JABberwocky Literary Agency

JABfriends, we are happy to announce that we’ve completed our move into our shiny new office.

Our phone line has been transferred over to the new space, so you can call us at the usual number–in case you forgot, it’s (718) 392-5985–and we’ll answer in the usual way. We have a new fax number, so if you need to send us a fax, please send it to (718) 392-5987. Our emails haven’t changed, but our internet is set up now, so now we’ll be able to respond swiftly and efficiently to your emails.

Please also take note of our new address:

24-16 Queens Plaza South, Suite 505
Long Island City, NY 11101

The old P.O. box will be open for a while, but mail sent to that address may take longer to reach us, so please use the new one for both mail and packages. If there’s anything we’ve forgotten or you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to try out the new phone or shoot us an email. (Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, give the new fax a try!)

We’re looking forward to showing off the new place!

All best,
The Jabberwocky Team

WIth Deadlocked, Charlaine Harris was not only once again a #1 bestseller in the US and UK for her debut week, but in the UK, she had the fastest-selling hardcover so far this year in the UK. She also hit her highest ever ranking in Ireland at #3. Charlaine also reports in with some very big numbers for her tour behind the new book, which runs through this weekend. Another huge start for Sookie Stackhouse, ahead of the final Sookie novel that’s scheduled for publication a year from now.

We also offer congratulations to Elizabeth Moon, who hit the Locus bestseller list with both the Echoes of Betrayal hardcover and Kings of the North paperback.

The Syndics have apparently infiltrated the NY Times, because Jack Campbell’s “Black Jack” Geary was robbed! The INVINCIBLE Geary was #21 on the Bookscan hardcover fiction list, with hardcover sales around 5% up from a year ago. He was #26 on the B&N hardcover fiction list. His e-book sales set a series record, up 25% from Dreadnaught a year ago, and we in fact sold more copies in e-book than in print for the first week. NY Times New York Schlimes our congrats to John Hemry aka Jack Campbell on a huge increase in first week sales, and the best launch week ever for the Lost Fleet. We’ll knock some champagne against the hull for this one.

Our long-time client Scott Mackay is once again a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award. Given by the Crime Writers of Canada, the Arthur Ellis is the Edgar equivalent for our friends up north, and this year Scott contends in the Best Short Story category for “The Girl with the Golden Hair,” a Doctor Deacon story which first appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Winners will be announced on May 31. You can catch Doctor Deacon in book form in Angel of the Glade and The Miser of Cherry Hill.

Adam-Troy Castro is already nominated this year for more awards than we can count, including the Nebula Award, winners to be announced in just two short weeks. He’s now announced as winner in Analog’s “Analytical Laboratory” reader’s poll for his novella “With Unclean Hands,” a new Andrea Cort story. He also has a novella placing at #4 in the Analytical Laboratory, “Hiding Place.” You can find more Andrea Cort in the Philip K. Dick-winning novel Emissaries from the Dead, followed by Third Claw of God and War of the Marionettes, which will soon get its first US release from Audible.

And we have a second winner in Analog’s Analytical Laboratory, with John Hemry tying for the lead in novelette with “Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in the Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronism.” John is best-known for being Jack Campbell, the NY Times bestselling author of the Lost Fleet military sf series. The newest, Invincible, just came out.

We congratulate all our winners, and look forward to cheering Adam on at the Nebulas.

We’re scheduled to move during the week of May 7.  If all goes well, packing and phone installation occur on the 7th, physical moving on the 8th, internet installation on the 9th, and we’ll just be all beautifully and wonderfully up and running on the 10th.  Any bets on the “all goes well” part?  The new address is:
JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
24-16 Queens Plaza South, Suite 505
Long Island City, NY 11101-4620
(if you like addressing mail like a computer:
2416 Queens Plz S Ste 505 is the official PO formatting)
There’s even another publishing company in the building!
The phone number should stay the same, during the transition it may ring at the old office.
Stay tuned for updates!

Not to make Writing Excuses, but Brandon Sanderson is part of the team behind the 2012 Hugo-nominated podcast Writing Excuses, along with Jordan Sanderson, writers Dan Wells and Mary Robinette Kowal, cartoonist Howard Tayler.

This weekly podcast is a must for the aspiring writer, with weekly topics that cover the craft of writing, the business of writing, the promotion of books and authors, and much much more. There’s a long tradition of “paying it forward” in sf/fantasy. Writing Excuses is a prime example of this. As Brandon’s agents, we can hardly keep up with all things Brandon — yet somehow he finds the time week after week to join forces with the other members of the Writing Excuses team to open the curtain.

