Literary Agents on Twitter

Heigh Ho! Agent alert.

What we would do to secure an agent! The right agent. The one that cares, that recognises our native genius, that knows all the right people, that gets us the book deal of our lives. 

Dream on.

I've started following agents. Not in the street you understand but in the Twitterverse. It's virtual. No harm's done. Its fun. Who are these people? What do they do? More importantly, how do they think?

Here's a listing of (friendly) agents and agencies that have a presence on Twitter.

Let's start with the agents themselves. Here they are with their Twitter tags, Agencies and edited, or in some cases unedited, versions of their personal riffs. Then we'll move onto the agencies and a handful of editors (if that is the correct collective noun) and other people; publishers, writers and that sort of thing.

It is of course, as always, a personal selection.

Literary Agents on Twitter

• Caroline Hardman ‏ @LittleHardman with Hardman & Swainson. Pocket-sized literary agent. Her taste is diverse. Looking for upmarket commercial and literary fiction, quality crime and thrillers, young adult and non-fiction. Drawn to writing that is clever and quirky: smart word play, unusual dark settings, great plot twists, and offbeat characters.
• Charlie Brotherstone ‏ @CharlieBroAgent with A.M Heath. QPR fan- Wedding Singer. Charlie represents literary and commercial writers of fiction and non-fiction.
• David Headley ‏ @DavidHHeadley with DHH Literary Agency. MD of Goldsboro Books. Bookseller & literary agent. Views are my own. Represents an eclectic range of best-selling and award-winning authors, including novelists, historians, short-story writers and children’s authors and currently only looking for fiction writers.
• Jane Judd ‏ @Janelitagent with Jane Judd. Agent to a variety of fiction and non-fiction authors. An eclectic list of non-fiction and fiction writers with an emphasis is on self-help, health, biography, popular history and narrative non-fiction, general and historical fiction and literary fiction. Would love to find quirky and surprising subjects in both fiction and non-fiction.
• Juliet Mushens ‏ @mushenska with PFD. Essex and proud, eternal optimist. Delightfully lowbrow. Secretly nerdy. Always looking for new voices. Represents a commercial list of fiction and non-fiction writers. On the fiction side, likes reading group fiction, thrillers, historical fiction, fantasy/SF and commercial writing for children aged 12+ with an emphasis on YA. On the non-fiction side, represents everything from celebrity autobiographies to cook-books, with a passion for inspirational memoirs and a growing list of ghost-writers.
• Juliet Pickering ‏ @julietpickering with AP Watt. My views only. Juliet is interested in literary fiction, well-written commercial fiction, mystery, narrative non-fiction and food writing.
• Lisa Eveleigh ‏ @richfordbabe with Richford Becklow. Reads, cooks, gardens; fairly nice, quite clever. Founder and primary agent at Richford Becklow. Actively looking to take on new authors and encourage and represent a range of writing talent. Open to reading well-crafted and thoughtful writing in all genres.
• Sallyanne Sweeney ‏ @sallyanne_s  with Watson Little. Building her list. Looking for talented writers of literary and commercial fiction. Passionate about writing for children & young adults, and is interested in narrative non-fiction, quirky gift books, food writing and crafts.
• Sam Copeland ‏ @stubbleagent with Rogers, Coleridge & White. Secret agent in my mind. Literary agent in reality. 20% charm 80% offensive. Building an extremely diverse list, representing writers of both literary and commercial fiction, science fiction, children’s (11+), serious and not-so-serious non-fiction. Happy to look at anything but self-help and business books.
• Susan M Armstrong ‏ @susanW1F with Conville & Walsh. Particularly interested in debut literary fiction, upmarket commercial fiction and accessible fantasy and science fiction. Enjoys novels that blend genres, are unusual in setting or circumstance and that have unexpected twists.

Literary Agencies on Twitter

• A.M. Heath & Co. ‏ @AMHeathLtd One of the UK's leading literary agencies representing prize-winning, best-selling and iconic authors. 
• Conville and Walsh ‏ @conville_walsh UK literary agents boasting prize-winning authors. We specialize in launching careers for debut authors.
• Folio Literary ‏ @FolioLiterary NY/US literary agents & book nerds. They have a nice Facebook page.
  
