Our Biggest Publishing News Yet! And a Cover Reveal…

During late summer and into the fall of 2014, Ann and I were furiously busy working on a proposal for a new series. As much as we love the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries, we wanted to try our hand at something different to keep our writing fresh. And today we’re thrilled to be able to share the news of our brand new publishing deal with Kensington Books! LONE WOLF will be the first in a three book, hardcover series, edited by Kensington’s Peter Senftleben. In it, we meet Meg Jennings, an agent in the FBI’s K-9 unit, and the handler of Kane, one of the unit’s multi-talented search and rescue dogs. This is a real unit, specializing in search and rescue, drug and explosives detection, and tracking in federal crimes. In this series, we’ll follow Meg and her black lab along with her fellow FBI agents and their dogs as they track down bombers, murderers and hijackers, rescuing the lost and injured along the way. It’s a new publishing house for us and a new series, so we’re going to be trying out a new single pen name this time around—Sara Driscoll. But never fear, nothing will actually change when it comes to the writing; it’s still Ann and I behind the prose.

Huge thanks to our wonderful agent Nicole Resciniti of the Seymour Agencyfor working so hard to put together this deal, literally from its inception. Her Publishers Marketplace announcement went up today:

March 2, 2015 - LONE WOLF by Jen Danna and Ann Vanderlaan

Fiction: Thriller

Jen Danna and Ann Vanderlaan writing as Sara Driscoll’s new suspense series, beginning with LONE WOLF, in which an FBI K-9 handler and her search-and-rescue dog fight to stop a mad bomber targeting sites around Washington D.C., to Peter Senftleben at Kensington, in a three-book deal for publication in Spring 2016, by Nicole Resciniti at The Seymour Agency.

Want to know a little more about LONE WOLF? Here’s the blurb for the FBI K-9s, book 1:

When a madman goes on a bombing spree, an FBI K-9 team of one woman and her dog is the key to stopping him before more innocents die and panic sweeps the Eastern seaboard.

Meg Jennings and her Labrador Kane are one of the FBI’s top K-9 teams certified for tracking and search and rescue. When a bomb rips apart a government building on the National Mall in Washington D.C., it will take all the team’s skill to locate and save the workers and children buried beneath the rubble.

More victims die and fear rises as the unseen bomber continues his reign of terror, striking additional targets, ruthlessly bent on pursuing a personal agenda of retribution. Meg and Kane join the task force dedicated to following the trail of death and destruction to stop the killer. But when the attacks spiral wide and no single location seems safe any longer, it will come down to a battle of wits and survival skills between Meg, Kane, and the bomber they’re tracking. Can they stop him before he brings the nation to the brink of chaos?

We’re looking forward to introducing our readers to Meg and Kane next year!

With all this talk of a new series, we know one of the questions we’re going to get is what is going to happen to Matt and Leigh and the Abbott and Lowell Forensic Mysteries? Never fear, a lot is going on there too. The third full length novel in the series, TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER, comes out on February 18th. And we’ve nearly completed the next full length novel which follows it, with a planned 2016 release date. We have no plans to end the series. There may be a bit of a delay between our recently completed fourth novel and the one to follow as we’ll be writing two series (all while I juggle the day job at the lab), but we fully intend to come back and continue the adventures of Matt, Leigh and the team around our contracted installments of the FBI K-9s.

Last November we were pleased to show off the new cover for the mass market version of DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT, which Harlequin Worldwide Mysteries released in January 2015.

The next full length novel in the series, A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH, will release in mass market paperback from Harlequin Worldwide Mysteries in April 2015. We recently got our first peek at the new cover, which continues the strong series branding:

As before, Worldwide Mysteries likes to write its own material, so we’ve got a brand new and exciting version of the back cover copy for this book as well:

State Trooper Leigh Abbott and forensic anthropologist Dr. Matt Lowell are happy in their new relationship. But their latest investigation is tough to take on, even together: the charred body of ex-Wiccan Moira Simpson was stabbed through the heart with a ritual dagger. Leigh is certain one of the many former friends and lovers Moira alienated with her ruthless egotism is responsible.

Then a local priest is hacked to death with a ceremonial sickle and his body is found burned beyond recognition. Now amid growing panic and community backlash, Leigh and Matt will pursue dark rumors and obscure clues, looking to the past to reveal a killer. But the truth could burn more than their future to ashes.

And that should do for our publishing news this time around. :)