February 8, 2005 For more information: Frank R. Scatoni 619-807-1887 frank@ventureliterary.com "No Kill Date" Venture Literary Sells Tsunami Narrative to Rodale On February 8, 2005, Greg Dinkin of Venture Literary sold the North American rights to an untitled narrative about four tsunami survivors and their devastated Thailand village by Erich Krauss to Peter Fornatale at Rodale. UK rights are being handled by Ed Jaspers at Conville & Walsh (Ed@ConvilleandWalsh.com); translation rights are being handled by Whitney Lee at The Fielding Agency (wlee@fieldingagency.com). Author Erich Krauss, who had been living and writing in southern Thailand since the end of November 2004, managed to reach the isolated village of Nam Keam on the back of a relief truck twelve days after the tsunami ravaged the coastlines of Southeast Asia. Wandering among the wreckage of the village in a contamination suit, he found a handful of survivors grouped together by the beach. His mission was to deliver food and water, but as the hours passed, dozens of locals expressed their desire to share stories of what their community had been like prior to the disaster and how their lives had been forever changed. As these survivors shared their stories, the village that now lay strewn across two miles of sand came to life in their eyes. Although hundreds of tourists had near-death experiences to tell, it was the stories of four villagers from Nam Keam, who began that Sunday morning with little and ended it with nothing, that painted the big picture of the loss and devastation experienced in the wake of the world’s worst natural disaster. Krauss will resurrect the village of Nam Keam and the losses suffered by its inhabitants that Sunday morning by recounting the day-by-day struggle of four villagers who survived the tsunami only to bury their family and friends. Beginning with their fight for life as a forty-foot wave crashed down upon their community and ending with their slow and confusing quest to rebuild their lives after the last of the bodies had been buried, Krauss will unveil the actions and thoughts of ordinary people who were forced to brave extraordinary circumstances. Erich Krauss is an expert on Thai culture—he has lived there for years and was living in Thailand when the disaster struck. He has a degree in geomorphology with an emphasis on natural disasters. And he has written both On the Line—a fascinating history of the U.S. Border Patrol—and the forthcoming Wall of Flame—about the 2003 wildfires that decimated Southern California. To learn more about Venture Literary, visit www.ventureliterary.com. To learn more about Rodale, visit: http://www.rodale.com/.