HELEN KAMPFNER

Thank you Raine. Yes it turned out to be a pretty cunning ploy.

Well done John, and thank you Libby for a competition which led to so many brilliant stories – what richness!

Jeez that’s shocking behaviour. Both from your agent @Hilary and @janette.
I’ve never got that close – I mean, I’ve had full requests but no more than that – but I’d have thought you could at least rely on agents to be honest.
We’ve all been blanked on a submission – which is par for the course, even if I don’t particularly like it. But to bring…[Read more]

Wow, thanks Libby! Well done to the other participants. I’ll think up some devilishly difficult competition for March and post later tomorrow.

Thank you everyone for your solidarity and kind comments about my writing, and for the encouragement to realise all the positives in this tale as well. And, @janette, for someone not to reply properly having suggested revisions – that is, indeed, unprofessional.

I am taking a step back from that experience and that novel, and working on the…[Read more]

Incidentally, as this year I am coasting towards the age where I am ‘losing my hair’, and wondering whether I will be locked out at quarter to three (never mind getting a bottle of wine for my birthday or a Valentine’s card), I suppose I should resign myself to joining that league of elderly no-hopers that includes Hilary Mantel, Philip Pullman…[Read more]

Hilary, I am seething with outrage. Firstly, let me say your writing is beautiful and the comp entries we have both seen and heard about are testament to that. I’m not surprised but very pleased to hear that you had those full requests, but to drag you down to London only to relay so many negatives – including your age for goodness sake – that’s…[Read more]

Hilary, as an aside, the Bookoture girl did say she had a 96 year-old on her list for whom she had so far published some 23 ‘cosy crime’ novels. ‘One every couple of weeks’ she said.

Feedback today from those who did pitch to her said she refused most straight off. Made suggestions to make more acceptable to one and I now of another who pitched…[Read more]

To be fair, she didn’t say it was about representation. I just thought/hoped it would be. She said it was to discuss suggested revisions and how we might work together. As well as the thing about commercial/literary, there were so many aspects of the book that she thought didn’t work, I even asked her why she had wanted to meet me and she said…[Read more]

I sort of worry a bit when I see agents pushing writers this way. In fact, my hackles start to hack or rise or whatever they’d do if I had them. Book Club fiction is Literary Fiction that agents reckon they should be able to sell better than average. As for this splitting of work into ever more categories as though this is some kind of scientific…[Read more]

Rachel agreed, in the end, to a bath.

The water was hot. There were bubbles. The scent made her think of purple.

She closed her eyes. Lowered herself, let her hands float, slid down until her head was under water. She let the breath go out of her and waited. Slowly, she pushed herself back up. Water dripped from her face, her hair. Steam…[Read more]

I’m late to this debate, but it’s a very interesting one, so I hope no-one minds me resurrecting it.

My view on this is very utilitarian (I think), in that I always – consciously or unconsciously – try to work out whether the value of the book/music/art/movie/whatever is greater to me than the cost of reading/listening/watching it.

And the…[Read more]

A Spill of Tea

I thought I’d bagged the prize of a lifetime when I landed my new job and the salary that came with it. The buzz about the café I’d worked at was great, but buzz didn’t pay bills, did it? Buzz didn’t afford a better flat, one I felt comfortable inviting friends back to; a holiday now and then. This new opportunity, it felt like win…[Read more]

Of course, I hadn’t fully considered how many cases there are until I started this. For instance, I read We Need to Talk About Kevin long before I knew anything about Lionel Shriver – possibly before she had begun the process of disseminating her curious bag of libertarian views* across the media and the web. I still consider it a beautifully…[Read more]

New Day

The smoke from cooking fires lay like a grey blanket over Alexandra township and a tangerine sun rose behind it, then burst clear and threw its warming mantle over the land. The windows of the high-rise buildings on the distant Johannesburg skyline glinted like slabs of molten gold. A typical autumn dawn on the highveld but this was not a…[Read more]