Jimmy Vines

April 28, 2003

Short Takes

by John F. Baker

Shannon Holmes, a hip-hop author who made a big underground hit with an independent press novel, B-More Careful, has now gone mainstream in a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster's Malaika Adero, who preempted for six figures from agent Jimmy Vines, U.S. and Canadian rights; first of the new titles is Bad Girlz. … A posthumous novel, his first, written for a YA readership by the late Stephen E. Ambrose, was signed from his estate by Brenda Bowen at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. It's called This Vast Land: A Young Man's Journal of the Lewis & Clark Expeditionand is based on a (fictional) diary by young George Shannon, who was actually on the expedition; Bowen bought it from Endeavor's Brian Lipson.