Jumping at the Chance
When we’re interviewing for new staff, we’re often talking to people who are currently working at a publishing company, and we’ll often ask why they’re looking to move to an agency. The most common response is a variation of: “I realized that I want to work on the books I like, and at the publishing company, I’m having to work on books the publisher can publish.” And for me, I don’t think that’s ever been truer than in our work on Gil Griffin’s JUMPING AT THE CHANCE , a wonderful fish-out-of-water story about fish swimming very very far from America’s coastal waters. Twenty years ago, I was like many Americans. Australian Rules Football was this weird thing you heard about, mostly as a strange joke about the strange things you’ll find watching TV in the middle of the night. Then, in 1999, I went to Australia for the first time, and I went to see this strange thing for myself. Well, let’s just say I was mesmerized. I sat in the Melbourne Cricket Ground and watched a Kangaroos game, a