Happily, it’s nominated as Best Related Work, a different category than Jim C. Hines. We can unabashedly cheer on both when the Hugo Awards are announced Labor Day weekend.

We’re tempted to break into song — this song in particular — to celebrate our client Jim C. Hines, who is a 2012 Hugo Nominee for Best Fan Writer.

On Live Journal and mirrored on his blog (check both to catch all the robust comments), Jim maintains a robust and diverse web presence. His “First Book Friday” gives authors a place to talk about their path to first publication. He doesn’t shy from hot topics, one he blogged about aggressively in 2011 was sexual harassment in sf and fan/con circuits. He does straight shooting about the industry, and he gives a glimpse into both his professional life and personal life. And much, much more. For the quality of his writing, its range, its insight, its breadth, and more, his Hugo nomination is richly deserved.

We’re honored to represent Jim’s fiction, including his Goblin and Princess novels and forthcoming Magic Ex Libris series. We’re incredibly proud of his extracurricular activities, and wish him all good fortune in the final Hugo Award balloting.

The paperback edition of Dead Reckoning, the 11th Sookie Stackhouse novel by Charlaine Harris, was released on March 28, and  quickly headed to the highest echelons of the NY Times paperback list, debuting at #4.  The list will be published in the Sunday NY Times Book Review on April 15.

Charlaine also cracked the Top 10 in the annual bestseller lists for 2011 that appeared in Publishers Weekly in the March 19, 2012 issue. The hardcover of Dead Reckoning made #9, with Penguin reporting sales of 500,000 copies to PW. The e-book was #25 on the 2011 bestseller list, with sales just over 250,000 copies, and Dead in the Family had e-book sales in 2011 of around 80,000 copies.

So 2011 was a great year for Charlaine Harris, we’re starting in on a great 2012 with another NY Times bestseller, and there’s more good stuff to come as the hardcover of Deadlocked, the 12th and penultimate Sookie Stackhouse novel, is destined for greatness when it goes on sale on May 1.

Our biggest news since True Blood!

Now that the press release has gone out and the website has gone live, we’re delighted to finally share the big news: Brandon Sanderson and Little Orbit have teamed up to create a video game set in the world of Sanderson’s NYT bestselling Mistborn novels. The all-new story, penned by Sanderson, will take place hundreds of years before the MISTBORN trilogy, in which Fiddle Fathvell will master Allomancy to protect his family. In addition to writing the storyline, Sanderson will work closely with the brilliant developers at Little Orbit to put Allomancy in the hands of gamers.

The game is due out in 2013 and will be available for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, the Xbox 360® video game & entertainment system from Microsoft, and for Windows PC and Mac. To learn more, you can follow the game on Twitter or Facebook, and be sure to check out the snazzy new website.

We can’t wait for Sanderson’s next visit to Scadrial. And between now and the game’s release in 2013, there should be plenty of time to check out the original trilogy and Sanderson’s latest Mistborn novella, THE ALLOY OF LAW.

UPDATE: Brandon has written a blog post about the process and his involvement.

Echoes of Betrayal (reviews/buy) by Elizabeth Moon, the newest novel in the Paladin’s Legacy series which continues the story of Moon’s enduring fantasy classic The Deed of Paksenarrion, hit #22 on the NY Times Hardcover Bestseller List, for launch week sales thru February 25.  This is the highest-ever NY Times placement for a Paks book, comfortably beating last year’s Kings of the North (#29), and it reflects strong sales growth in the series.  Even with the move to e-books and the loss of hundreds of Borders since Kings of the North came out, hardcover sales were up by almost 10%.  We’re also very close to Elizabeth’s highest ever Times ranking, #19 for Victory Conditions, which was the final Vatta’s War novel.  Fingers crossed we’ll top that as the Paladin’s Legacy series continues!  We’re extra super happy since Elizabeth’s been part of the family for almost the entire 26 years Joshua’s been an agent.

Brandon went to Taiwan in January and had an awesome visit. (Read his recap here.) Our Taiwanese subagent, Gray Tan of the Grayhawk Agency, shared this lovely photo, and we wanted to share it with you!

