Following a hotly contested auction at this year’s Bologna Book Fair, HarperCollins has acquired world-English language rights for the DARKMOUTH series by Shane Hegarty, Arts Editor for the Irish Times. The first book will publish in summer 2014. The Bologna Children’s Book Fair or La fiera del libro per ragazzi is the leading professional fair for children’s books in the world.
The four-book deal was negotiated by Nick Lake, Fiction Publishing Director at HarperCollins UK, and Phoebe Yeh, Editorial Director, HarperCollins US with agent Marianne Gunn O’Connor, who told The Irish Times, “Authors like Shane are very, very rare. You see a talent like this once every five or 10 years.”
A monster-hunting adventure for 8-12s liberally laced with warm-hearted irony, DARKMOUTH marks tells the story of the last of the Legend Hunters: Around the world, there are various towns where the border between our dimension and the dimension of the monsters – properly called Legends – is weak. Legend Hunters keep the population safe. But for a while now, the Legends have stopped crossing over. Apart from in one place, Darkmouth, in Ireland, where Legend Hunters are very much in demand. Our hero Finn is the son of the last remaining Legend Hunter. In a society where Legend Hunting skills are passed down through generations, Finn will carry on that tradition. The only problem? He’s really not very good at it. And in a fabulous bit of timing, it turns out there’s an extraordinary and disturbing reason that it’s all gone a bit quiet everywhere else.
Commenting on the deal Nick Lake says “Shane is the Real Thing. His warm, witty, wonderful voice caused a frenzy of excitement for everyone in the offices last week and I’m thrilled that we’ll be publishing this hilarious and distinctive new writer.”
Ann-Janine Murtagh, Publisher HarperCollins UK, added “This was quite simply a must-have book for us. We pride ourselves on being the house of homegrown British and Irish talent here at HarperCollins and creating classic children’s global brands of the future.”
Shane Hegarty is 38 and has previously published in non-fiction with The Irish (and Other Foreigners) , and co-authoring with Fintan O’Toole The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising. He explained to the Irish Times that he began working on the “comic adventure” concept a year ago, and the first draft was completed only a few weeks before the deal was announced.
Hegarty, a father of four, told The Irish Times: “A lot of it was written going in and out of work on the train, at night time in between feeds, and on days off.”
