Mark Z. Danielewski's "The Familiar" gets a home.

      Mark Z. Danielewski will be releasing "The Familiar", an ambitious 27 volume masterwork beginning in 2014 on a breath-taking schedule of one volume every three months.  He told the LA Times in an interview that these would not be hefty volumes, but instead that " 'Volume' speaks to it being a little different from a standard trade paperback book".
     Pantheon Books, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday, paid more than $1 million for the first 10 volumes of "The Familiar," which will be broken into 2 5-volume seasons.  Danielewski's reputation as a writer who works on multiple levels at the same time indicates that the title "The Familiar" will also likely have multiple meanings within the context of the work.  The firstvolume will open with a young girl adopting a cat, though will almost certainly quickly get more complicated and involved.
      Mr. Danielewski, has said he has been influenced by "Moby-Dick," "The Lord of the Rings" and the manga series "Lone Wolf and Cub".      Danielewski's last book, 2006's "Only Revolutions" was a finalist for the National Book Award, and in 2012, he will be releasing the "The Fifty Year Sword" next October, a ghost story with shadow puppets and intermingled voices he has performed at REDCAT for the last two Halloweens, and he hopes to find the equivalent theaters in cities for a performance-studded book tour.