New author Kevin Hearne sold his debut urban fantasy trilogy to Del Rey, via relatively new agent Evan Goldfried at Jill Grinberg Literary Management. The tentative title for the series is the American Druid series, featuring Atticus O’Sullivan, a 2,000 year old Druid who is the last of his kind. The first three books in the series are titled Hounded, Hexed, and Hammered. Del Rey expects to start publishing them in 2011.
Goldfried says the books sold in “a four publisher auction for six-figures.” Del Rey bought North American rights. Goldfried also reports “a great deal of interest in the UK,” and that the series “was one of our lead titles for Frankfurt [the international book rights convention just concluded]. The foreign response from our subagents has been tremendous so far. There is an incredible demand for a new big urban fantasy series that does not fall into the romance category, and we are expecting that to translate into sales around the world.”