| Commercial Major Markets | Mass Market Humor Novels | Mass Market, Semi-Literary | Fantasy For Mainstream Market |
|---|
| Publishers, Commissioning Editors, or Agencies interested in any of these properties are cordially invited to contact senior-partner@aaraulit.com. Please put "Publishing Inquiry" in the subject line of the e-mail. |
|
COMMERCIAL MAJOR MARKETS The Piano Room is a police procedural thriller by a UK police Detective Chief Inspector on active duty. The serial killers are capturing men and women to re-enact historical events in true snuff videos: Joan of Arc, Anne Boleyn and others. Dastra is the police investigator married to Lucy, a Californian university student who happened on the first bodies during a tree-hugging protest. Dastra is framed, falsely accused, convicted, jailed, and released on appeal but is still suspected by another senior officer with a vendetta against him. The denouement is a race by all back to the Piano Room to prevent Lucy from becoming the next victim during the final hours of her pregnancy. The killer has begun one last video…a reenactment of the Charles Manson murders. 110,000 words. Film proposal in process. To be published in the summer of 2012 by Champagne Books. Deadly Passage is a multi-layered, high seas adventure thriller of bioterrorism in a post 9/11 world by an experienced American yachtsman and senior physician/virologist. 70,000 word novel, film proposal and screenplay. SWGW Reg. 1425805. See also Film Offerings. A physician’s family sailing the Caribbean comes across a sailboat adrift with a terrorist couple on board who have intentionally infected themselves with a deadly bioengineered virus intending to enter and thereby attack the USA. They must deal with the disease, the Cuban Navy, and an approaching hurricane. The U.S. Coast Guard turns them away from safety, operating under the conflicting influences of the Department of Homeland Security and the oval office. The shocking and unexpected denouements leave us twisting in uncertain winds reminiscent of On The Beach. The Forgotten is the factual and fully documented account of a remarkable and significant World War 2 event that never found its way into the history books. It is offered as a 70,000 word novel, full–length docudrama screenplay, and corresponding film proposal, SWGW Reg. 1429942. See also Film Offerings. North Africa (1942): what the cynical British Command calls a “suicide force” of 500 Jewish Palestinians is ordered by General Auchinleck to defend the Mechili pass to protect the British Eighth Army’s flank against the massed forces of General Rommel. They held out for 28 days leaving less than 50 out of 500 survivors until relieved on their last legs by the Free French. One of them (Ari) became determined that the story of his comrade’s sacrifice would not be forgotten…relating it to the author a few years later. The Collineau Covenant: explodes in a shattering act of terrorism against the Vatican. Rome’s Carabinieri anti-terror chief faces an enigmatic mix of the criminal underworld and ostensibly legitimate groups driven by ruthless greed, historical feuds and delusions of heavenly glory. His adversaries are immensely wealthy and widely influential. Are some high in the Church, or those he has long trusted, among them? The Collineau Covenant, with its origins dating back to the 14th century, is the Holy Grail inspiring the collaborators. Can the billionaire American fundamentalist, prepared to risk everything he possesses, follow its precepts and take control of the New Catholic Church—its doctrines and its riches—like Richelieu succeeded in doing centuries before him? 120,000 words. By an experienced British technical writer and editor. Film proposal available, screenplay in process. . Click here to return to the top |
| MASS MARKET HUMOR NOVELS Movies on the Sails is the satirical and masterfully written self-examination of a mature, well-known and widely published northern California poet turned novelist. 100,000 words. Maui, Hawaii. Not content with a self-aggrandizing closet autobiography, he dissects himself and everything around him with a deft touch and humor jumping off every page. The plot is a twister, held together by his most unconventional detective agency, an informal social grouping of friends—until the real world slams them into a profound and dangerous mystery involving Polynesian gangsters, free-Hawaii revolutionaries, and his minor league baseball team, The Paradisiacs, of which he is the captain. One of the most natural imaginations writing, he puts together brilliant language forms with a sexually charged picaresque theater of light-hearted mind.’ Jack Hirschman, Poet Laureate of San Francisco. As The Case May Be The Agency is down on its luck in the Bahamas and hired by a liberated redhead to keep an eye on her husband while he watches her entertain other men. A brutal murder leads to a baffling case. Is every lie the wife tells in the service of a greater truth? Is she a rapacious sexual adventuress, a courageous activist, or a wronged woman bent on bloody revenge? 