John T

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

Well done @johnalty – much deserved. Perhaps writing two stories then being forced to choose is a sound strategy to adopt 😀 And Thankyou Libby for an intriguing challenge 🙂

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

Oh Hilary! I was alerted to this thread by Ath. I can see you’re taking this well but I know how much it must hurt. I’m going to try to take a step back and see where the agent might have been coming from. Don’t shout at me!

Agents love books, of course, and get very excited when they are part of the process that leads to publication. For some,…[Read more]

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]

How incredibly insensitive of her, Hilary. Of course you were excited and expecting something after being asked to meet her. What on earth was the agent thinking? But, as others have said, there mat be a positive side. Perhaps give yourself time to get some distance then decide if her suggested revision are for you or not.

And Janette – another…[Read more]

I’m astounded by all these badly behaved agents, because bad behaviour it is. It’s just rude, and they must understand how galling it is for an author to get their hopes up needlessly – or maybe they don’t. And as for not replying after requesting a full – well, it’s appalling. @janette your experience in particular has me fuming. How can he gush…[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]

Oh Hilary and Janette, I feel for you. Somehow it’s much harder when your hopes have been raised. I guess they’ve got further to fall.

@Janette. I understand that agents receive zillions of submissions everyday and can’t respond personally to each one but I do think, when they’ve requested a full or asked for edits to be made, they could at leas…[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]

In the news this morning: several actresses walked out of the César awards (the French Oscars) after convicted rapist Roman Polanski won Best Director for his film ‘J’Accuse’ (‘An Officer and a Spy’). Obviously the French film academy considers that a work should be judged on its own merits rather on the morals of who’s responsible for it.…[Read more]

Hilary, my reactions to this are twofold. First, intense sympathy for you. What an awful let-down! Even if she did make clear what the actual purpose of the meeting was, it shows a certain sense of entitlement (as Ath said) to expect you to come running to London at the crook of a finger just for a chat about revisions. And if it never occurred to…[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]