My new young adult thriller, Out of Eden, is now available in hardcover, paperback, or for your Nook or Kindle. Click on the cover, which will take you to amazon.com. This book is for kids 14 and above, though it’s also considered a “crossover” novel for adults.
Out of Eden details a strained father-son relationship, but it’s also a thriller and a revenge novel about a serial killer, who follows a family into the NH woods. I do my middle-grade novels with HarperCollins, but when I hawked Out of Eden to other big publishing houses, some editors wanted me to turn the serial killer into a vampire. When I told one editor that I thought a serial killer was scarier than a vampire, she said, “How can a serial killer be scarier than a vampire?” To which I responded: “How about because they’re real.” Sometimes the obvious goes ignored because of marketing concerns.
Fortunately, I ended up working with my old editor, Stephen Roxburgh, at namelos press. Stephen has published Michael Printz Award winners and National Book Award Finalists, and, in my opinion, is one of the best YA editors in America. More important, I was able to do the book the way I wanted to.
As a final note, my new middle-grade novel, The Life and Times of Benny Alvarez, will be out from HarperCollins in June, and my previous middle-grader, The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr., aka Houdini will be available in paperback at the same time.