I’m beyond thrilled to announce that, fifteen years after I began writing it, my first novel Seoul Survivors, has been bought by Jo Fletcher Books, a Quercus imprint specialising in SF and Fantasy. The contract is a two-book deal that will see Seoul Survivors published in Feb 2013, and my second novel published twelve months later.
I couldn’t have found a more perceptive editor than Jo Fletcher, an award-winning poet who understands that poetry and SF meet in the fizzing intersection of words, ideas and the visionary imagination. Her comments on an earlier draft helped me torque, rather than tweak, the novel’s characters into who they really are. In her words – because, hurrah, I don’t have to write my own PR anymore! –
Renowned poet and playwright Naomi Foyle’s debut novel Seoul Survivors is a dark, passionate, flamboyant cyber-thriller set – well, tomorrow, really, or the next day, with the world on the brink of catastrophic climate breakdown. Naomi’s got some fascinating characters here: Sydney, the beautiful, ditzy Canadian model looking to reinvent herself and bury her awful past; her ‘boyfriend’, Johnny Sandman, who’s brought her to Korea, but who has a whole other secret agenda; the disaffected Brit Damien, who is seeking sanctuary from the world itself, and the glamorous Korean-American scientist Dr Kim Da Mi, who has her own plans to see the world through the coming apocalypse. And of course there’s Seoul City itself, a vibrant, throbbing, exotic metropolis where nothing is quite what it appears. It’s a great start to Naomi’s new life in the genre.
Fifteen years is a pretty long time to nurture a dream … I hope my good fortune will inspire other writers to keep faith in their work, and keep honing it too. It amazed me how, with each revision, Seoul Survivors kept revealing glittering new depths. The contract also presents me with an immense new challenge. From writing a novel at a leisurely pace over 15 years, I now have to finish the next one by December. And no, I didn’t have one I prepared earlier … So I’ll be marching to a daily word count this year; but as the advance has allowed me to step down from some of my paid work, I also plan to be paying a bit more attention to This Space. Book reviews for a start, and travel blogging from my research trips. Oooohhhhh yes, there will be research trips!!!!!!!