Brandon with the whole Fantasy Foundation team

Back row from the left: Oz Chang (editor), Vivi (editor), Sherry Wang (Brandon’s editor), Evanna Hsu (rights manager), Fanny Yang (editor-in-chief), Cheng-dun (distribution). Front row from the left: Bonny, Jessica and Janis

We’re delighted to congratulate Charlaine Harris and Jeri Westerson on their Agatha Award nominations! Charlaine has been nominated in the Nonfiction category for 2011′s THE SOOKIE STACKHOUSE COMPANION, and Jeri has been nominated in the Historical Mystery category for THE TROUBLED BONES. We’re glad they’re nominated in different categories, since we would have a tough time taking sides.

Major congratulations to both!

Big congrats are due to Adam-Troy Castro, who has made the short list for both the Bram Stoker Award and the Nebula Award. His short story “Her Husband’s Hands” (Lightspeed Magazine) has been nominated for both the Bram Stoker and Nebula Awards, and his novella “With Unclean Hands” (Analog) is a Nebula finalist.

These are Castro’s seventh and eighth Nebula nomination and third Stoker nomination. His first middle-grade novel, GUSTAV GLOOM AND THE PEOPLE TAKER, will be published this summer by Grosset & Dunlap.

We’re very proud–congratulations, Adam!

Jabberwocky loves Twitter so much that we’re branching out into new social media … we’re finally on Facebook! The project kicks off with a page for Rick Shelley, a Jabberwocky client whose deep backlist we’ve been making available as ebooks.

Like his page to stay up to date on all the latest happenings. You can learn more about our ebook program here.

Book for book, Jeri Westerson and her Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series are the most accoladed author and series of any of the JABberwocky list. That amazing run over four books in the series and counting continues with the great news that Troubled Bones (reviews/buy) is a Finalist for the Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award, one of the Left Coast Crime Awards, winners to be announced at the 22nd annual Left Coast Crime Convention, in Sacramento CA on Saturday March 31, 2012. Westerson was previously a finalist for this award for the 2nd Crispin Guest mystery, Serpent in the Thorns, and she has also contended 3 times for the Macavity, twice for the Romantic Times award, and once for the Shamus. That’s 8 award nominations for 4 books. Congrats to Jeri!

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), which is part of the American Library Association, has just released their list of 2012 Notable Children’s Recordings, and leading the list (well, because it’s an alphabetical list, but still, it’s leading) is the Recorded Books version of Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians (reviews/buy in print/download audio) by Brandon Sanderson. This is one more reason to be super thrilled with and super thankful for our good friends at Recorded, who not only did a bang-up job on the recording but have also used the bang-up new covers for the French editions of the Alcatraz books. And as the ALSC says “Ramon de Ocampo deftly voices the reluctant, snarky hero.” Thanks, Ramon! It’s been a really good year for Brandon’s Alcatraz novels, 2011 started with a slew of state reading awards and programs choosing the book, and now we’re off to a great 2012.

We’ve just gotten word that the Bulgarian Fantasy & Horror Club has awarded Simon R. Green its “Author of the Year” prize in something of a landslide, while his 11th Nightside novel A Hard Day’s Knight (reviews/buy) was the winner in a close race for International Hit of the Year for 2011.  We believe these are the first awards our clients have won in the Bulgarian market, and we congratulate our trailblazing author Simon R. Green.

Charlaine Harris has once again hit the French bestseller lists, with the translation of Dead Reckoning (J’ai Lu) reaching #7 on the Livres Hebdo list in the 20 January issue of that magazine, the French equivalent of Publishers Weekly.  The first printing is reported at 70,000 copies.

There are so many good reviews coming in as we head toward the on-sale for Myke Cole’s debut novel Shadow Ops: Control Point (on sale from Ace on Jan. 31) that tweeting the links doesn’t seem quite sufficient.  Here’s a round-up of some:
Civilian Reader, we had to underline almost the entire review for the quote sheet!
Fantasy Faction calls it a “non-stop thrill ride” among other nice things.
The SciFi Chick, she replaces “non-stop” with “action-packed”!!
Over at Fantasy Book Review, it leads their post on Most Anticipated Books of 2012.
Our client Jim C. Hines is a fan. He especially likes the goblins.
“Lord of the Rings” smashed into “Clear and Present Danger” is the quote from Dead Robots Society.
We know how hard and how long Myke worked on his debut, and we’re looking forward to lots more excitement to report on here as word continues to get out on just how good the one is.
Update Jan. 17 2012 lots more reviews coming in, here’s a “High Recommendation” from Rob H. Bedford at SFF World.
Staffer’s Musings is saying “an absolute blast to read, I predict Cole’s debut is going to be a monster success.
And how can we not like The Ranting Dragon: “an intense masterwork of military fantasy that grips you from start to finish. Highly recommended.”
Updating Jan. 18 with a Fantasy Book Review link, 9.4/10* and planning to make a book of the month for February!
Updating some more Jan. 24
Fantasy Book Critic is a “superb, can’t wait to see where Cole plans to take the reader next.
Watchamacallit Reviews is similar, “definitely recommend, and can’t wait for the sequel.”
These good reviews didn’t go for naught — update Feb. 6 – we’ve the excellent news that Control Point debuted at #15 on the Barnes & Noble sf/fantasy bestseller list.

