Nicola Vincent-Abnett

Nicola Vincent-Abnett
"Savant" for Solaris, Wild's End, Further Associates of Sherlock Holms, more Wild's End

Saturday 31 March 2012

So... About that Agent


Last night...
I dreamt... No, that’s not it, although it does feel as if I was dreaming.
The husband was having a snarky afternoon and wandered into the drawing room yesterday, around teatime, where I was running edits. He wanted to talk about his snark, and I’m always happy to listen, but I was distracted. What I wanted to say was, “You think you’re snarky? I’m going nuts waiting for this agent to get back to me. It’s been...” And that’s when my ‘you’ve got mail’ ping... well... pinged.
There it was, the e-mail that I’d been waiting for. It had been 27 days, don’t think I didn’t count them, since a lovely agent had asked me for a full manuscript of “Naming Names”. I had two thoughts. One was that it’s not a long novel, and if said agent needed 27 days to think about it, there were clearly problems with it, and the other, more charitably, was that agents are busy people, especially agents as successful as this one is, and I should let said agent get on with agenting clients, because, if I was one of them, that’s what I’d want rather than someone scratching around for new talent all the time.
Either way, the lovely agent had sent me an e-mail. Naturally, the word that jumped off the page was the ‘however’ that began the second paragraph. It rather spoilt my enjoyment of all the wonderful things the lovely agent said about “Names” in the first paragraph.
I read the whole thing to myself and then to the husband, who had offered to leave, bless him, so that I could read the mail in private, but who stayed because I suspected I’d need his support. I shed a tear, but only one, and all thoughts of feeling snarky about anything disappeared from the husband’s splendid head.

3 comments:

  1. The next one, or the one after that, won't have any 'however' at all.

    I say shoo to those 'howevers'.
    Kaaron

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  2. My first novel Kultus was rejected by 24 publishers and 4 agents (a further 8 never bothered to reply to my query letters) before it was finally taken on. Hope this helps ;)

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  3. hope it wasn't a boojum! not that it's anything some straight silver can't handle ;) as we say down these ways ... kia kaha! \m/

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