First of all, what is your role at the agency?

I am the Agency Assistant. I‘d like to think I help the office to run smoothly by helping out Darley Anderson and the rest of the team!

Which book changed your life?

The first book to have a strong emotional impact on me was The Corum Boy by Jamila Gavin. I read it on a family holiday when I was a child and cried throughout it and then cried when it was over. I then repeated the whole process a couple of years later. It is such a captivating book – although I’m sure my parents got a bit tired of the tears.

What book are you waiting for?

I am a huge Agatha Christie fan and would really love to read a whodunnit style mystery, perhaps with a modern-day Miss Marple at the forefront! My favourite kind of stories are the ones that lead the reader on, believing something which is suddenly turned around in an unexpected twist. That element of surprise and then realisation, wondering how it is possible that you did not see the truth from the start, is something I really enjoy in books.

You are stranded on a desert island. You can choose one luxury item to take with you, one celebrity guest to join you and you will be granted one wish (which you cannot use to wish yourself off the island). What and who do you pick?

My luxury item would be a smoothie making machine, I’m hoping that my island would have a plentiful supply of fruit trees there! My celebrity guest would be the character Jonathan Creek (played by Alan Davies) as he is so clever and interesting and I think his superb ability to solve mind-boggling problems means he’d have great survival skills and could  help me come up with a plan to get home again. My wish would be a school of tame dolphins which I could ride around the island on and could take me away from the island if I tired of Jonathan’s company!

Share your favourite quotation:

First of all, what is your role at the agency?

The Agency is alive with deals being done all over the world and it is my job to document these at the point when they appear here in ££s, €€s and $$s, swiftly transmit the funds to our authors and handle all associated admin, reporting and care.

Which book changed your life?

Eric Berne, Games People Play.  Who knew??

 What book are you waiting for?   

 The next Reacher. (Not sucking up. True).

You are stranded on a desert island. You can choose one luxury item to take with you, one celebrity guest to join you and you will be granted one wish (which you cannot use to wish yourself off the island). What and who do you pick? 

I am reluctant to whisk anyone to a desert island with me – I am scared of mice and not practical.  So, possibly someone dead who might be glad to be doing anything again, maybe Christopher Marlowe, Henry Fielding or Dostoyevsky. Or a childhood companion like Diccon from The Secret Garden in which case my wish would be to be 7 years old. Or I could get over myself and choose Dougie Poynter or Patrick J. Adams and wish to be 17 years old.  My sister would probably ace the luxury item with a spring of fresh water but if it’s allowed I’d choose my bedside table which is equipped with cigarettes, pens, books, a candlestick, phone, writing paper, make-up  – and Volvic.

 Share your favourite quotation:

‘This too will pass.’

First of all, what is your role at the agency?

My official title is Rights Assistant which means I liaise with editors from all over the world about our wonderful titles. I’m responsible for a handful of my own territories, from Iceland to Israel and lots of lovely countries in between. So I talk to masses of very interesting people on a daily basis.

Which book changed your life?

This is a hard one, and I admit I haven’t found this book yet! Out of the many I’ve read, there are a few that really stand out, such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. Each of these books has such amazing, strong characters, which I’ve realised is what I look for in a really good story. I love that they are real, honest human beings, and these books make me think about the way people interact with one another. I especially love the boys in Cannery Row, who are so flawed, but so brilliant!

What book are you waiting for?

Working in foreign rights means I go to the London and Frankfurt book fairs to meet with editors who are on the hunt for the next bestseller. I, and the publishers I meet with, usually have between 15 and 20 appointments a day throughout the fairs, so any book (no matter what genre, or age group) that I can pitch in one exciting, sparkly line that has an interesting or unusual hook, should be a winner.

If you’re an author thinking about submitting to our agency, bearing in mind we get over 300 manuscripts a week, try the elevator pitch before you send in your work; you have 30 seconds to pitch your entire novel.  You could use this pitch in your covering letter. This is a good exercise for any aspiring author (and rights agent!).

You are stranded on a desert island. You can choose one luxury item to take with you, one celebrity guest to join you and you will be granted one wish (which you cannot use to wish yourself off the island). What and who do you pick?

I would have a solar-powered iPod (is there such a thing!?) full of music and the odd audio book. Growing up with Monty Python, then later, his various travel programmes, Michael Palin would be the perfect fellow-strandee. Oh, and he shares my love of maps.

When it comes to the wish it would be a toss-up between unlimited supplies of beer, or sun cream… it would have to be beer – I will just drink in the shade…

Share your favourite quotation:

‘Without deviation from the norm, ‘progress’ is not possible.’  Frank Zappa

First of all, what is your role at the agency?

I’m the crime, thriller, mystery and general fiction agent at the agency.

Which book changed your life?

This is such a tough one…can I change it to what three books changed my life? I can definitely answer that and can still remember exactly where I was when I read the following books.

