Author Watch: Tina Seskis

Every so often an author will come along that bears watching. The savvy reader just knows this is a writer who is going places and as a general rule of thumb it's fun to watch as their style matures and their sales climb with each successive book. If you haven't yet heard of Tina Seskis yet, odds are you will soon. Her first big book to be published Stateside, One Step Too Far, will be released by William Morrow in January.

A meticulously plotted thriller about a woman who runs away to London, abandoning her husband and family and creating a new identity for herself in an effort to escape a mysterious secret from her past, Seskis' novel packs quite a punch for such an early career effort. She writes in a genre that is popular, but is unique enough to stand apart. 

The novel itself, it's interesting to note, is already nearing it's fifth birthday. Written in 2010, Seskis formed her own publishing company a few years later after failing to find a traditional publishing home for the novel (and another she had written in 2011). Readers knew a good thing when they saw it, even if the traditional publishing houses did not....One Step Too Far sold over 100,000 copies in just four short months. Throw in a Bookseller of the Year award and a Top Ten Summer Reads pick and bam....all of a sudden those publishing houses were paying attention.

Penguin UK picked up the rights to the novel in the United Kingdom while HarperCollins picked it up for the U.S. (and here's hoping they paid a pretty penny for it after all that). With this solidity behind her, I'd expect to see more from Seskis in the near future.