Tom and Giovanna Fletcher to co-write YA trilogy

Penguin Random House Children’s and Michael Joseph are launching a new YA trilogy jointly written by authors Tom and Giovanna Fletcher. The first novel in the trilogy, Eve of Man, is about the last girl on earth and publishes at the end of May.

Written for "a YA and YA crossover audience", the first novel in the series is described as "an unconventional love story set in a dystopian future". It tells the tale of 16-year-old Eve - the first girl born in 50 years. 

PRH Children’s and Michael Joseph acquired world rights in a joint venture from Stephanie Thwaites at Curtis Brown with Hannah Ferguson at Hardman & Swainson, to publish under the Michael Joseph imprint in hardback, e-book and audiobook on 31st May 2018. Random House Children’s Books US will publish the series in North America. 

Amanda Punter, publishing director for Puffin, and Maxine Hitchcock, publishing director at Michael Joseph, said the two writers had sold over 1.5 million books between them that had been translated into more than 30 languages.

Musician turned children's author Tom Fletcher wrote the hit middle-grade novel The Christmasaurus and has launched a bookclub with W H Smith. He also recently revealed he is signed up to write two more in The Dinosaur that Pooped series with McFly bandmate Dougie Poynter. Actress and TV presenter Giovanna Fletcher's most recent novel was Some Kind of Wonderful. She is next month publishing her non-fiction book, Happy Mum, Happy Baby: My Adventures in Motherhood (Coronet) that inspired a podcast in paperback.

"We have no doubt that fans new and old will be gripped by the world they have created together in Eve of Man," Punter and Hitchcock commented jointly.

The husband and wife team said the concept for the novel was inspired by a conversation they had with a friend five years ago after the babies in her NCT group were all boys. 

“We’re so excited for Eve of Man to be published this year, five years after we originally came up with the concept," they said jointly. "The idea came about when a friend commented that everyone in her NCT group had delivered boys and this sparked off a whole ‘what if’ conversation - what if no girls were born?  An idea was born and it was one we couldn’t shake off.  

"Creativity is such a personal thing, and we’ve learnt we work in very different ways. Writing as a duo, with us each telling the story of a different character, meant that we’ve discovered a new way of working. There have been disagreements along the way, but nothing that’s caused an ongoing marital rift. Not yet, but this is a trilogy so there’s still time!"

This morning the authors announced the trilogy on social media channels with a teaser trailer.