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Post by Dante on Nov 8, 2009 17:17:37 GMT -5
Funnily enough, we did, at one point, think such a thing was coming out. We had the U.A., and we learnt that The Beatrice Letters and The Notorious Notations were coming out in 2006. Theory went, the U.A. was Lemony's story, TBL would be Beatrice's story, and TNN would be Olaf's story - a theory strengthened when the cover turned out to be a fiery silhouette of Olaf... It turned out to be another blank book. Pity. An Olaf prequel would work, but I don't know if it could be reasonably strung out for four books.
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Post by Hermes on Nov 8, 2009 17:46:50 GMT -5
Theory went, the U.A. was Lemony's story, TBL would be Beatrice's story, and TNN would be Olaf's story - a theory strengthened when the cover turned out to be a fiery silhouette of Olaf... It turned out to be another blank book. Pity. Perhaps Olaf interfered and managed to suppress the text.
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Post by Dante on Nov 9, 2009 4:19:29 GMT -5
Doubt it. The cover was recycled from The Ominous Omnibus anyway.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Nov 9, 2009 15:40:00 GMT -5
I rather doubt the new series will be directly about ASOUE characters. A reference to them would be perhaps feasible, but in TE Handler basically established the Baudelaires' and Olaf's stories were over.
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Post by s on Nov 11, 2009 21:27:57 GMT -5
The U.S. version of the new series will be published not by HarperCollins, but rather by Little, Brown, & Co., set date 2012. Before that, however, they plan to publish a young adult novel by Snicket in 2011. (!) Maira Kalman will illustrate this book. And as part of the deal, Susan Rich is moving from HarperCollins to Little, Brown as well. Source.
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Post by Dante on Nov 12, 2009 5:06:47 GMT -5
Awesome work, Shruti! Thanks for the links! First things first, the young adult novel by Snicket published in 2011? That sounds eerily similar, and yet different, to something mentioned here; " 13 Words," to be illustrated by Maria Kalman. But that was meant to be published by HarperCollins in Fall 2010, and was meant to be a picture book, not a young adult novel by LBC. Did that project leave HarperCollins with Snicket and get pushed back, and turn into a somewhat more grown-up project, or is it something different? After all, Helquist illustrates a bunch of Snicket's books, so why shouldn't Maria Kalman illustrate several as well? So at the moment I can't be certain that those two books are the same. As to the main part of the story: Looks like Snicket's made a definitive move to Little, Brown & Co. I'm doing some research; apparently they published Twilight? So they must be rolling in it right now; looking to expand? Snicket'll help. Susan Rich moving over as well... so is she part of the Snicket "package" now? Was there some sort of deal where HarperCollins effectively exchanged the Snicket team with LBC? I honestly have no idea, but I can't off the top of my head see why this would be something HarperCollins would've wanted, to lose a top-selling author and prominent editor. Maybe Snicket's left-wing politics really did disagree with Rupert Murdoch. Nah, that's a conspiracy theory. I'll poke around. The main thing is, we have a 2012 release date set for both the U.S. and the U.K., which is good; I was concerned that they might not be simultaneous, but this way nobody should lose out, hopefully.
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Post by cwm on Nov 12, 2009 11:05:47 GMT -5
apparently they published Twilight? I'd just like to get a platform for how much I hate Twilight. There. Thank you. Given that we have different publishers and different release dates, I'm inclined to think that this 'untitled young adult novel' is different to 13 Words. Surely they couldn't get the publisher AND release date wrong and not know the title?
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Post by Dante on Nov 12, 2009 11:24:07 GMT -5
Yeah, that's what I'm leaning towards. It just seemed too big a coincidence when I first thought about it, but "titled Snicket picture book" and "untitled Handler young adult novel" really have nothing to do with each other. Although the Handler-Snicket relationship is going to get even more confusing with Handler muscling in on Snicket's territory. Nah, I guess "young adult" implies a crowd older than Snicket's target age group, which is technically 9-12. More like "people who were in the target age group for Snicket, but are now a few years older." More like us. I wonder if it's that pirate novel of Handler's, now I think about it, or if that's going on the back-burner for another ten years.
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Post by Hermes on Nov 12, 2009 11:49:12 GMT -5
Yes, YA is a classification which is hard to pin down. If Harry Potter is YA - which it's frequently counted as - there's no reason why ASOUE shouldn't be as well. I'm rather surprised by the idea that the target audience is 9-12. But if this new book is by Handler, not Snicket, and is to be definitely marketed as YA, not children's, it looks as if it will be a new departure in a new style.
I, too, was wondering if this would be the pirate book. From the descriotiuons we've heard of it, it looks as if the theme is one that would work well in a YA setting. Otherwise he's doing that as well as the YA book, four children's books, a picture book.... and one wonders whether they will ever be finished.
