VQR Contributor Sells His Novel

I was glancing through the Publishers Lunch Weekly newsletter today—which offers information about a quarter of books sold to publishers the previous week—when I was struck by a familiar name. It appears that VQR’s own Michael David Lukas, a contributing online editor and frequent blogger here, has sold his novel, The Oracle of Stamboul, to Harper. (Perhaps his recent post on settling on a pen name should have been a hint that something was up.)

Here’s the full listing:

Michael David Lukas’s THE ORACLE OF STAMBOUL, about an eight-year old girl, who becomes an adviser to the Sultan in 1885 as the Ottoman Empire is crumbling, to Terry Karten at Harper, for publication in February, 2011, by Nicole Aragi at Aragi Inc..

Nicole Aragi is widely considered one of the best agents in the biz, representing impressive young talents like Jonathan Safran Foer, Junot Diaz, Colson Whitehead, and Edwige Danticat, so Michael’s burgeoning career is in great hands.

It was only last July when Michael wrote about his conflicted feelings about having finished Oracle and the perils of subjecting his creation to the vicissitudes of the market. Well, he’s speedily cleared that hurdle, and I’m sure I speak for all at VQR when I offer him congratulations and wish him the best.

Keep an eye out for Michael’s posts here (the next of which may be chiding me for parading his success so publicly). To tide you over until February 2011, Michael has made the first chapter of his book available on his website.