Swift Preempt for Comedy Thriller
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 7/14/2003
An overnight read by Marc Resnick at the Minotaur imprint at SMP led to a swift preempt (by long-distance phone to agent Joe Veltre, away at a writers' conference in Aspen) for a comedy thriller called Bahamarama by journalist and travel writer Bob Morris. Resnick paid for a three-book deal, North American rights. The novel is about a man just freed from jail on a trumped-up charge, who goes seeking his girlfriend, on a magazine assignment in the Bahamas, only to find she has been kidnapped. Veltre, who works with Carlisle & Company, describes it as akin to the work of Carl Hiassen. Author Morris, a former columnist for the Orlando Sun, self-published three books of his columns and sold the astounding total of 20,000 each, just locally.