100,000 words. And the same author writing charmingly for CHILDREN: The Girl With the Loom in Her Room He has this and two other superb short-shorts for young readers (4–10) of a quality that parents will also delight in reading to their children. The Agency has not seen anything of this stature and inspiration since the days of AA Milne: poetic prose in a masterful writer’s voice. With a publisher in-hand, more could undoubtedly be produced to fill a full-length book. Average 3,000 words each. The Men Without Heads is by a young British writer who knows well the rock and jazz subcultures and locales (especially Zurich) in which he sets this witty, humorous thriller. Paul has the talent to make it in rock and jazz, the charisma to attract Europe’s loveliest women and a naiveté profound enough to get him trapped between the jaws of the mafia and police. He’s made the improbable escape we all dream about from grey old England, busking his way through one sunlit summer in Zurich. If you’re a man who’s under thirty or his girl (or remember when you were), then you’ll soar with him as he lives through the age-old conflicts between love and success within the bohemian subcultures south of the English Channel. 70,000 words. Assignment Zanzibar delivers a charming apposition of humor, pathos, and authentic insight into African politics through a powerful, readable and masterfully informed novel drawn from the author’s 25 year career. Suffering in a joyless marriage, young economics specialist Nielsen applies to an NGO, delights us and their “dragon lady” at interview and is sent to the beautiful island of Zanzibar. Fatally outspoken and disillusioned with the Aid project, he appeals to the politically powerful Mrs Makaba. She seduces him in an erotic love scene, making it clear she wants “room-service sex” and not love. She then assigns him as “minder” to Mollel, the farmers’ leader who has promised to deliver their votes. Mollel’s farmers’ rally gets out of hand with arson and murder. It’s a setup: Nielsen is arrested and jailed. The brutality of prison is mitigated by fellow prisoner Kamal, and through the outside help of Zena, a disfigured outcast with native African talents Nielsen had earlier befriended. The politics is turned on its head and Makaba is unexpectedly elected President. Nielsen and the others are released but nothing is what it seems as he navigates through explosive slicks of corruption. When Makaba sets out to crush Mollel, Nielsen opposes her and there is a vicious break-up. He is now free to pursue happiness with Zena. Her land is being unlawfully appropriated to build a hotel. Kamal explains the true politics: Makaba plans to break the Union with Tanzania. Nielsen heads to Dar es Salaam to seek help through the NGO. Tanzania sends in the gunboats. Kamal is appointed a Minister in the new government. Zena recovers her land and Nielsen finds that the place called peace was inside his head all along. 70,000 words. Dogsbody is an informative and humorous recounting of a Brit’s gap-year working holiday in New Zealand. Joe’s university buddy Crispin is already there, working at high pay with beautiful women in plush offices, drinking beer and living the high life. The reality for Joe with his fresh zoology degree begins with lugging bags of compost in a garden center. Joe researches New Zealand’s history—particularly Captain Cook and his part in the country’s discovery. Encouraged by Cook’s legendary status, Joe creates a scoring system to monitor his achievements against the Captain. Success in an adventure gives Joe a point, failures score for the Captain. When the plant season ends, Joe fails as a door-to-door salesman, then lands a risky but profitable one-off as bait for an unscrupulous but likeable private eye’s sting operation. When he meets Kiwi girl Jess, he must juggle romance with his plans to move on and work his way south. Will Jess go with him, or does she think he has nothing to offer her beyond a sensible haircut and a pleasant accent? On South Island he ends up laboring on the new airport under a boss determined to break his resolve, and then washing-up in a grimy hotel kitchen he experiences true camaraderie for the first time. Being a dogsbody abroad has never been so hard. At year’s end Joe must fly back to the UK, leaving Jess behind. She avers that if Joe decides to return, “I may be waiting for you.” And yet, despite Joe’s inexperience, the Captain is defeated on the last point. The boy has finally become a man. A “Bill Bryson” for the gap-year generation, and "An Idiot Abroad" with sex: 90,000 words (with informational appendices). Click here to return to the top |
