The kids book is described as a “mostly true tall tale” about a recently orphaned young girl named Opal B Flats who forms an unexpected friendship with a music-loving colony of bats and helps them find a new home against all odds.

Cline is otherwise best known for penning the 2015 sci-fi novel Armada, which follows another teenage gamer who discovers that the alien-invasion-themed game he’s been playing is actually a simulator to prepare humanity for a real-world invasion. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.In the meantime, he busied himself as a star of Austin's slam poetry scene, collecting some of his verses into a chapbook, The Importance of Being Ernest, in 2001, However, it was his debut novel Ready Player One that made him a household name, and it was adapted by Steven Spielberg in 2018. Both Armada and Ready Player Two have been optioned for film adaptations ( in Armada's case, three years before it was even published). There, Opal bonds with Uncle Roscoe over music and befriends a group of orphaned, music-loving bats. But with people afraid of the bats and determined to get rid of them, it'll take a whole lot of courage to prove that this is where the bats--and Opal--belong. The book appears to mark something of a departure for Cline from the work in the sci-fi realm for which he’s best known.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Cline earned his laurels as part of Austin's geek elite in the '90s with his buzzy script, Fanboys, which finally made it to the screen in 2009 in a version starring starring Jay Baruchel, Kristen Bell, Seth Rogen, and Danny Trejo. If Opal and the bats can fit in anywhere, it's the nearby city of Austin, home to their favorite music and a host of wonderfully eccentric characters.The publishing deal for The Bridge to Bat City was brokered by Cline's longtime representatives, manager/producing partner, Dan Farah, and literary agent Yfat Reiss Gendell. But just as the farm is starting to feel like home, the bats’ cave is destroyed by a big mining company with its sights set on the farmland next.

But with people afraid of the bats and determined to get rid of them, it’ll take a whole lot of courage to prove that this is where the bats — and Opal — belong. His book deal was brokered by manager and producing partner Dan Farah and literary agent Yfat Reiss Gendell. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. This is an enchanting tale that weaves together fact and fiction set against the incredible backdrop of 1980s Austin, filled with a vibrant cast of characters, rich music history, activism and environmentalism, and bats!Set for publication in April 2024, the book is described as a “mostly true tall tale” about a recently orphaned young girl named Opal B Flats, who forms an unexpected friendship with a music-loving colony of bats and helps them find a new home against all odds. Inspiration for the novel stemmed from Cline’s longtime residency in Austin, TX, which is home to the world’s largest urban bat colony. Ernie lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic video games. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.