A few months back the SFF community took a huge blow when we lost the Strange Chemistry imprint. Although the label hadn’t been making the kind of revenue it needed to survive, its authors were getting attention through largely positive reader reviews and a fair share of award nominations . This, of course, made the fact that a number of authors, some mid-way through a series, would be ending up out of contract all the more upsetting.
Today though we’ve had some very good news. One of the stand out novelists from Strange Chemistry, Laura Lam, has sold two books to Macmillan in a six figure deal.
The first in the new series is called False Hearts and is a near-future thriller set in San Francisco. The novel, written for adults, begins in Mana’s Hearth, a retreat that’s closed off from the rest of society and denied access to technology or modern medicine, where twin sisters Taema and Tila dream of a life beyond the walls of the compound. When their lives are threatened they finally manage escape to San Francisco and a life that’s beyond anything they could have imagined. Ten years later, Tila returns to the twins’ home in the city, terrified and covered in blood, just before the police arrive and arrest her for murder in the first homicide by a civilian in decades. Taema is given a proposition: go undercover as her sister and perhaps save her twin’s life. Lam explains that it is being pitched as something like Minority Report meets Gone Girl!
Julie Crisp, Tor’s editorial director, who signed up the novels said: “I was completely hooked from the first page by Laura’s writing. To me it was like reading Hunger Games meets “Blade Runner” meets The Shining Girls. Thrilling, addictive and completely page-turning.” Juliet Mushens, Laura’s agent, described the book as “an adrenaline-fuelled thriller, packed full of twists and turns with a compelling heroine at its heart”.
The conclusion to the press release we received this morning was warming too. Lam was quoted as saying: “This year has been a rollercoaster, and this is definitely one of the highest highs.”
Congratulations to Laura who will be publishing the first book in this series January 2016.. We are all crossing our fingers that more Strange Chemistry authors will also be finding new homes over the next few weeks, months and years too.
Jennie Ivins
[…] and this seemed even more likely when Laura Lam was snapped up by Tor Books for a novel called False Hearts, a near-future […]