Our first title is live!

December 21, 2009

I am very pleased to publish Pod by Stephen Wallenfels as the first title on the namelos list. Pod is Steve's first novel, and there is nothing an editor finds more exciting than discovering new authors and publishing their first books. I met Steve when he participated in a Highlights Foundation Whole Novel Workshop, taught by my wife, Carolyn Coman, and Tim Wynne-Jones. I didn't know anything about what he was writing but over dinner I learned that he and his son have an annual holiday tradition of rewatching Die Hard and I knew then and there that he was someone to keep an eye on. (You can take that any number of ways, but I mean it positively.) Subsequently Steve let me read a draft of the novel and I knew immediately that I wanted to publish it.

I’m all cried out. I’m still alone. The sky is full of giant spinning black balls that kill anyone stupid enough to go outside.

Pod is the story of a global cataclysmic event, told from the view points of Megs, a 12-year-old streetwise girl trapped in a hotel parking garage in Los Angeles; and 16-year-old Josh, who is stuck in a house in Prosser, Washington, with his increasingly obsessive compulsive father. Food and water and time are running out. Will Megs survive long enough to find her mother? Will Josh and his father survive each other?

Pod is the first book in a trilogy and is now available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats on our website.