Slushpile Family Book Deal Announcement

It’s been a thrilling week here at Slushpile.net. The big announcement is that our patron saint of techie matters, overlord of gadgets, the guy who originally convinced me to write this blog, and the dude who actually pays the Slushpile hosting fees, John Biggs, just signed a major new book deal.

Dial Press won a heated auction at a price of more than $300,000 for Marie Antoinette’s Watch. John’s book tells the story of Abraham Louis Breguet’s creation of the greatest timepiece ever, originally ordered for the French royal. In spite of her death, Breguet continued crafting for more than 40 years. The watch was ultimately stolen from a museum in the mid eighties during a Thomas Crown-Ocean’s Eleven style heist.

I’ve watched this project go from idea to numerous drafts of proposals to agents and then to the auction process. So it’s come to a thrilling conclusion for all of us here at the Slushpile libraries. After he sobers up returns to the office, I’ll get an interview with John so you can learn more about the process of submissions, meeting with prospective editors, and making difficult choices about which publisher to sign with.

A hearty Slushpile congratulations to John. This is a long way from those first short stories he and I traded ten years ago. I’ve got some old shitty stories rare John Biggs manuscripts that I’m gonna auction when Marie Antoinette’s Watch is released and he hits the big time. 

[The picture above is John teaching his young son how to threaten and crack the whip, even from afar, as he commanded “Read those damn galleys, Scott! Get your page views up!” while he vacationed in Spain or Greece or St. Augustine or Lake Eerie or some exotic locale.]