• PFD Agency ‏ @PFDAgents The Peters Fraser & Dunlop Agency is one of the oldest literary agencies in London and is home to a distinguished client list.
• RCW Lit Agency ‏ @RCWLitAgency Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd.
• Sheil Land ‏ @sheilland A successful and highly respected Literary Agency based in London.
• Watson Little Ltd ‏ @watsonlittle Diverse. Enthusiastic. Unique. Savvy. 

Editors, authors and other people on Twitter

• Andrew Wille ‏ @andrewwille Teach write read edit cook eat.
• Harry Bingham ‏ @harryonthebrink My head is home to Fiona Griffiths: Welsh, dark, intense, clever. (Official diagnosis: crime novelist). Also help run Writers Workshop.  
• Kamila Shamsie ‏ @kamilashamsie Writer. Trustee of EnglishPEN and Free Word.
• Kate Lyall Grant ‏ @KateLyallGrant Commercial fiction editor, publisher of the Creme de la Crime imprint at Severn House; committed dog owner and world traveller.
• Martina Boone ‏ @4YALit Writer and Adventures in YA Publishing blogger with inspiration, craft, editing & market tips.
• Rachael Harrie ‏ @RachaelHarrie Lawyer-turned-architect of words, YA Horror and Dark Fantasy writer, Aussie. I organize Campaigns so writers can network together. 
• Roz Morris fiction ‏ @ByRozMorris On a mission to prove literary novels can tell a thundering story. Host of The Undercover Soundtrack.
• Roz Morris ‏ @dirtywhitecandy Writer, editor. Nearly a dozen ghosted novels in print, 8 bestsellers. Writing book Nail Your Novel. I tweet about writing here. 
• Bloomsbury ‏ @BloomsburyBooks Publishers of fiction and non-fiction by authors including Khaled Hosseini, J.K. Rowling, William Boyd, Margaret Atwood and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. 
• FaberBooks ‏ @FaberBooks Purveyors of fine books since 1929, and still trading independently. Follow us for Faber news and freebies... 
• Severn House ‏ @severnhouse Severn House publishes a wide range of fiction, from Crime to Romance. Titles from our best-selling authors are available in all formats.

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Donna Leon

Talking about Donna Leon, she is another one I should have put on the list.

I would like to capture half - no, all - of the simple elegance with which she writes.

Donna Leon writes novels, set in Venice, featuring the Italian detective Commissario Guido Brunetti. The novels are, in my experience, consistently good and by 'good' I mean they are readable, accessible, valuable and, in short, worth reading. Other people seem to agree. Here are some snippets from the review-blurb on a back cover:

• she tells a good story ~ Scotsman
• clever, vivid and wholly absorbing ~ Observer
• an emotionally complex, intellectually and morally satisfying narrative ~ Scotland on Sunday

How does she do it?

Like Maeve Binchy, she builds her story through conversations between friends and this is the key to the whole tenor of her books. Commissario Brunetti has friends. In fact, he's a friend by nature and quickly becomes a firm favourite of the reader.

I am reading Wilful behaviour. Let's look, chapter by chapter, at some of these conversations.

