Miles Klee, a copy editor at The Deal, has sold his first novel to OR Books. Mr. Klee is, perhaps, known best for his literary writing on The Awl; he joins the likes of Chris Lehmann in jumping from pixels on the site to paper-and-ink.
A source at OR Books indicates this is the first book deal OR Books, a print-on-demand publisher previously written about in these pages as an early partner of Emily Gould’s online bookselling venture Emily Books, has made with a first-time novelist. Today, Mr. Klee made a list on his personal blog of the rejections his short stories had received at the hands of editors.
Mr. Klee’s former agent, Matt Hudson at William Morris, had left the business, Mr. Klee told The Observer, but had “ambitiously shopped it around to some pretty elite publishing houses.”
Mr. Klee took his manuscript to OR Books himself. According to the query letter, Mr. Klee’s novel, Ivyland, “is a black comedy set in a crumbling, post-empire New Jersey. Aidan and Henri, childhood friends who came of age in the last days of social conscience, now watch their hometown disappear, street by street, into the corporate holdings of Endless Nutraceuticals. Across Ivyland, a second duo, DH and Leviticus, find a rare moment of entrepreneurial inspiration as the country collapses around them: they take to the open road as traveling amateur cosmetic surgeons, blitzed on the anesthetic Hallorax gas that keeps their clientele comfortably numb.”
We can’t wait for the book party!
ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_
