Mushens Entertainment’s 2022 Round-up

We’ve had a brilliant year at Mushens Entertainment, with 56 books published, 12 new clients, 37 UK deals, 10 US deals and 5 film/tv deals! We’ve also been joined by two new team members, Associate Agent Rachel Neely and Literary Assistant Catriona Fida, who have been welcome additions to our busy agency,

Juliet Mushens

A new yearly record for Juliet, she has had an incredible 8 number 1 bestsellers in 2022 and 17 overall bestsellers.

For the third year running, Juliet was featured in The Bookseller 150, an annual list of the most influential people in UK publishing.

She was a judge for the Cheshire Novel Prize and was a mentor with SYP London for the second time. Juliet is also in her second year as President of the British Fantasy Society.

2022 has been full of wins for Juliet’s authors:

Claire Douglas and Abigail Dean won the Silver Nielsen Bestseller Award, Buki Papillon won The Kansas City Library’s Maya Angelou Book Award, Stacey Halls won the Women’s Prize and Good Housekeeping Futures Award, Abigail Dean won Debut Book of the Year 2021 and Laura Purcell won Historical Crime Book of the Year at the Capital Crime Fingerprint Awards, Elodie Harper won the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, Richard Osman and Claire Douglas won at the Dead Good Reader Awards, Richard Osman and Abigail Dean won CrimeFest 2022 Awards, Richard Osman won the AudioFile Earphones Award with The Bullet That Missed.

For the second year running Juliet had the record-breaking achievement of representing the #1 hardback and #1, 2 and 3 bestselling paperbacks in the same week. Five of her clients’ books made it into the 100 bestselling overall titles of 2022.

In 2023 she tells us she intends to sleep more.

Liza DeBlock

Liza continues to build her list, and has signed 5 clients this year, processed 4 UK deals, 1 US deal, 1 Audio deal and 1 Film deal. She has also worked hard to promote all ME authors internationally and you can see details of the incredible array of Foreign Rights deals she has completed below. 

She was named a Bookseller Rising Star in 2022 and was profiled in Book Brunch.

This year Liza handled her first ever film deal for Pim Wangtechawat’s THE MOON REPRESENTS MY HEART which is set to star/be produced by none other than Gemma Chan!

Rachel Neely

After joining as Associate Agent in February, former Commissioning Editor Rachel has started building her list. She has signed 9 authors so far and has confirmed 4 six-figure deals across the UK and US this year.  

Having attended Frankfurt book fair for the first time, Rachel has also done her first deals in translation, with Fiona McPhillips’ UNDERWATER, which will be published in the UK by Transworld in 2024, selling to Hungary and Carmella Lowkis’ SPITTING GOLD, which will be published by Doubleday in the UK in 2024, selling to Italy.

Kiya Evans

Kiya went to the Cheshire Novel Prize Awards ceremony as well as attending Mushens Entertainment favourites, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrrogate, and FantasyCon! She’s also excited to announce that she’s starting to build her own list of authors and is officially open to submissions.

Catriona Fida

Catriona joined Mushens Entertainment this year from Pan Macmillan, where she was the Rights Assistant. Her first role in an agency, Catriona has loved getting to know the list and assisting Liza in all of her foreign rights deals. She looks forward to London Book Fair in the Spring!

Foreign Rights

As an agency, we have done lots of foreign rights deals this year in partnership with our lovely co-agents.

We’ve completed a total of 141 deals with international publishers across 39 territories which averages to roughly 1 deal every 2.5 days!

Fun trips!

In a year where book festivals were in-person again, the ME team took a few trips out of the office.

At the end of July, the Mushens Entertainment team travelled up to Harrogate to attend the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. It’s something of an annual tradition for us and it’s always fun to catch up with our own authors, editors who work on our books, and to meet fellow crime writing fans!

We also attended FantasyCon, an annual convention organised by the British Fantasy Society. This year’s event took place over two days, and included fascinating panels, author workshops, signings, and - of course - karaoke!

This year we were delighted to have our first Summer party in-person since the pandemic

Rachel and Catriona joined the agency!

In February, Rachel swapped her editorial role at Trapeze to become an Associate Agent and in October, Catriona moved from the Pan Macmillan Rights department to become ME’s new Literary Assistant.

Below are all of the wonderful books that we’ve published in 2022. Thank you to all of our authors, publishers and partners who have made this possible!

Wishing you a wonderful festive season and a happy new year, with love from the ME team! x