• 1. The explosion came at breakfast ... Guido Brunetti's wife Paola is enraged by the treatment of women as displayed in the morning papers. The conversation progresses naturally to a mention of Paola's students at the university where she teaches and later that day one of her students, Claudia, approaches her with a question.
• 2.'There's someone to see you, sir' ... The same day, at the Questura were he works, Guido has a visitor. It is his old friend Marco Erizzo. They adjourn to a bar and, over a small glass of wine, Marco spills out his problems.
• 3. At dinner that evening, Guido and Paola tell each other about their day. Their conversation eddies around the earlier conversations with Marco and Claudia.
• 4. A week or so later Claudia and Paola speak again.
• 5. The next day, Claudia goes to speak to Guido at the Questura.
• 6. As a result of his conversation with Claudia, Guido goes to talk to his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier.
• 7. At home for lunch, Guido briefly relates the morning's conversations to Paola, amidst all the banter of a family meal.
• 8. Back at the office, Guido phones another old friend, Lele Bortoluzzi.
• 9. At home, Paola and Guido talk about her father and his father. The next day, Claudia is found murdered. Guido phones Paola to tell her. He assesses the crime scene with his colleague Vianello. Conversations follow with the landlady and the flatmate.
• 10. Conversations continue with the landlady and the flatmate and with the pathologist at the scene of crime; and with Vianello.
• 11. Guido and Vianello work together in the dead girl's flat and then Guido goes to talk with a contact of Claudia's, an old woman whom she looked upon as a grandmother; Hedi Jacobs.
• 12. Guido walks back to the Questura and goes in to talk to Signorina Elettra, 'the woman who does', his secret weapon. Signorina Elettra is the chief's personal assistant and, while there, Guido is summoned into Vice-Questore Patta's office. They speak and later in the afternoon, Guido receives a call from the pathologist and then goes down to the lab to look at some of the evidence collected from the scene of the crime. The conversations are fragmentary but they are connected.
• 13. We are on page 110, the story is well under way and further conversations with Paola and Signorina Elettra continue to move the story forward.

That's all you need to know. The story builds conversation by conversation. 

Now you can go and do it.

Wilful behaviour, Donna Leon. Arrow,  2009

Paperback, 368 pages

ISBN-10: 0099536625; ISBN-13: 978-0099536628

Originally published in hardback by William Heinemann, 2002
ISBN: 0434009946

The book:

• On Amazon
• On Goodreads.com

The author:

• Publisher's mini-site at Random House
• Official author website
• On Wikipedia

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A visit to the library

I went to the library yesterday and came home with five books, three of them were novels written by women. The other two were not novels. Three novels, all written by female writers - and this is not unusual. There is something about books written by some women writers that I like. Put it another way. There is something about books written by men that I don't like. Is that true?

Not entirely.

There are plenty of books written by women that I don't like. In fact, when I think about it, most of the books in the library, whether written by men or women, are books that I don't like, won't ever like. It's the same with poetry.

I scan the shelves of poetry and hope, hopelessly, to find something that rises above the awful mediocrity of human futility. And fail, more often than not. Not always, it's true. Occasionally, I light upon an RS Thomas or a Gillian Clarke and my spirits rise and respond. But not always. Not often.

One of the other, non-novel, books I came home with yesterday is a book called Serious Poetry by Peter McDonald. I'm looking forward to getting into that and engaging brain to brain with the author and with the poets 'from Yeats to Hill', grappling with purpose and intent, 'form and authority', as it says. The other 'non-novel' is, interestingly, also related to poetry. It is Now all roads lead to France by Matthew Hollis, the acclaimed biography of Edward Thomas. I revere Edward Thomas - it is a sickness of our age; my age, at least. But even then, much - most?- of his poetry leaves me cold, or worse, lukewarm. I revere him as a poet not so much for the product but for the potential; because of his evident integrity.

[At this point I go to my shelves, the small, dark-stained wood, three-shelf bookcase that my Grandfather made (or is that another personal urban myth?), and search for my book of Edward Thomas - Edward Thomas: Collected Poems, with foreword by Walter de la Mare. It is a slim volume alongside those of DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy. [I do have another novel out from the library at the moment, The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. And he's a man.] Nothing ever quite touched the *** (supply adjective: simplicity, success, majesty) of Adlestrop but Adlestrop would not exist but for the rest. We write to write one *** (supply noun: work, success, ...) and we are lucky - blessed - if we achieve even that.]

I have a theory. Women writers, some women writers, are are able to approach closer to their truth than most men. And their truth, the truth of the individual writer, is our truth. Most men are evading it; and most women for that matter. Fewer men seem to be able to find that bridge across the chasm that connects them with this inner integrity. You know it when you see it, and you see it if you're really looking for it.