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell was my first crime book and instantly got me addicted. I read it when I was 14 on holiday near Brighton and from then on I was an addicted crime/thriller reader. Cornwell balances character, spine-chilling story and an incredible insight into forensic pathology brilliantly. And she opened up the market to female writers in the genre. 

Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy is my next favourite and I have read this book about 30 times. Maeve’s characters get under my skin every time. I think Benny is my all time favourite heroine. She’s honest, funny, clever and brave - all things I’d love my daughter to strive to be – which goes against the current emphasis on looks, weight and money. This makes me really sad as I think it makes people overlook what is the most important part of themselves and also, with all the glam and glitter, you’re just making it harder to be truly happy with your real self.

Lastly Polo by Jilly Cooper. I can still remember sneaking this book off the suitably top shelf at home even though my Mum said I couldn’t read it yet. I’d wait until she’d gone out or to bed and read it leaning against my radiator eating Nutella and toast whilst devouring the life of Rupert Campbell Black. For me, this series of books are genius. Jilly Cooper’s characters grabbed me and left me with a cloud of sadness when I finished. I now often suggest to my authors (who you’ll be amused to learn are usually male!) to read her books just to study how she characterises. Although I guess on paper the characters represent everything opposite to what I love about Circle of Friends, at the heart of the story (and all of this series) good always overpowers bad. In all fiction this is vital. I also love how the victorious characters always have a heart of gold and are misunderstood or overlooked by everyone else until they succeed at the end, and this is very like Maeve and Benny. Everyone loves an underdog.

What book are you waiting for?

Anything that surprises, excites and challenges the reader. Wonderful, real, inspiring characters. Tense cliffhangers that keep you up at night and desperate to tell your friends about. In fact the last bit is the best test as when you find something really special it is so incredibly exciting all you want to do is stop every person you pass on the street and make them read it. This feeling is what makes the submission pile so brilliant and a hugely important part of my job.

You are stranded on a desert island. You can choose one luxury item to take with you, one celebrity guest to join you and you will be granted one wish (which you cannot use to wish yourself off the island). What and who do you pick?

My luxury item would be a pair of goggles, I’d definitely take David Attenborough and my wish would be tougher skin as I’m not sure how long my lobster self would survive in the sunshine.

Share your favourite quotation:
‘Crying wolf is a real danger’ David Attenborough

Me between Mary, the Rights Assistant, and Vicki, the Agency Editor

As the Rights Manager, I negotiate deals for translation rights all around the world for all the Agency’s authors. I’m also scouting for new talent and am looking for commercial and accessible literary general fiction and all types of women’s fiction.

Which book changed your life?

My first book

My dad made me my first book. My parents used to call me ‘Boo’ and the book’s called ‘Boo’s Own.’ It’s nearly thirty years old now. The pages are loose and it’s covered in scribbles and all sorts of smudges and stains that show it’s been well used by a small person – like one of those dirty old teddy bears that have been loved so much their stuffing is coming out and they’ve got an eye missing. That book helped me learn to read and write – and I’ve been all about reading and writing ever since.

What book are you waiting for?

I’m looking for books with strong, vivid characters, an excellent plot and a well-balanced pace. I love books with an unusual premise too, like The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Lovely Bones, Room, Before I Go To Sleep, The Road Home and Sister. I’m also excited about The Age of Miracles, but I haven’t read it yet.

You are stranded on a desert island. You can choose one luxury item to take with you, one celebrity guest to join you and you will be granted one wish (which you cannot use to wish yourself off the island). What and who do you pick?

My luxury item would be a Gibson acoustic guitar. My celebrity guest would be the gorgeous George Harrison. My wish would be for a magic bookshelf that replenished itself once a month with the latest bestsellers.

I can’t play guitar but George can – and he knows a few good tunes too.

Share your favourite quotation:

‘Remember, for every no you receive you are one step closer to a yes’ Stephen King

I read all the crime and thriller submissions that we receive at the agency and assess whether they are suitable for us to take on for representation.

Which book changed your life?

The Catcher in the Rye. I read it when I was 9 and it was the first ‘adult’ book I read - and the first one to make me realise that fiction can take you into new worlds far removed from your own life (1950s New York was rather different to 1980s Merseyside).

What book are you waiting for?  

I’d love to read a UK-set police procedural with a complex and engaging main protaganist, pitted against a vicious but cerebral killer. A book that combines the characterisation of George Pelecanos and Ian Rankin with the high-concept plotting of Mark Billingham and the breakneck thrills of Simon Kernick would make my day!

You are stranded on a desert island. You can choose one luxury item to take with you, one celebrity guest to join you and you will be granted one wish (which you cannot use to wish yourself off the island). What and who do you pick?

I would take a bottomless vat of 8-hour cream (I can imagine that all that sunshine would be very drying on the skin …), Adam and Joe for amusement purposes (can they count as one celebrity guest?) and my one wish would be that a mobile library would pop round every Friday to bring me a new selection of books.

