Carole Blake at ChipLitFest: Pitch the Agent

Originally published as a blog post by Emma Lee-Potter, author of three novels, a children’s book and five novellas. She has been a Costa Book Awards judge, has driven across the equator in a Land Rover and interviewed Richard Branson 40 thousand feet above the Atlantic! Emma writes about news, education, books and family and you can visit her website here: http://www.emmaleepotter.com/.

Carole Blake is the doyenne of literary agents. She has worked in publishing for 50 years, started her own literary agency in 1977 and has a star-studded list of clients that includes the likes of Peter James, Barbara Erskine and Sheila O'Flanagan.

She’s also the author of From Pitch to Publication: Everything You Need to Know to Get Your Novel Published, a must-read for writers. Carole is currently writing an updated version, due out in 2015.

At this year’s Chipping Norton Literary Festival Carole teamed up with Wannabe a Writer author Jane Wenham-Jones to present a literary-style Dragons’ Den event. The session was entitled 'Wannabe a Writer – Pitch the Agent' and challenged aspiring writers to submit 1,000 words of their novels for Carole to critique. Five brave individuals were shortlisted and Carole gave her verdict in front of a live audience.

Carole is second to none when it comes to giving advice and guidance to authors and the audience scribbled feverishly as she spoke. Writers agonise about their synopses when submitting work to agents but Carole said that she always reads the chapters first “to find out if someone can write.” She emphasised, however, that a synopsis must include the ending of the novel.

As she talked about the shortlisted writers’ work a host of dos and don'ts emerged along the way. Here are some of them:

•  “If you are a genius you can break all the rules but be sure that you are a genius before you break them”
• Beware of using coincidence as a key part of your plot
• “We don’t necessarily need a shining, sparkling hero but we need to admire him rather than think he’s a twerp”
• “You need a bit more drama and a bit less melodrama”
• “Characters are more important than plot”
• “If you try to please too many people you will end up with something that doesn't appeal to anybody at all”

The session ended with Jane asking Carole for one key “nugget of wisdom to take away.” Carole, who receives up to 25 submissions from writers a day (including Saturdays, Sundays and even Christmas Day) didn't hesitate. Do your homework, she said, pointing to the wealth of information on literary agents’ websites about what they are looking for. Carole herself takes on few new clients these days but states on the Blake Friedmann website that she is interested in “good quality commercial and literary fiction, contemporary or historical.” The guidance couldn't be clearer yet writers still persist in sending her everything, from children’s books to science fiction.

“Given how easy it is to find out information these days do a lot of homework first,” she said. “There is nothing more guaranteed to get a fast rejection than if you enrage the agent.”

Emma's latest book, LOVE AND LAUGHTER, was published in November 2013 and is available here. 

Benjamin Johncock’s BURNING BLUE sold to Picador USA!

Benjamin Johncock’s incredible debut, BURNING, BLUE, has been bought at auction by Elizabeth Bruce of Picador USA, to be published in Summer 2015.

BURNING, BLUE is a stunning evocation of the life of an US astronaut, Jim Harrison, in the 1950/60s Space Race, and the excitement of being chosen to fly into space paralleled alongside terrible personal tragedy wrought upon Jim, his wife, and their marriage.

Ben’s short fiction has been published by The Junket and The Fiction Desk, and in 2012 he won an American Literary Merit Award and the National Short Story Day competition. He received a grant from Arts Council England to write BURNING, BLUE, his first novel.

Where in the World is Margie Orford!

Picture by Brooke Fasani

When we ask Margie Orford where she’s been lately, she laughs ruefully and says, “I feel like the Johnny Cash song—I've been everywhere.” Far from an understatement, this energetic author, activist and PEN Vice President has spent the last few months in a whirlwind of events across the world.

In February, she visited Ethiopia as the South African PEN’s executive Vice President.  At Ethiopian PEN’s Conference on Freedom of Expression, she spoke on how to cultivate a human rights culture in a post-conflict society.  A vocal commentator on issues of violence against women and the challenges of post-apartheid South Africa, her article on the Oscar Pistorius case has been featured in the Guardian and the New York Times and widely quoted. 

She went on to spend March on tour in Norway, publicising the Norwegian translation of the first title in her Clare Hart crime series Daddy’s Girl, and appeared on primetime television with Belinda Bauer. See more on Margie and other female crime writers in Norway here. In an interview with Asbjørn Slettemark, she talks about South Africa’s complex society, the Clare Hart series and her favourite South African crime novels and films.