Great news from the UK this morning: Brandon Sanderson and Jon Sprunk have been longlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award! Sanderson was nominated for THE ALLOY OF LAW (reviews | buy), and Sprunk for SHADOW’S LURE (reviews | buy).

This is the third consecutive year for Sanderson, who won last year for THE WAY OF KINGS (reviews | buy), and the second year in a row for Sprunk.

Please vote for your favorite here.

Our congratulations go out to both!

It’s a great month for the JABberwocky list in Taiwan, with Brandon Sanderson debuting last week at #3 on the Eslite foreign literature bestseller list (Eslite is Taiwan’s leading bookstore chain) with his Mistborn: The Alloy of Law, which appeared in a stunningly gorgeous package from Fantasy Foundation, and now this week his #3 spot has been taken by Peter V. Brett with The Desert Spear, while Alloy holds nicely in the #7 position.  #3 gets a nice thumbnail on the Eslite home page so at least for a week or ten days after this news item goes live you can admire one or the other cover here.

Fast on the heels of all the other great Goodreads news, we at JABberwocky have just learned that for steampunk month in January 2012, the 6,500+ member sf/f book club has chosen Mark Hodder’s THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF SPRING HEELED JACK (reviews | buy) as its sf pick!

Now you too can join in the fun thousands of others are having, by picking up your own copy of Hodder’s Philip K. Dick award-winning debut (and the rest of the trilogy — the third book, EXPEDITION TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, has just published!).

Update – 21 Hours Later:  Some more good news for Hodder this week, click here and find his THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CLOCKWORK MAN on the Forbidden Planet list of the 25 Best Books of 2011.

Over at Barnes & Noble, Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught is on the Honorable Mention for their Year’s Best, putting it as one of the top 25 titles of 2011. Mistborn: The Alloy of Law from Brandon Sanderson is on the 2011 Year’s Best SF/Fantasy list from January Magazine, and Jon Sprunk’s Shadow’s Lure was #4 on the top 5 list over at Only the Best Sci-Fi.

Both Dreadnaught and The Alloy of Law were also NY Times Hardcover Fiction bestsellers, and each was a contender for the Goodreads Best of 2011.

Our congratulations to all three authors on a great 2011!

JABberwocky is delighted to announce that  a role playing game, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Adventure Game, is just out from our friends at Crafty Games.  It’s the first RPG to be based on a JABberwocky property, which makes this, as Dean Wormer might say, double secret exciting.  You can buy it as a deluxe hardcover, a regular softcover or digitally by clicking over to Crafty. Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy has quickly established itself as a modern fantasy masterpiece in just a few short years since the first novel was released.  It can be obtained in a handy boxed set, which according to Nielsen Bookscan outsells even Lord of the Rings most weeks of the year. Why not get your fantasy-loving friend a double-stockinged treat of both the RPG and boxed set!

This has been in the works for a while now, but now it’s website-official: we are delighted to announce that we’ve conquered Ari Marmell, author of THE CONQUEROR’S SHADOW and other illustrious works. We are big fans of his books, and looking forward to getting started on the latest.

We have a lot of our clients on Graphic Audio and couldn’t be prouder or happier to relay the good news that their edition of Simon R. Green’s Blood & Honor has just taken honors from AudioFile Magazine as one of the ten best Full Cast audio of 2011.  The production was directed by Terence Aselford, who was also lead voice, what a wonderful job from him and everyone else on the cast and crew.  You can sample the entire first hour of the Graphic Audio adaptation by clicking here, and if you want to explore Simon’s original novel it’s available as a JABberwocky e-book.