If all this sounds like elitist guff, I don't think it is. All human beings (have the capacity to) recognise (this kind of) truth. In most of us, however, this capacity has been suppressed either by the imposition of false authority or by - that is, as the result of - fear. It is the writer's job, the artist's job, to enable reconnection.

What did I bring home?

Suffer the little children by Donna Leon

Something might happen by Julie Myerson

The gravediggers daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

I'll report back later.

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Other people's novels

I'm looking for equivalence.

Which novel by which author comes closest to the tale I'm trying to tell?

Is there a match? Does anything come close?

Here are a few contenders. (The list keeps getting longer, so I'd better nail it while I can.)

• Joanna Trollope
• Maeve Binchy
• Mark Haddon
• Nick Hornby
• Jon McGregor
• Kamila Shamsie
• Sebastian Faulkes
• Ian McEwan
• Ian Rankin
• Donna Leon
• Robert Harris
• Sam Bourne
• Kate Moss

My story has historical, crime and suspense elements in it but it is essentially about people and society. If you see where I'm coming from.

So perhaps it is most like Sebastian Faulkes's A Week in December except that it is not a week and it is not in December and it is not set in London and doesn't have a terrorist subplot - yet. But, in its own way it is perhaps a 'state of the nation' novel.

A Week in December

• Guardian review
• Wikipedia
• Author website
• Amazon

I have blogged elsewhere about Jon McGregor's remarkable first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things; see After the Silence. I can only hope to aspire to his sensitive and realistic portrayal of contemporary society and local community. Joanna Trollope heads the list because of her felicity in handling contemporary family dramas and her clean, elegant writing. This is accessible, contemporary fiction at its best. Similarly Maeve Binchy relates the stories of everyday, ordinary people. Mark Haddon comes close with his book A Spot of Bother. But ... well, he doesn't do Joanna Trollope as well as Joanna Trollope does. The main difference is, I suppose, that he is a man. The book is a male take on the domestic drama with all the disturbing undertow of the male psyche. I have no intention of writing a psychodrama but I wouldn't mind achieving a 'deep, sharp humanity'.

A Spot of Bother

• Guardian review
• Wikipedia
• Goodreads reviews
• Amazon

Nick Hornby is another man who had a go at the domestic drama in his novel How To Be Good and, bravely, he takes on the female point of view. Well done him. Again, it might be thought of as a 'state of the nation' novel or perhaps, better, a 'confused mind of the nation' novel if the nation is held to reside in the suburban streets of Greater London. Much of it does, of course (reside in the suburban streets of Greater London); especially the literati and cognoscenti. A large number of them didn't like this novel - which tells you more about them than it does about the novel. It's good, if quirky and off-beam and it touches a nerve.

How To Be Good

• Guardian review
• Author website at Penguin
• Goodreads reviews
• Amazon

Kamilla Shamsie's second novel Salt and Saffron is a confection and a delight but Kamilla Shamsie deals with life-as-it-is-lived with a deep humanity and insight. If this is chick lit then I'm a chick. I love the bounce and vitality of the writing.

Salt and Saffron

• Blogcritics review
• Goodreads reviews
• Amazon
• AMHeath webpage; Authors' Agents

I don't think I have read any Ian McEwan. Or have I?. I did see the film of Atonement and I'd like to try reading Solar sometime; but you can see I have a problem. I am suspicious of Literary literature.

And then there is what I called the historical, the criminal and the sense of suspense, hence, Ian Rankin, Donna Leon, Sam Bourne and Kate Mosse. Robert Harris is in a league of his own with books like The Ghost, Enigma, Pompeii, Imperium. He has it all: clean, clear writing, historical acumen and a sense of plot. If he lacks anything, it is perhaps in depth of character and a certain sense of humanity. His writing can sometimes be, or appear to be, clinical.

Enigma

• Booklore review 
• Goodreads reviews
• Amazon

So, am I any closer?

Like I said,

My story has historical, crime and suspense elements but it is essentially about people and society. If you see where I'm coming from?

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