Deal Announcements feature my most recent deal as an agent and the story behind it. Writers and readers should experience how an agent knows when they’ve struck gold and sign an author, the beginning of the journey to publication.

I’m thrilled to announce the publication of Nina Moreno’s Saint Rosa of the Sea!

Hannah Allaman at Disney has bought Nina Moreno‘s debut YA contemporary novel, Saint Rosa of the Sea, pitched as Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic, in a preempt. The women in Rosa’s family are cursed: her abuela is exiled from Cuba, her mother is reckless, and Rosa is forbidden to go to the sea. Rosa dreams of finally seeing their island, but her study abroad plans crumble amid political changes just as she crashes into a quiet boy from the docks. Publication is planned for summer 2019; Laura Crockett at Triada US Literary Agency negotiated the deal for world English rights.

Once upon a time…

‘Twas the afternoon before offices closed and all through the inbox, not an email was pinging, not even a — wait a minute! Is that an offer?!

Nina Moreno is one of the very first clients I took on a couple years ago, and I fell in love with an incredibly doomed, romantic YA contemporary set in an orange grove. We loved this manuscript to pieces, but unfortunately there were no bites.

While I was submitting that manuscript, Nina’s brain was cooking up a new project, about a drummer in a small town. But soon that project developed into something more, making the drummer the BFF to the real protagonist of this small town’s story: Rosa, an artistic soul with a passion and determination to visit her family’s country, a country forbidden legally and by her own family to visit in any capacity. Toss in the cultural elements, the diaspora, the lyrical language, and a whole lot of delicious pastries, and I was a goner. This manuscript was gorgeous.

We submitted it several months later to several editors (after many revisions), halted further submission (for more revisions), was about to submit again (but was asked to not because Nina wanted to revise some more), and then finally sent off what we felt was the strongest possible draft. Not two weeks later, Disney came in with an offer we couldn’t refuse.

Merry Christmas, indeed!

And the rest…is history.

Congratulations, Nina! You’re going to be a published author!