Podcaster J.C. Hutchins has landed a publishing deal!
Congratulations to podcaster and novelist J.C. Hutchins who has landed a publishing contract with St. Martin's Press for the trilogy 7th Son. Hutchins recorded the three novels (Descent, Deceit, and Destruction) as a series of audiobooks over the past two years, and released them one episode at a time in the form of podcasts that have generated for him not only a legion of fans that call themselves the Beta Clone Army but serious coverage in such newspapers as the New York Times.
The 7th Son trilogy depicts the adventures of seven men brought together by a secret government project following the assassination of a fictional President of the United States by a four year old child, who then suddenly dies of a mysterious illness while in custody. The men discover that they are in fact clones, and that their memories are duplicates of the original, referred to as "John Alpha" by the project. Their assignment is to locate John Alpha and apprehend him because he was the assassin...
The first novel, Descent, is scheduled for release in the year 2009.
I've been a fan of 7th Son since late in 2006, close to the end of the first series. I'm a fan of science fiction and picky as hell, so I don't recommend this series to you lightly. While it isn't hard SF in the vein of Orion's Arm or the work of Charles Stross, it's very accessible to people who aren't highly technical, enjoyable by those who are, and overall well written. Hutchins performed the entire series by himself, going so far as to develop individual voices for each character in the story and tracking down postcast-safe music for the series. I recommend downloading and listening to the first couple of podcasts to listen to if you're not sure that you'll like it - they're free, so you're not ponying up anything but a little bit of download time and disk space.