reader wrote to ask me for more info. I don’t know anything beyond what is posted above, but my guess is that the thrust of her book is that we all have a degree of post-traumatic stress in current environment. It is well known that trauma affects chemistry and operation of certain centers in the brain (the amygdala).

From a publishing point of view, this is a lot of money for a non-fiction book about psychology, which suggests that 1) THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR must have sold quite well and 2) they are planning to promote the bejeezus out of THE PARANOIA SWITCH.

This does look terrific. And check out the blurb from Lloyd Alexander, author of one of the most popular children’s series ever.

Hylas Publishing: Scary: “Meet Horris, the horrifying narrator of SCARY, a nonfiction book for kids on the scarier facts of life. Horris knows all about the gross and gory, and he delivers the gruesome goods, adding his own mix of dark humor and dangerous antics. In SCARY, kids learn fascinating facts about the world’s most poisonous snakes and spiders, read frightening (and true) ghost stories, discover unsolved mysteries, and are privy to Horris’ musings on all things spooky and horrible. Horris’ playful narration is brought to life with dark, detailed, and wonderfully original illustrations. Horris has endless kid appeal and is sure to become a hero to generations of children.

“Warning! Readers will experience shivers of delight, followed by uncontrollable bursts of laughter. Before they realize it, they’ll be captivated by strange and startling facts about the world around them. This is a case where scary means marvelous.”
—Lloyd Alexander, Newbery Award-winning author of The High King and The Black Cauldron

“SCARY is simply wonderful. I would have loved it when I was eight, and I love it now. I work with kids all the time and I guarantee that any child given this book-whether that child has ever read a book or not-will gobble it up. Why didn’t I think of writing it?”
—William Sleator, author of Interstellar Pig and The Boy Who Couldn’t Die

“SCARY is a wonderful book — beautifully illustrated, handsomely designed, and sure to both delight, fascinate, and titillate middle grade readers (as well as their parents and teachers!). A really impressive debut!”
—Peter Glassman, owner of Books of Wonder, Manhattan’s largest independent bookstore.”

OhmyNews International: “last year I wrote a study on nuclear scenarios in the DPRK nuclear crisis. And one of my scenarios was the possibility of a unilateral, preemptive military strike by the U.S. government.

I asked, ‘Is it possible a president of the United States could do such a thing?’ And my conclusion was that yes, it is possible to imagine, but you have to be imagining a really, really unusual situation, because for the president to make such a decision, he would have to do so in the full knowledge that that would endanger the U.S. alliance with the ROK and Japan. I believe he would only make such a decision if he were convinced that the danger to the United States was so great that he would be willing to put all the relations in Northeast Asia in jeopardy.

So would you call that situation ‘crossing the red line’?

I don’t know. I have never seen the American ‘red line.’ I think they must be infrared and we need special glasses. (laughter)

So far what I have seen is that the presumed red lines get crossed, and nothing happens. So, what were our red lines? Restarting the reactor? Processing the plutonium? Declaring the DPRK is a nuclear power? Sending uranium to Pakistan or maybe even Libya? Where are the red lines? (laughter) I wish I saw them. I must need new glasses!”

International News Article | Reuters.com: “TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran’s parliament voted on Wednesday to speed discussion of a bill that would force the government to scale back its cooperation with the U.N. atomic watchdog, state media reported.

The bill to limit the scope of nuclear inspections is in retaliation for a resolution approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors last week recommending Iran’s case be sent to the U.N. Security Council.

If approved, the bill would oblige the government to stop implementing the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which allows U.N. inspectors to make short-notice visits to nuclear facilities.

About 300 protesters gathered outside the British embassy in Tehran on Wednesday to denounce the IAEA resolution submitted by Britain, France and Germany.

‘Nuclear energy is our legitimate right,’ they chanted. ‘We will fight, we will die, we will never surrender.’”

Message from the people of Iran to the people of the United States:

1. Our legislature is just as dumb as yours.
2. Our kooks are just as dumb as yours.

An update (and probably some major plot action) on Peter Pettigrew.
Rita: What about Wormtail? Is there hope for redemption?
JK Rowling replies -> There’s always hope, of course. You’ll find out more about our rat-like friend in book six. (World Book Day chat, 3/04/04, http://www.mugglenet.com/jkrwbd.shtml).
What we got:
Actually, very little about Pettigrew: He’s living with Snape.