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Book People are Nice People! (the latest in a series…)

Pardon the double-duty post, but I had to put this in “News” as well as the blog…

I just received the most awesome blurb from author Nicole Mones. This was especially exciting for me because I loved her book, “Lost in Translation,” which when it came out, I thought was one of the very few books by a Western writer that presented contemporary China in a way that I believed (“The Last Chinese Chef” is on the top of my To Read list).

I have to put up the blurb here, because it’s too awesome not to share:

“Finally a Western writer has taken China’s domestically bestselling genre of wild, louche-life youth and re-imagined it as a highly original expat thriller. It’s a wild ride—but don’t turn the pages too fast. Brackmann’s evocation of China, funny, frustrating, frightening, sometimes tender, and always real, is worth savoring.”
– -Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation & The Last Chinese Chef

I can’t tell you how truly gratifying it is to have authors whose work I have enjoyed and whose books are on my bookshelves respond to mine with such generosity and understanding.

Jeff Abbott, T. Jefferson Parker, Eliot Pattison, Qiu Xiaolong, and now Nicole Mones, thank you so very much.

Kitteh! (and oh yeah, an ARC)

Kitteh! (and an ARC)

Laura Hruska

This is not the post with which I wanted to return to blogging, but so far this young year seems to be marked by loss.

Laura Hruska, publisher and editor-in-chief of Soho Press, passed away this weekend. She was a cofounder of the press, profoundly shaping its strong and idiosyncratic vision.

I never got to meet Laura. I was hoping to do so this summer. What I know about her is that she helped create a publishing company with real vision and guts and integrity. That she took chances. She took a chance on me and my book, and I will always be profoundly grateful for that.

Another thing I know about her: not long before her death, she did an interview with the Houston Chronicle about Stuart Neville’s wonderful GHOSTS OF BELFAST, in which she managed to not only promote the subject of the interview but get in plugs for a whole range of upcoming Soho titles, including mine.

Now that’s a publisher.

She will be missed.

Here are some links to articles about her…

Idiosyncratic Mind

Stuart Neville’s blog

Shelf Awareness

Houston Chronicle article

Fuli Village

New Year's sausage

Suzhou – Shantang Jie

Suzhou - Shantang Jie

Kebab School

Sign me up!

Well, this is exciting!

Soho’s Spring 2010 catalog is out! And guess who’s on the front page?

Have a look! (this will take you to a PDF file)

ROCK PAPER TIGER available for pre-order…

So, yeah, I’ve been checking Amazon occasionally (daily) to see when my book shows up for pre-order without really expecting it to be there. I figured it would appear around the same time as the Soho catalog for Spring/Summer 2010. Tonight, as I was chatting with two friends in two separate chat windows, I idly surfed on over to Amazon for my routine search (because two chats is not nearly enough multi-tasking for my attention-deficit-addled brain) and, whoah…

There it was…

There are all sorts of moments that stand out in this journey to publication, some of which are pure joy and validation (getting an agent, getting the sale, seeing my cover), and others that are joyous mixed with…”Oh. Weird. That’s my book.”

Oh. Weird. That’s my book.

Chain-like organization

Chain-like organization

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