My website has been down ALL MORNING, and I can’t STAND not posting about this now that I’ve got permission!
I have sold two books to Harlequin’s new action-adventure romance line, Bombshell! The first book will be out in late 2005 and the second in spring 2006. Wow! WOW!
These will be under the pen name Cate Dermody, and the story concept is thus:
Alisha McAleer, CIA agent, writes a private, quasi-legal personal journal of her missions before doing her official CIA report. She takes the journal to a bank in whatever city she’s in, opens a safety-deposit box under her current alias, and leaves the manuscript there. The series, called “The Strongbox Chronicles”, tells some of Alisha’s adventures as she wrote and experienced them; later books will be chronicles left by Alisha’s proteges.
I am *really* looking forward to writing these! *bounces*!
*Much squeeing on your behalf!* Congrats!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!
Oh wow, congrats, Kit! :D
Is there a story behind the pen name?
And are pen names used because it makes it seem like there are more authors out there than there are or something? :)
And I knew you before you were famous! :) Yay, Kit!
There’s licensing and name recognition stuff tied up with an author’s name–they talked about this at Writer’s Weekend, to which the lovely and talented Kit hauled me this past July. :) Different publishing houses’ll handle it in different ways, but sometimes different pen names will be how the same author has to write for different publishers.
You sure are cool, Kit. :)
I’ve been pounding on your cloaked website all day trying to find out what the chachaing was about, you evil woman! Yay for secret agent books, and I’m looking forward to reading them :)
How utterly cool! We are looking forward to reading them!
*laugh* It was my grandmother’s maiden name, and I think it sounds like a great kick-ass woman sort of name (which apparently was very true of my grandmother).
But the reason for it is that as I am a brand-new writer, I take no financial hit for using different names, and I essentially want to establish brand names. If you buy a Cate Dermody book, you’ll know you’re in for action-adventure/suspense/romance. If you buy a C.E. Murphy book, you’ll know you’re getting fantasy, probably urban fantasy in the early days and branching out later; if you buy a Catie Murphy book you’re buying a young adult book. It’s not an attempt to seem like more than one person, but rather to help a reader know what she’s in for when she picks up a specific author name. I intend to leave them all transparent–catedermody.com will redirect to cemurphy.net. No way am I keeping up a multitude of websites. :)
Congratulations! Not having ever read a romance novel…these will probably be my first…lol. Way to go!
“Dermody” sounds like a fabulous name to me. :) And I may just have to grit my teeth and actually buy a Harlequin book if you wrote it, babe! ;)
Awesome! I actually saw a magazine ad for this line, and it struck me as a neat idea. Now it migrates from merely neat to INCREDIBLE!
Well, the emphasis is on the action-adventure, not the romance, for what it’s worth. :) The stories are supposed to be about *her*, rather than about *them*, so romance gets to be secondary, which is right up my alley as a writer. :) I think these are going to be fun. :)
Yes, you’ll have to. All my books so far are Harlequin books, after all! :)
Indeed! And boy, am I looking forward to having that book and pointing at it and saying proudly, “My friend wrote this!”
*showers confetti and rose petals* YAY KIT! :D
Yay!!!
Yay! Congratulations and good luck!
Congratulations!!
That’s wonderful news.
That’s about where my brain stopped when I read this. CONGRATULATIONS, that’s fantastic!
Wow!
Yaaay Catie! That is so awesome!! :)
And here I thought it was Angles we’d be hearing about soon. Looks like we can hold out for number three still. :)
Congrats!
Will there be sex in it?
Because, you know. Romance!
You rule, regardless of smut. :)
*cheer* Woo! Go you!
wow! congratulations! does that make it FIVE books that you’ve sold this year??? wow. I know someone famous.
I donno yet. We’ll see! :)
This is great news! Congratulations…!
PS I do think it’s quite serendipitous that you met the Bombshell launch author and the Luna launch author at the same time and now you are writing for both lines…that magic must be working…!
Huzzah and congratulations!
That’s terrific! Mucho congratulations!
Thank you!
Of course, now I have to *write* the darned things, and this has not been a good month for writing so far. Ai! I need my own Glare Report! :)