News & Reviews

WORD: Backspace co-founder Karen Dionne to debut as novelist with Berkley

Three years ago Karen Dionne co-founded a popular literary message board Backspace, which was followed by the annual Backspace Writers Conference in New York City. She can add author to her list of titles, now that Berkley Books purchased her debut novel 'Freezing Point.'

Agent Jeff Kleinman, a founder of Folio Literary Management who handles Dionne’s book-length fiction, closed the single-book deal with Berkley editor Natalee Rosenstein. The Penguin Group imprint slated Freezing Point as a mass market paperback with a release date of fall 2008, Dionne said.

Freezing Point is a thriller about a solar energy company that uses microwaves from geostationary satellites to melt Antarctic icebergs into drinking water as environmental extremists plot to stop them -- neither realizing that the water is contaminated with an unknown, deadly disease.

Dionne already has the endorsements of Lee Child, David Morrell, Douglas Preston, Gayle Lynds, John Case and John Lescroart nearly two years before publication.

Prior to forming Backspace, Karen worked as senior fiction editor at NFG magazine, a print journal out of Toronto, Canada. She is a member of the International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers Associations.

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