For the past few weeks I've been going ON and ON about all the various Exciting Things that I couldn't talk about - one of these was The Validators appearing at this year's indietracks, and today I can REVEAL what one of the others is, for LO! I have got an LITERARY AGENT!
"That is not quite as exciting as I was led to believe" you may think, which is fair enough, but to me it is THE MOST EXCITING. Ever since I (re)started with The Writing back in The Space Year 2012AD one of the AIMS has been to get an Agent - everybody always says "You don't need an agent, you can do it all yourself" but, to be honest, after 500 years in ROCK I have got pretty much all the transferable skills I need. I know about PRS, PPL, setting up PA systems, invoicing, manufacturing schedules, and the difference between CMYK and RGB, so would rather NOT have to learn the equivalents of the above for the BOOK world!
For LO! (again), it is MY NOVEL that this is all related to. When I re-read it a few weeks ago I thought "Actually this is quite good, maybe I should try and see if anybody wants to put it out?" After taking ADVICE from various sources I did The Proper Thing and got myself a copy of The Writers And Artists Yearbook, went through the lists of agents, identified ones which looked suitable, emailed them with whatever their requirements were for Unsolicited Enquiries (usually a covering letter, synopsis, and first 30-50 pages of the book), and then sat back to see what would happen.
I must admit I had precisely NO expectations WHATSOEVER - all my experience of doing The Proper Thing in regards to AND of The Arts has been that you sit around for months and nothing happens. I was fully expecting to get either NO replies or polite form letters, and had put a note into my diary to wait six weeks and then start properly investigating self-publishing via Amazon. Imagine my SURPRISE then when, a week or so after sending the emails out, I got a request from one of agents for the FULL novel! "It might take a few weeks to get round to reading it", she said, so imagine my FURTHER ASTONISHMENT when she emailed my the other side of the weekend to ask if we could have a phone chat! "Maybe she wants to tell me personally how rubbish it is?" I thought.
To cut a very long story short, that WASN'T the purpose of the call and so, some further weeks later, I am VERY PLEASED INDEED to say that I am now Officially Represented by Franca at Zeno Literary Agency! I'm on their webpage and EVERYTHING!
The next stage, apart from SWANNING AROUND saying "Oh I shall have to ask My Agent" (OBVS), is for them to send the book out to PUBLISHERS to see if they will, well, PUBLISH it. It's being PITCHED as for the 9-12 age group, which a) was a surprise to me as I didn't WRITE it that way b) meant a couple of very minor adjustments (apparently you're not allowed to rampantly kill human beings, textually, but small dogs are fair game) and c) probably says more about my MENTAL AGE than I would care to consider. That said, it is MORE than fine with me - I went to Waterstones to look at THE COMPETITION the other day and there are a HECKLOAD of AMAZING books in that age range!
My sole hope at this point is that I might help to DELIGHT and EDUCATE a few CURIOUS MINDS, and I have definitely NOT been fantasising about making 100 BILLION QUID from MOVIE DEALS, nor have I spent hours rehearsing CHAT SHOW APPEARANCES, and anybody who says I have is a rotten fibber. Either way it is all EXTREMELY EXCITING - it may, of course, all come to nothing, but you never know, it might end up with an ACTUAL REAL BOOK with my name on it! ZOINKS!