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Post by cwm on Nov 12, 2009 12:44:11 GMT -5
Was the pirate novel not meant to be for older readers? We haven't heard anything about it for years, have we... I'd pretty much forgotten about it until now and had thought it had been scrapped.
It's not as if they're all scheduled for early next year and he's only just started work. I'm sure DH has paced himself properly.
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Post by Tiago James Squalor on Nov 12, 2009 13:28:16 GMT -5
It still sucks that the new series will be published by the same publishers as Twilight´.But who knows they might do a good job.I just HOPE the new series will be illustrated by Brett Helquist.
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Post by Dante on Nov 12, 2009 13:34:35 GMT -5
Handler's been working on the pirate novel since 1999. I get the impression he keeps on setting it aside in favour of other projects. It was meant to be an "adult" novel, but that might only have been in the sense that books written under Handler's name were generally for adults - not that that stopped younger people from reading them. Similarly, while aSoUE's target age group is indeed 9-12, I think anyone involved with it would admit that its appeal reaches older groups as well. I'd say the classification is purely based on aSoUE's cartoonishness, whereas HP inhabited - well, I hesitate to say a more realistic world, but it was a world which resembled ours more.
And as cwm pointed out, I wouldn't see the amount of books Handler has coming out as a problem. Right now we have the undated pirate novel - which we don't even know he's still working on, or hasn't conflated with another project - then we have 13 Words, a "picture book" (a.k.a. short) in 2010, a young adult novel (a.k.a. not huge) in 2011, the new series (again, probably not huge) beginning in 2012 and ending we know not when... That's just one book a year - the same pace aSoUE was at. Actually, I think the first eight books were produced twice yearly, and that's assuming you don't count the U.A. and TBL (and Adverbs, whenever that came out). I wouldn't worry about Handler not having time to write his new books; he has as much time as he's always had - if not more, when you consider that all he published this year was a short story a couple of pages long, and in 2007 and 2008 we had The Composer is Dead, which was rather short, and The Lump of Coal, which he actually wrote in 2002 or so. So he's had plenty of time to get a head-start, too. Although you might argue that he needs it - at one point, his draft of Adverbs was a thousand pages long.
Edit: Re: Helquist and Twilight: If the new series is the same kind of series as aSoUE, in the same sort of vein, I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect more Helquist illustrations, since he's illustrated so much of Handler's work even if Handler has been dallying with other illustrators lately - that's just because his recent projects have been very different animals. As for Little, Brown being the publishers of Twilight, you have to remember that it must've been a canny marketing decision and they should've made a lot of money, which means it's not a risk for Snicket to work for them, they aren't going to have any qualms about hiring Snicket. It's not like HarperCollins are paragons of morality! It's owned by Rupert Murdoch!
Edit Again: It is, however, another nail in the coffin for the paperbacks.
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Post by Hermes on Nov 12, 2009 15:31:16 GMT -5
I'd say the classification is purely based on aSoUE's cartoonishness, whereas HP inhabited - well, I hesitate to say a more realistic world, but it was a world which resembled ours more. True - which is weird, when you consider that HP is out-and-out fantasy and ASOUE isn't. But you're right nevertheless. It's not so much the lack of time that worries me, as his ability to get distracted - as is shown by the fact that he still hasn't finished the pirate book. It's easier to focus on a project if you have one project at a time.
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Post by Dante on Nov 12, 2009 15:55:14 GMT -5
True - which is weird, when you consider that HP is out-and-out fantasy and ASOUE isn't. But you're right nevertheless. I'm glad you see what I mean. It's hard to explain. But nonetheless, aSoUE is sometimes classed as a fantasy novel, and I'm not entirely sure I'd dispute that categorisation. It is pretty fantastic, whereas HP deals largely with magical racism. Ah, okay, fair point. Classed like that, I can see why you'd be worried, when you consider that these are projects set years into the future. I also feel like it wouldn't be particularly controversial to say that perhaps Handler's aims in writing aSoUE changed over the seven-year publication period. But I think that we wouldn't be getting these announcements unless a fair amount of groundwork had already been done, and he seemed to juggle aSoUE, the true long-term project, pretty well. Actually, consider the following: All his upcoming projects might be ideas he had ages ago but which had to wait until he finished aSoUE. Maybe that's why his new projects are one-offs or four-parters as opposed to a thirteen-book behemoth; he's already making sure he doesn't have too much on his plate for too long.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Nov 12, 2009 16:35:44 GMT -5
I wonder how long the time difference will be between each book- if, indeed, the books are coming out one at a time.
To emphasize how much Little Brown & co.'s recent popularity: They've not only published Twilight, but Maximum Ride as well, and many other books by James Patterson. So the new Snicket series adds to their ongoing chain of success.
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