First book deal!

Okay, so I've been sitting on this news for a while now, waiting for various details to be hammered out. Sitting on it so long, in fact, that this announcement feels almost anticlimactic. But, really, how can there be anything anticlimactic about announcing MY FIRST BOOK DEAL.

Yes, I have been offered a two book deal! Someone is actually paying me to write! Someone is making a bet that readers will put down their hard earned cash to buy something I wrote! Wow. (Something more than a short story, that is. To read my first published short story, order here. ;-) Already shipping from Amazon in the US. Just saying....)

The offer was made based on a proposal :-) and it's for two YA novels, (young teen, really), a genre I've been flirting with for a long time, but had yet to tackle beyond the ideas stage.

The books will be released in Fall 2010 (yes, that soon **Maureen is writing very quickly**) by Phoenix Books, a Beverly Hills based publisher better known for celebrity non-fiction and audio books than for kids fiction. (But hey, they did publish Carl Reiner's children's picture book.)

And I'm super excited they chose my series to help launch them into this segment of the publishing world. (Not that they don't know the teen/tween market... One of their current titles is "I Heart Robert Pattinson".

The books are the first two in a planned series based on fairy tales, but with a few twists -- including a "make your own adventure" element where the reader gets to choose what the characters do next.

The first two books are:

CINDERELLA: NINJA WARRIOR, wherein Cinderella is not that interested in going to a ball, and uses her martial arts and magic skills to defeat her evil stepmother and win the heart of the prince.

And...

SLEEPING BEAUTY: VAMPIRE SLAYER, wherein a princess is cursed to sleep during the day, and everyone else in her kingdom is cursed to sleep at night -- when the vampires attack. How's a girl to find true love and break a curse when all the non-bloodsucking-type boys are asleep?

We're already talking about books 3 and 4 and I'm excited about those ideas too, and the ones I have percolating for books 5 and 6 and... I'm getting away from myself.

I've always loved the magic, wonder and happy endings offered by fairy tales, but even as a kid was bothered by all the passive heroines in peril, waiting for their princes to save the day. I'm thrilled to be re-imagining these much-loved stories with tons of girl power, lots of action and danger, and yes, handsome, charming princes, too. But in my fairy tale world it'll take more than good looks for the heroines to win a happily-ever-after ending.

And I'm hoping these books will mark a happy beginning for me. After several other projects came so close to making it to the ball, but never quite got there, I feel a bit like Cinderella myself right now. Gotta run, pumpkin carriage outside... ;-)