| SEMI-LITERARY NOVELS Whatever the Impulse is a psychological thriller set in the 80s rock music world by a 37 year-old Canadian woman of remarkably wide and appropriate experience. Night Shannien is 19 years old before he begins to realize that his surrogate father has been using him as slave labor in his bar-restaurant on the mid-Oregon coast. Never sent to school and trusting in his father’s motives, he is taught to act as if he were deaf and communicate by sign language. As Night finally yields to the inevitable primal human passions, he sets off a chain of events that expose the truth about his bizarre existence. His only way out is as a fugitive—a naïve adult-child in an alien world that everyone save himself understands. Only Night can substitute for the terminally ill twin brother he discovers (long hidden from him) and save the rising rock group’s major tour. Night’s roles are complicated by his past, his own reluctance to be “used” once again, the temptations of forbidden sex at every turn—and his ‘father’ stalking him across the continent. With an almost soulless lack of inhibition and nothing to guide him but instinct and resentment, Night tests the limits between right and wrong, falling back on one easy guideline: Whatever the Impulse. 130,000 words. Film proposal available. Beyond the Ranges is the fictional novel of an epic journey into the Brazilian jungle, but is informed by the personal Amazonian expeditions of the young author. Cape Town 1924: a discontented boat repairman sets out on a quest to realize his boyhood dream of exploring the Amazon. He meets a brazen American and an obsessive German historian searching for a lost emerald mine and they venture into the savage heart of an uncharted wilderness. The harsh realities erode Travis’ romantic notions, but this pales when a desperate flight from bloodthirsty cannibals leads them into a secluded valley inhabited by a colony of English refugees isolated there for 300 years and speaking the language of Chaucer. Could the mine actually be real, contrary to all intuition? Can Travis find love, redemption, and lead them all out into the 20th century? 105,000 words. White Cat is a satirical fantasy novel by an Irish writer that is difficult to categorize (every agency should have a fine one of these on offer). Set in USA and Bermuda. This is a two-hander dealing with the unstable friendship between two solitary working-class neighbours: a middle-aged alcoholic who works in a liquor warehouse and is struggling to reignite his career as a science fiction writer and an equally mature, paranoid recluse. There is a murder that one explains as caused by vampires, in which the other comes to believe. We are never quite sure about reality versus fantasy. This is a folie à deux, in which a person gradually comes to believe in another’s psychotic delusion, but in this case the delusion turns out to be mostly true. This is a psychotropically bizarre story in direct and compelling prose: brilliantly written alternative fiction. 80,000 words. A Long Night of Chaos is by a British writer and lecturer in English, MA (modern history, Oxford). This sweeping novel features fictionalized pen portraits of such historical figures as Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian gangster-warlord, Arkan, in the context of an imaginary Soviet republic. Those familiar with the actual history will see the parallels. Those who aren’t will enjoy a powerful, insightful and epic novel. This is a roman à clef in 4 parts: the descent of a fictional ‘Yugoslavia’ into civil war. The principal character is an Olympic champion and national hero who is squeezed in all directions by the political forces and personalities. In the end he trumps them all and saves his country from civil war. The plot is held together by a skein of romances between the leading characters—both illicit and righteously charming. It can be fairly read as a romantic novel in the tradition of a 19th century Russian novelist but executed in a modern, gripping thriller genre. 150,000 words. A mini-series film proposal is available. Queensbury Rules of Terror is a dynamic and informative political thriller with unusual insights into the characters by a relatively young diplomat—yet possessing deep and relevant experience. Jamie is intelligent, highly educated, middle-class, white and British. He is also a terrorist. He takes Anna into hiding as a hostage. As their relationship develops, both characters try to reconcile their personal feelings for one another with the stark facts of their situation—Jamie’s need to remain distant enough to keep himself and his co-conspirators safe and Anna’s feelings of revulsion with Jamie’s past and her wavering need for revenge. When the police track them down, Anna has a plan to keep them together: they can enter the murky world between intelligence agencies and private wealth, and possibly protect their industrialist sponsor by reforming his business, seeking to appease Jamie’s terrorist movement by working towards its arguably legitimate humanitarian goals—but in doing so they create new enemies who may prove more deadly even than the terrorists…and some may be in their own camp. The novel introduces a progressive worldview similar to that of Mark Curtis and Noam Chomsky, and questions the moral division between different violent and non-violent expressions of this position. The novel’s structure is possibly unique. Book I is written fluently in first person from Jamie’s POV. Book II follows in Anna’s first person POV as a powerful leading character in her own right. 90,000 words. Click here to return to the top |
| © 2007-2010 by Paul M Muller (proprietor) Aarau Literary Agency |