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Steve's
literary agents conducted an auction which led to three publishers
bidding furiously against each other.
The
Somerset-based author was offered £130,000 for US and UK rights,
but has been advised by his agent to sell the US rights separately
at a later date.
Steve
has also signed a £16,000 deal with an Italian publisher, and there
is additional interest from Holland, Japan, Korea, Germany and US.
Interest
from film companies
The
film companies Dreamworks, Warner Brothers, Fox and Miramax have
all asked to see the manuscript, but Steve says he doesn't let himself
think too much about this side of things.
Steve,
who lives in Coleford, with wife Tory, son Tim and daughter Daisy,
said: "My only ambition was for the book to be published. All the
rest is just the icing on the cake.
"It
is something I have always wanted to do, but it was only when Tory
told me to 'go for it' that I really started working seriously on
the whole thing."
A
labour of love
The
book took Steve 18 months of hard work to write: "During the school
holidays, and at weekends, I would get up at 3.30am and write for
six or seven hours a day."
Aimed
at ten year olds and above, the original idea for the book came
from a horse fly.
Steve
said: "It was tracking me for ages trying to bite me and just kept
coming back to the same spot.
"It
gave me the idea of an adventure story for children that would include
a theme of children being able to pilot and fly insects.
"The
Dreamwalker's Child is about a child who becomes lost in a different
world following an accident and how he tries to find his way home.
"It
is an adventure story with lots of different layers about love,
hope and the fact that there is more to life than meets the eye."
The
265-page hardback is set to be published in the Spring of 2005 with
a launch party at the Natural History Museum in London.
Will
the sequel be as good?
Steve
has already started sketching out the sequel.
But
he is not going to let his success divert him away from teaching.
He
said: "I love my job working in a great school with a fantastic
bunch of people.
"The
ideal would be to carry on writing in my spare time."
Children's
Commissioning Editor at Faber and Faber publishers, Julia Wells,
said: "The Dreamwalker's Child represents fantasy literature at
its very best - alternative
world, breath-taking action scenes, the most fabulous female character
I have ever met.
"This
is creative talent that has a long, illustrious publishing future,"
she added.
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