Moving from Norway to a PEN event in Glasgow in April, she took part on a panel discussing freedom of speech and modern censorship with Anne Enright. She also met with her UK and international publishers in London during the 2014 London Book Fair.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Harper Witness Impulse have released Margie’s first US publication, LIKE CLOCKWORK, and other Clare Hart titles will follow in quick succession this year. She has recently been interviewed on NPR about the Pistorius trial – listen to a podcast here. Margie will be back in the UK in August to appear at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  

 Margie Orford, who has been described as 'the Queen of South African Crime Fiction', was born in London and grew up in Namibia, the setting for BLOOD ROSE which is also optioned for film. A Fulbright Scholar, she was educated in South Africa and the United States. She is Executive Vice-President of South African PEN, the patron of Rape Crisis and of the children's book charity, the Little Hands Trust. She lives in Cape Town. 

Praise for Margie Orford and WATER MUSIC:

‘Margie Orford writes with great human insight, at times with poetic beauty, and always the ever-present deep, dark undertow of menace.’ – Peter James

'Orford plots so brilliantly that to stop reading is as harrowing as to carry on.' – Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph

‘Clare Hart is back, and she returns in style… the tension racks up, and up, and up… WATER MUSIC should see Orford win many, many more fans, and she’s not exactly short of them already. Read it.’ – The Big Issue

‘I loved the twists and turns of this book and the truly unknowable nature of the next chapter.’ – Lizzi Thomasson,The Bookseller

‘Margie Orford's WATER MUSIC is fascinated with the way cultural and political pressures affect criminal behaviour... Orford has a rare ability to get under the skin of the genre's conventions.’—Irish Times

‘Another in this excellent South African series.’ –Literary Review

Follow Margie Orford on twitter

Visit Margie's website

ARCHIPELAGO shortlisted for the Orion Book Award

ARCHIPELAGO by Monique Roffey, US: Penguin

Monique Roffey’s acclaimed novel ARCHIPELAGO has been selected as one of four finalists in the 2014 Orion Book Awards. This award is given annually to books published in North America that address the human relationship with the natural world in a fresh, thought-provoking, and engaging manner. Other fiction finalists are Margaret Atwood, Abby Geni and Rick Bass.  

Orion Magazine will announce the winner in the second week of May. Previous shortlisters include Karen Russell, Barbara Kingsolver, Robert MacFarlane and Helon Habila and the most recent winner was APOCALYPTIC PLANET by Craig Childs. More on the award can be seen here.

ARCHIPELAGO won the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Jamaican author Olive Senior, chair of the judging committee, spoke of ARCHIPELAGO as containing ‘an exploration of the greater Caribbean space in which is embedded a real-life story of trauma, loss and ultimately redemption that is both contemporary and uplifting.'

Roffey’s hauntingly beautiful novel follows the psychological and geographical journey of a man, his daughter and their dog as they flee the destruction of their home and take to ‘the green and turquoise leopard print sea.’

ARCHIPELAGO was published in the US by Penguin and in the UK by Simon and Schuster. Brazilian, Czech and Slovak, Portuguese and Norwegian rights have been sold. Roffey’s new novel HOUSE OF ASHES will be published in the UK by Simon and Schuster in July 2014.

See more about Monique Roffey here.

Praise for Monique Roffey:

‘One to place on the shelf next to Moby Dick … A masterful writer.’ – Publisher’s Weekly

‘Arresting . . . Strikingly vivid . . . ARCHIPELAGO beautifully evokes the pared-back rawness of being adrift, at the mercy of nature, first by accident and then by design.’ 
—Maria Crawford, Financial Times

‘Engrossing . . . ARCHIPELAGO washes over the reader’s imagination with the force of a tidal wave as its protagonists embark on a perilous journey along the Caribbean Sea. The novel shows what remains in the heart when we have lost what we love, and the inner resources needed to rebuild a life from its ruins.” —Anita Sethi, The Independent

ARCHIPELAGO  is lovely: a novel full of sensual, elemental description, soaked in loss and damage and softly haunted by the Caribbean’s bloody history of slavery.’ —Claire Allfree, Metro  

Catch Carole Blake at festivals around the country this spring!

Blake Friedmann founder and Pandora Award-winning Carole Blake will be appearing at a variety of literary festivals in the upcoming months.

On Sunday 27 April, she will be running an event  at Chipping Norton Literary Festival. With Jane Wenham-Jones, “Wannabe a Writer? – Pitch the Agent” takes place at The Methodist Church Hall, and tickets are available here.

On Thursday 15 May, Carole will be advising visitors of the Swindon Festival of Literature on how to get their novel published. This will be at 6:30 in the Swindon Arts Centre, and tickets are available through Swindon Theatres.

At the West Cork Literary Festival, Carole will be doing a session on Publishing Today and How To Get Published. The Festival runs from 10-13 July, and further details will be announced on their website nearer the time.