Game designer/scriptwriter Jonathan Howard sold Johannes Cabal, in which a snob obsessed with raising the dead travels to Hell and back (twice) in the hopes of regaining his soul from a bored, sardonic, eccentric Satan, as a Faustian wager is made and the clock is ticking: Johannes must deliver 100 souls within one year for Satan to reward him with the return of his own. The book was pitched as “Tim Burton meets Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell,” to Alison Callahan at Doubleday, who bought it from sub-agents Christy Fletcher and Melissa Chinchillo of Fletcher & Parry, on behalf of Sam Copeland of the Robinson Literary Agency.