Conville & Walsh

We are delighted to announce a deal for the first trade novel by Howard Cunnell, sold by Patrick Walsh to Paul Baggeley and Kris Doyle at Macmillan for UK & Commonwealth rights on pre-empt. It is due to be published in Spring 2012.

Howard has a PhD from the University of London, and was previously a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Sussex. He is the editor of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road – The Original Scroll, which the New York Times described as ‘the living version for our time.’ A former scuba diving instructor and guide, he lives in London with his wife and daughters.

Salt Junk follows Kim, a diving instructor and married father, from Brixton to the Red Sea, where he meets up with an old friend, the virtuoso waterman Garland Rain. The two divers have been hired as guides on the dive boat Shang-Tu, owned by Teddy King, a gangster who lives a life of drugs and violence.

While Garland tries to contain Teddy’s worst excesses, Kim gets sucked into the partying. He begins an affair with Teddy’s young girlfriend, Jody, and soon after that, one of the other divers dies in an accident. Back on dry land, Kim finds that the decisions you make in the moment come back on you, and sometimes even follow you home.

It’s a story about a man torn between his responsibilities and his dreams; and about what might happen if you were stuck on a boat with someone you didn’t trust.