Share your favourite quotation:

‘You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me’ C. S. Lewis

First of all, what is your role at the agency?

I am the Agency Editor.

If during the course of a party (or other non-publishing-related social event) I happen to be asked what it is that I actually do for a living I tend to respond with something along the lines of: ‘I sit in a chair all day and read books’.

To be specific I read all women’s, children’s, young adult and general fiction submissions that come in to the agency and look out for anything particularly exciting. I also provide personal feedback and editorial support to new writers at the agency to make sure that their work is in tip-top condition when we take it to publishers.

But yes, basically, I sit in a chair all day and read books.

Which book changed your life?

Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile. Let me explain.

One day  when I was about seven my very clever friend, Fiona, who was also about seven at the time sat down next to me in the reading corner of our classroom on one of those large animal shaped cushions that seem to frequent reading corners in most primary schools and she read The Enormous Crocodile to me.

Fiona was an honourable member of the blue table (a position of the highest esteem that only seated four) and I, who had never yet been introduced to Mr Dahl, was not. To be honest, I was having a spot of bother with this whole reading malarkey that all the grownups seemed so keen to get me interested in.

On this day, however, I remember being stunned by this wonderfully weird book. It talked so graphically about ingesting small children while still managing to be friendly and it provided such brilliant potential for funny voices.

And what’s more it was not being read to me by one of those impossibly tall and shouty grownup creatures, this was one of my peers. This was my friend Fiona, who I was actually a little bit taller than at the time.

What a revolutionary idea. We didn’t need the grownups. No waiting for story time or bedtime or any of the other timeframes that the tall ones forced upon us daily. We could take the stories for our own. 

I’m sure my love of reading came from other places too and I’m pretty certain that all the hard work my parents put in before and after this moment should take some credit. Not to mention my mother’s insistence that I see an optician shortly after this time. An optician who informed us that one of my eyes wasn’t pulling its weight and placed a strange contraption he called glasses on my face to help me clearly see the words on the page. I think that probably helped too.

But, in my heartlessly self-centred seven-year-old’s mind, that moment was cemented as the important one for me. If Roald Dahl had never given us this book I might never have learnt to love reading and my life would have been so much less bright.

What book are you waiting for?

Any book with story and character. Get a good idea, write a gripping story around it and tell it with engaging and exciting characters. That’s the most important thing. Tell a good story with good characters and submit it to us. We’ll be in touch the moment we’ve finished jumping up and down and yelling ‘we’ve found it! We’ve found the one!’

You are stranded on a desert island. You can choose one luxury item to take with you, one celebrity guest to join you and you will be granted one wish (which you cannot use to wish yourself off the island). What and who do you pick?

My luxury item would be the shipwreck that they have at their disposal in The Swiss Family Robinson film so I can build that awesome tree house (water system, pipe organ, removable roof and all). I think I could survive happily anywhere if I had that tree house.

My celebrity guest of the moment would definitely be Jason Segel. I always liked him in How I Met Your Mother but then he made the latest Muppets movie happen and I fell in love. I’m sure we would be perfectly contented singing Rainbow Connection together in the tropical sunshine all day long.

And of course I’m wishing for magic powers because I strongly believe in the logic of wishing for more wishes. To be specific (as you always should be when it comes to wishing) I want those magic powers to include teleportation, telekinesis, invisibility, finding out knowledge that I don’t already know when I need to the know it (a sort of Google of the mind), the ability to fly and it would probably be useful to be able to make fire and light. Magic powers might also help me build that tree house.

Share your favourite quotation:

‘The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms’ Muriel Rukeyser

We would like to officially welcome you to the Darley Anderson Blog!

Are you excited? We are. We’ve never had a blog before.

To begin with we thought it was only right that we properly introduce ourselves. Over the course of the next two weeks we will be doing just that in a feature we’re calling ‘Getting to Know Us’. Everyone on the Darley Anderson team will be answering five incredibly probing questions about themselves and we’ll be starting with Vicki Le Feuvre, our sparkling and brilliant Agency Editor. For any aspiring writers out there we would really like to speak to you in particular. We will be posting advice tailor-made for you, to help with your writing as well as familiarising you with the sometimes intimidating process of submitting your work to literary agents. We will also be using this blog to let you know exactly what submissions we are looking for and what books we most love to read.

Over the coming weeks we will be focusing on the often dreaded covering letter. It strikes us that writing a covering letter for a submission may well be one of the most challenging writing exercises known to man. If you are having any trouble or just want a few useful tips this is the place to come. We will be giving you weekly snippets of advice to help you get started filling that blank page with the right words to get us as excited about your work as you are.

Also be sure to keep a weather eye out for the exclusive giveaways we have planned for you very soon.

So that was our first blog entry. I hope you liked it.

But enough about us, what about you? Is there a question you would like to ask us? If there is, leave a comment or email a question to assistant@darleyanderson.com