A Book Sale for Christmas!
So, my Christmas Eve started this morning when I woke up to see an email from my agent saying: "It's up!"
And he'd included this screenshot from Publisher's Marketplace:
It's my book Masks and Shadows - my first historical fantasy for adults! - and ohhhh, am I just ridiculously happy and excited about this news! Masks and Shadows is such a book of my heart. I'm not sure how many of you guys know this about me, but I am a huge, huge opera fan. I played in lots of opera pits back when I was training to be a classical musician in undergrad, and I always thought an opera orchestra would be the most fun kind of orchestra to work in fulltime. Then, when I switched to music history, I focused on late-eighteenth-century opera history, writing my Master's Thesis on an opera by Haydn that was written for performance at Eszterháza palace (the setting of Masks and Shadows). I even spent three years working on a PhD all about opera and politics in eighteenth-century Vienna and Eszterháza.
I didn't finish the PhD, in the end. When my funding ran out, I took a fulltime job at my local opera company instead, and spent two years there getting practical experience of how an opera company really works.
And it all came together in this deeply - wildly - romantic and operatic book, with a castrato opera singer as the male lead, with the composer Joseph Haydn as a character, and with the opera house playing a central role.
I wrote the original version of this book 10 years ago, researching it right along with my half-written PhD thesis, getting more ideas with every new opera or book that I studied. (Whoa, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy had a mistress living in the palace at the same time as his wife? What must that have been like? And what if she had a sister who walked into the situation completely unprepared?) (Ooh, isn't this interesting: there kept on being controversial and fiercely contested legal cases about whether or not men who were castrati should be allowed to get married. Mostly, it was ruled illegal, although there were differences between Catholic and Protestant views on the question. Fascinating!) (And ooh, all those alchemists and political schemers working in Vienna, ooh...)
This is the full pitch that I sent my agent when I emailed him out of the blue earlier this year to let him know that - surprise! - I had written an adult novel, and I hoped he would like it and want to market it:
The year is 1779, and Carlo Morelli, the most renowned castrato singer in Europe, has been invited as an honored guest to Eszterháza Palace. With Carlo in Prince Nikolaus Esterházy's carriage ride a Prussian spy and one of the most notorious alchemists in the Habsburg Empire. Already at Eszterháza is Charlotte von Steinbeck, the very proper sister of Prince Nikolaus's mistress. Charlotte has retreated to the countryside to mourn her husband's death. Now, she must overcome the ingrained rules of her society in order to uncover the dangerous secrets lurking within the palace's golden walls. Music, magic, and blackmail mingle in a plot to assassinate the Habsburg Emperor and Empress--a plot that can only be stopped if Carlo and Charlotte can see through the masks worn by everyone they meet.
If you want to get more of a visual impression of the setting and mood of the book, you can check out its Pinterest board, which I've been working on this week and which will definitely be growing over the next year or so until the book's publication!
It's always been my biggest career fantasy to be able to publish books for kids AND books for adults in parallel streams. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that this is finally happening, and starting with a book that means so much to me. I really, really love these characters, and I hope that you guys will, too.
I hope you guys have a really wonderful holiday season. I absolutely am. :)
And he'd included this screenshot from Publisher's Marketplace:
It's my book Masks and Shadows - my first historical fantasy for adults! - and ohhhh, am I just ridiculously happy and excited about this news! Masks and Shadows is such a book of my heart. I'm not sure how many of you guys know this about me, but I am a huge, huge opera fan. I played in lots of opera pits back when I was training to be a classical musician in undergrad, and I always thought an opera orchestra would be the most fun kind of orchestra to work in fulltime. Then, when I switched to music history, I focused on late-eighteenth-century opera history, writing my Master's Thesis on an opera by Haydn that was written for performance at Eszterháza palace (the setting of Masks and Shadows). I even spent three years working on a PhD all about opera and politics in eighteenth-century Vienna and Eszterháza.
I didn't finish the PhD, in the end. When my funding ran out, I took a fulltime job at my local opera company instead, and spent two years there getting practical experience of how an opera company really works.
And it all came together in this deeply - wildly - romantic and operatic book, with a castrato opera singer as the male lead, with the composer Joseph Haydn as a character, and with the opera house playing a central role.
I wrote the original version of this book 10 years ago, researching it right along with my half-written PhD thesis, getting more ideas with every new opera or book that I studied. (Whoa, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy had a mistress living in the palace at the same time as his wife? What must that have been like? And what if she had a sister who walked into the situation completely unprepared?) (Ooh, isn't this interesting: there kept on being controversial and fiercely contested legal cases about whether or not men who were castrati should be allowed to get married. Mostly, it was ruled illegal, although there were differences between Catholic and Protestant views on the question. Fascinating!) (And ooh, all those alchemists and political schemers working in Vienna, ooh...)
This is the full pitch that I sent my agent when I emailed him out of the blue earlier this year to let him know that - surprise! - I had written an adult novel, and I hoped he would like it and want to market it:
The year is 1779, and Carlo Morelli, the most renowned castrato singer in Europe, has been invited as an honored guest to Eszterháza Palace. With Carlo in Prince Nikolaus Esterházy's carriage ride a Prussian spy and one of the most notorious alchemists in the Habsburg Empire. Already at Eszterháza is Charlotte von Steinbeck, the very proper sister of Prince Nikolaus's mistress. Charlotte has retreated to the countryside to mourn her husband's death. Now, she must overcome the ingrained rules of her society in order to uncover the dangerous secrets lurking within the palace's golden walls. Music, magic, and blackmail mingle in a plot to assassinate the Habsburg Emperor and Empress--a plot that can only be stopped if Carlo and Charlotte can see through the masks worn by everyone they meet.
If you want to get more of a visual impression of the setting and mood of the book, you can check out its Pinterest board, which I've been working on this week and which will definitely be growing over the next year or so until the book's publication!
It's always been my biggest career fantasy to be able to publish books for kids AND books for adults in parallel streams. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that this is finally happening, and starting with a book that means so much to me. I really, really love these characters, and I hope that you guys will, too.
I hope you guys have a really wonderful holiday season. I absolutely am. :)