Courtesy of the Deals column at Publisher’s Weekly, the cat is now out of the bag!

Candlemark & Gleam is proud to announce the acquisition of Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson. To quote the PW summary, “The novel follows a loser-ish 30-something gamer with a computer science degree whose world is turned upside down when the thing he’s been waiting for—an alien invasion—does little to change his boring life.”

That does little to tell you about this amazing sci-fi novel, though. It’s one of the most stunningly plausible first-contact novels out there – only Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi is comparable, in my book – and it has the added bonus of being completely and utterly hilarious and engaging, to boot. The aliens are utterly realistic, the backlash from contact is hauntingly plausible, and the characters…well, you’re going to love the characters, from Ariel to Tetsuo to Dana to Curic.

Really, how can you not want to read a novel about alien video games?

Constellation Games will be available as a serial subscription beginning in November 2011, and will be published as a trade paperback in April 2012. More details as they come!