Sometimes, my non-publishing friends stumble on how to express what I do. They can't get their heads round the fact I don't "publish" anything... what is it I do with books again? With authors? I explain to them that the agent's verb is: to represent. I represent a list of authors; I represent their interests.…
The only English words my friend Michael Radelescu knew when he left Romania were the ones spoken in Arthur Miller's play The Incident at Vichy. When he was in Romania, planning his exile in America, his brother had sent him the following two language learning aids: Miller's play in English, together with a recording of himself, speaking…
After over forty years in the same offices, just over a year ago David Higham Associates moved to new premises. Some of us worried about losing our characterful, rather shambolic old offices. There was a sense that perhaps the offices *were* DHA. You could find our history in the teetering piles of manuscripts; read our…
I've been dogged by poor health for a few weeks now - a cough that won't shift, some sort of virus hanging around me, poor sleep - and a few of my friends, clients and colleagues have started up a loving interference. 'What time did you go to bed last night?' they enquire nosily. 'You…
I love letters. I don't think I have ever thrown one out. (Yes, I know, I don't throw anything out, but still, this.) When I was a young person, back in the middle ages (oh be quiet) we didn't have mobile phones or email or Facebook and when we fell in love we wrote love…
Quite often, inexperienced novelists narrate events very efficiently without knowing what story they are telling. Your book has no plot, I might tell them. But so much happens! the novelist might respond. Well yes, if what happens is: one thing after another; action sparking reaction sparking action; he said she said he said she said;…
More people are buying crime novels and thrillers than ever before; more women, especially. Let's not trouble ourselves today with listing the reasons why; let's think instead about what that means for writers. Many authors have been advised to twist their books with mystery; to turn to pain from pleasure; to tilt their ideas to…
Nineteen years ago, for one year, I wasn't Lizzy Kremer. I got married and I very proudly, very sweetly, changed my name. My new name was perfectly pretty. That is, it very soon became obvious to me that it was too pretty. Prettier than I could manage to be, anyway, prone as I was at…
Many of us obsessive readers experience fiction as a further dimension of our everyday lives; we roll along twin tracks. On this track I am travelling to work for the day; on this other, today, I am on my way to Paris, to drink wine at an outside table, with Jean Rhys. I can't imagine…
One of my responsibilities as an agent is to try to predict the future. A career as an author is an insecure one: however hard we try to get everything right, my clients don't know how many copies they will sell of their next novel; whether it will find critical acclaim; what they will be…