Don Winslow Picks up Trevanian’s Mantle – And Gains Two New Publishers in the Process

I first heard about this piece of news a little while ago but yesterday, the news was more or less official: Don Winslow has been tapped to write SATORI, a prequel to Trevanian’s excellent 1979 thriller SHIBUMI, for Grand Central Publishing. According to Mitch Hoffman, who acquired the novel, SATORI will be published in early 2011. I’m hoping to hear more from Hoffman (and from Winslow), and when I do, I’ll add their respective information to this post, but the news is interesting on multiple fronts: first, Trevanian’s backlist was reissued around the time of his death in 2005 by Crown/Three Rivers, but they aren’t the ones who’ll publish this prequel. Second, Winslow’s own publishing status in the US is in a bit of limbo, as THE GENTLEMEN’S HOUR – the even-better sequel to the amazing THE DAWN PATROL – was published in the UK, but there’s no US publication date in sight. Finally, Trevanian is just the latest author to continue posthumous publication (cf. Nabokov, Bolano and most recently, Isaac Asimov.)

More soon, and suffice to say, a lot of people are quite excited about this.

UPDATE, ¹¹⁄₃: I’ve altered the post’s headline to reflect today’s news that Winslow not only is writing as Trevanian for Grand Central, but his own work will have a new publisher, namely Simon & Schuster. Richard Pine of Inkwell Management made the deal to S&S

publisher David Rosenthal, with Sarah Hochman – recently promoted to

senior editor- slated to edit both books.

According to Publishers Marketplace, THE GENTLEMEN’S HOUR won’t be published until July 2011, which is a hell of a long way away – but that’s because the house has elected to publish Winslow’s standalone novel SAVAGES, described as “a gritty, humorous, and drug-fueled ransom thriller

set amidst the Baja Cartel in Laguna Beach, CA,” next summer. Hochman explained things further when I reached out to her via e-mail: “We’re knocked out by SAVAGES, and feel it can be a bestseller as a stand-alone, so we wanted to get [Winslow] rolling with an unencumbered book before getting back to the surfing series.”