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Becca Fitzpatrick, the young adult author behind the Hush, Hush saga, has landed a deal for a new book called Sapphire Skies.

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers plans to publish this stand-alone thriller novel in Fall 2015. Executive editor Zareen Jaffery negotiated the deal with Inkwell Management literary agent Catherine Drayton. The story stars a 17-year-old girl named Stella Gordon who ends up in the witness protection program due to extraordinary circumstances.

Fitzpatrick had this statement in the press release: “I’m delighted to be writing another young adult thriller for Simon & Schuster—this about a girl who’s running from dangerous men and a haunted past. I’m drawn to stories that weave heart-stopping suspense with broiling romance, and Sapphire Skies is no exception.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Help star Octavia Spencer inked a book deal with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Spencer’s debut novel, Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective: The Case of the Time-Capsule Bandit, is scheduled for release in fall 2013.

It is the first installment of a two-book middle grade series. Executive editor Zareen Jaffery negotiated the deal with William Morris Endeavor literary agent Andy McNichol. Jaffrey will edit the manuscript.

Here’s more from the release: “Randi Rhodes isn’t your average twelve-year-old. She’s a Brooklyn vigilante with a Tae Kwon Do black belt. But circumstances take a turn for the worse when Randi’s mother passes away and her father decides to move to the small and sleepy town of Deer Creek, Tennessee. Randi couldn’t be more unhappy—until a mystery arises: the town’s two-hundred-year-old time capsule, which is rumored to contain hidden treasure, inexplicably disappears. Randi must solve the case, as the town’s fate hangs in the balance.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sophie Stone is not happy when her father, the famous horror film director, decides to move the family from L.A. to the small town of Mystic Massachusetts where he grew up. Mystic has a long history of witchcraft and the occult, none of which remotely interest Sophie, who tries to distance herself from her father's passion for horror any way she can. Sophie is less than thrilled to learn that

This will be your chance to enter both real first lines of manuscripts (for you gluttons for punishment) and made-up-just-for-the-contest first lines.

I'll offer a Bulwer Lytton Prize for overall, overwritten awfulness, but remember, this is the easy one. It's tougher to write first lines that are bad in ways that many people achieve accidentally--but those are the ones I'll really be on the lookout for.

There will also be a Seuss Prize for poetry as rhythmic as a pounding migraine, a Drivel Award for uninspired use of cliches, a Robert Munsch Citation for most dysfunctional relationship in a first line, and other honors based on the varieties of dreck you foist upon me.