Who In the World Is Jordan Ainsley?
Posted on September 17, 2007
A huge bidding war erupted over the book rights to the unfinished vampire novel written by an unknown writer named Jordan Ainsley, leaving many puzzled as to why everyone was so hysterical about this unknown author's work. The mystery has been solved. Jordan Ainsley is the pseudonym of PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author Justin Cronin, who wrote Mary and O'Neil.
Last week, we hear, agent Ellen Levine at Trident Media closed a deal for a postapocalyptic vampire trilogy with editor Mark Tavani at Ballantine. Now, if we reported on every postapocalyptic vampire trilogy out there, we'd never have time to write anything else. But this postapocalyptic vampire trilogy sold, we hear, for a whopping $3.75 million for North American rights. Impressively, the deal was made off a 400-page partial manuscript. And even more impressively -- given how cynical most of the people we know in the book world are -- everyone seems to really like the book.Sounds like The Initiative from the Buffyverse meets Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. Ballantine paid $3.75 million for a three book deal and the film rights sold for $1.75 million to Fox and Ridley Scott's production company. But the question remains: how many postapocalyptic vampire trilogies can the market bear?*****
The story, set in 2016, revolves around a U.S. government project gone awry that affects a group of experimental subjects — condemned inmates plucked from death row — turning them into highly infectious vampires. Meanwhile, an orphan named Amy discovers that she has unusual powers, seemingly related to the crisis that quickly overtakes civilized society. It's pretty dark, though not completely without humor -- the governor of Texas in 2016, for example, is Jenna Bush.