Category: writing

Following a friendly meeting at his London club, Mr. Agent and I have come to an understanding. If I totally rewrite ‘Todd Garcia, Boy Archaeologist’, or more accurately, write a different novel around the same central concept, then he’ll represent my writing.

We discussed the manifold failings of ‘Todd Garcia’. He agreed – even from reading only the partial – with the conclusions of Ms Agent.

However, he saw something in my writing. ‘What’, I asked him. ‘Hmm, dunno’ he replied cheerfully. ‘But there’s something there.’

It was a strange and slightly unnerving experience. Before yesterday, I had a manuscript, but no agent. Now I have an agent but no manuscript. Mr Agent seemed totally confident in my ability to write a publishable novel, one he’d enjoy selling.

I wasn’t sure he was right though. That is, until I had to wake up in the middle of the night to comfort our little girl. After I’d got her back to sleep, I started to get some ideas. I grabbed a piece of discarded paper from one of my manuscripts and used one of her pencils to jot down some of these new concepts. By morning I was convinced that I have the makings of an even better adventure novel.

It’s a cracker – starts with a mysterious death in a plane crash, somewhere above the jungle of Southern Mexico.

R.I.P ‘Todd Garcia, Boy Archaeologist’. You were a good lad, did your job – attracted an agent.

So, I’ve been tossing ideas back and forth with the guy (I’ll call him Mr Agent) who represents another Oxford-educated biochemist. I don’t seem to have suggested any changes to the mss which have utterly grabbed his attention, but on the other hand we’re still talking. Even better, I’d managed to persuade him to meet me face-to-face.

Meanwhile, I actually had a request for a full manuscript, made in quite the loveliest email I’ve been sent about my writing, from a major agent in children’s publishing, in fact the very one whose interview I read on a Website. Since I’m talking to Mr. Agent, I didn’t feel like bringing Ms. Agent in, in case I’d be wasting her time.

And then she phoned me…Yep. She actually did. Had I received the email? Could I send the script?

So we talked. I told her I was meeting with Mr Agent. Ms Agent then said ‘Email me the script, I’ll print it out, read it in the next few days and get back to you before you meet with him’.

Very, very weird feeling, having ‘interest’, having agents call me…

Here’s something interesting.

I realised, looking at my spreadsheet of agents, that I don’t really know anything about any of them. They are just names – I don’t know much about what they like to read or anything.

I did find an interview on a Website with one agent at an agency I submitted to, and she sounds very nice and I get the sense that ‘Todd Garcia, Boy Archaeologist’ might be something that would appeal to her, but of course, I don’t know that she’d read it. It’s a big agency after all, and their rules say you just send material to ‘Submissions’.

So anyway. I thought – I’ll spend a day really searching hard for an agent who I can be pretty sure will enjoy the story. I did. I turned up a guy who I later realised was actually the first agent I ever submitted anything to (he was the first agent to be sent ‘VIP’). His agency has changed names since then. I notice that it happened round about when I sent him the submission which he ignored. Maybe there was too much going on?

I found him via a press release he’d posted on the Rights Noticeboard at The Bookseller. It was a terrifically well-written press release, oozing enthusiasm for his client’s book. Damn, I thought, this is the guy I need to represent my writing. When I saw his agency profile at Publisher’s Marketplace I was even more convinced.

But he has track record as a Submission Ignorer. So, I had to grab his attention in an email subject line, or he’d probably delete the email again. More research, this time into his authors, revealed an intriguing link between one of his successful children’s authors and myself – we both read biochemistry at Oxford. So I wrote him: Would you like to represent another Oxford biochemist?

Guess what…he responded the next day, read the submission within half an hour and wrote back: “I won’t offer to represent this as it stands, but I’d be happy to talk to you about it.”

So, we are going to talk tomorrow. I’ve no idea what he’s going to suggest but it beats the formal rejection hands down…