A message from Barry Cunningham
Dear Friends, I feel like I've been on tour myself this month! I joined our wonderful author C.J. Skuse with the fabulous Jenny Valentine at the Hay Festival, ventured far up North to talk to the students of creative writing at the University of Lancashire in Preston, then talked to some interesting French journalists in London about Numbers (Intuitions in France), before flying off to the American Library Association Conference in Washington with Lucy Christopher! Go Chickens! But really, it’s brilliant to see how far and wide the message of our good books spreads (and I haven't even mentioned Rachel Ward winning the Angus Book Award in Scotland, Lucy Christopher being shortlisted for the Australian Children's Book of the Year and the Chanda’s Secret film winning a major jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival!). I know the economy is in a bad state — but, hey we've got some fab books to read! I'm packing Saving Mississippi by Cornelia Funke for my daughter this summer (and the latest Patrick Ness for me) and the extra exciting news is that next summer, we are going to publish Cornelia's Wild Chicks. First time ever in English! Meanwhile we are busy preparing for Cornelia's Reckless launch on 14th September - and we are hearing all kinds of film rumours too! Can’t wait to talk to her interesting collaborator, Lionel Wigram, the Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes producer, about those! And if there was ANY chance of me getting any sleep, there’s Zac and The Dream Pirates coming in September too — debut author Ross Mackenzie telling us about what happens when nightmares threaten our dreams! Just sent that off to the printer, so that's brilliant! And what am I reading now ... There's this great manuscript about a boy ghost written by my old friend Thomas Taylor (the man who drew the Harry Potter covers). Think I should buy it? Happy reading!
Barry
Rights News
From our Rights Manager Elinor Bagenal
August 2010
10th ANNIVERSARY NEW TITLES BROCHURE
To celebrate our 10th birthday, we have a terrific array of NEW titles to show you, from dream pirates to dustbin cats. Click here to download.
BOLOGNA A BIG SUCCESS!
Bologna was very good for us here at Chicken House with non-stop appointments and most of them double appointments thanks to the BA strike! Everybody was very willing to share, which was good and quite a few new friendships developed as a result.
A NATURAL BESTSELLER
We had an offer in on the first day for our big book, Ravenwood by Andrew Peters which set the whole fair off on a very good note. We have since then finalised two other deals and hope to do several more before the end of the month.
STILL HOWLING
Wolven by Di Toft continues to attract a lot of attention and we did a deal with Brazil at the fair. We’ve had the most amazing review in Kirkus for this book and Book Clubs in America have taken 150,000.
. . . as Toft puts it, “when the astonishing happens, you just get on with it,” and so she does, briskly folding magic and slapstick into a madcap scramble. . . . Expect sequels.
GET READY TO ROCK!
Rockoholic by C.J. Skuse had its first outing at Bologna. There was lots of interest in this book about what happens when you accidentally kidnap your favourite rock star! Who would you kidnap if you had the chance? Most people seemed to want Michael Jackson…
COVER COVERAGE
We got universal acclaim for most of our covers and the new jacket for Dog Lost we’ve created to celebrate the unveiling of Ingrid Lee’s new book, Dustbin Cat, went down very well indeed. Many people wanted to read both these books as there are not many titles about real animals out there at the moment.
TEENAGE TRIUMPHS
Rights in Stolen by Lucy Christopher, Numbers by Rachel Ward, Pretty Bad Things by C.J. Skuse and Threads by Sophia Bennett still continue to sell and with the follow-ups coming for most of these, we hope for teenage triumphs all over the world.
Do contact me, Elinor Bagenal, on elinor@doublecluck.com for any more information.
Keep Watching!
