Did anyone tell J.K. Rowling that she's old hat? They say that in England right? Bloody Hell.
Anyway, so I heard about this from a comment on Goodreads. With help from The Google (as my mother calls it), I found a few articles that talk about 20 year old Samantha Shannon, an Oxford student, who just sold her first book and two sequels with a possible seven book series, The Bone Season, for a multi-million dollar figure. I can't find the exact amount.
The book synopsis from Goodreads:
The Bone Season is set in 2059 where Paige, a 19-year-old clairvoyant who escapes from life in a criminal underworld, is captured by the repressive government, Scion, and sent to Oxford, a town which has been kept secret, where she meets Warden, who becomes her "keeper."
It doesn't sound like the most original book but there has to be something about it that's amazing, right? A student with virtually no experience, who finished the book in one year, selling a possible seven book series? That's pretty awesome. Apparently she wrote one book, got rejected than started The Bone Season which got picked up by Bloomsbury, J.K. Rowling's publishing house relatively quickly.
Some info about her inspiration:
"Set in 2059, The Bone Season is inspired by the young author's interest in the Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid's Tale and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange - both of which have repressive regimes as a background." Source
Sounds like a dystopian mixed with fantasy to me.
Some random articles I found. These two had a lot of good info:
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/entertainment/oxford-student-samantha-shannon-dubbed-the-new-jk-rowling/story-e6fredpu-1226349356015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2140282/Is-Samantha-Shannon-new-JK-Rowling-Oxford-student-lands-figure-book-deal.html#ixzz1uDPOCNSb
More:
http://jezebel.com/the-bone-season/
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/entertainment/oxford-student-samantha-shannon-dubbed-the-new-jk-rowling/story-e6fredpu-1226349356015
Am I jealous? Hell yes! It's a lot of hype to put on a book so we'll have to wait until September 2013 to see what it's all about.
Moral of the story: Keep at it. It can happen-- even after some failure.
