Category: Uncategorized

Finding an agent the second time round!

I signed with literary agent Kate Burke in 2019. It wasn’t easy to find an agent back then. When Kate and I parted ways in 2024, I didn’t realise it would be even harder to find an agent the second time round!

I feel incredibly lucky to have had Kate as my agent. Her extensive editorial advice helped shape my debut thriller Shiver into as commercial a novel as possible. She even came up with the title at 3am one morning! She went on to sell Shiver in a ten-publisher auction in the UK, which was beyond my wildest dreams. I’m also extremely grateful to Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. Their amazing foreign rights team sold Shiver to 24 territories. TV and film agent Julian Friedmann sold the TV option. Read my blog post about how I got my first agent, including my actual query letter, here.

I got a 2-book deal. Kate gave me extensive editorial help with Book 2, The Bay (titled The Swell in North America.) She also helped me with book 3, a wilderness thriller set in New Zealand, but it was a tricky time in the thriller market, which was becoming over-saturated and she felt I should take the book in a direction I didn’t feel capable of writing. For months, I was stuck in limbo. I was also aware that over time, my taste and Kate’s had diverged. In June 2024, when she raised the idea of us parting ways, explaining she felt she’d taken me as far as she could take me, I agreed this was the best option.

It felt like the end of an era. I’d spent a whole year writing book 3. Being told it wasn’t sellable in the current market was devastating. And also terrifying! I’d been a full-time writer for five years. As a single mum, I needed to make an income. I’d lost all my confidence as a writer, so I tried to go back to teaching, but this wasn’t easy after so long out of the profession and I mostly ended up classroom assisting, part time, which didn’t cover my cost of living. I was lucky enough to have savings from my previous book deal to fall back on, but I knew they wouldn’t last forever.

I’m so grateful to the family and friends – in real life and online – who cheered me on through this time. I felt like I was at rock bottom for a month or two. I did a couple of reiki courses, a course in transcendental meditation and read a whole lot of self-help books. I also took a couple of short online courses with Curtis Brown Creative. I’d taken 3 of their short courses back in 2017-2018 and found them incredibly helpful (Start writing your novel, Write to the End, and Edit and Pitch.) This time, I studied their psychological thriller course with the amazing Erin Kelly and their Writing for TV course, which were excellent and really inspiring. I finally picked up enough confidence to revisit an older manuscript – another snowy thriller. 

(I love this photo. The two figures nearest to the camera are my mum and dad!)

Querying my new snowy thriller.

I’d just signed up to BBC Maestro and taken Lee Child’s Writing Popular Fiction course. (I really recommend these courses! For the price – I paid about $150 for a year’s subscription, allowing access to all courses – they are well worth it!) Lee Child says there’s a MASSIVE difference between a bad agent and a great one. A great agent will create your career, safeguard it, shepherd it, and be eager and attentive to every detail. But how do you find a great agent?

Researching agents.

I began by listing the agents of my favourite authors. Some authors link in their agent on X or other social media platforms. Some mention their agent on their author website. I had to Google others: who is X represented by? Most authors also thank their agents in the acknowledgements section of their books.

My goal is to make a living from my writing. Not an easy goal. 90% of writers have a day job. Like the first time round, I decided to target UK agents first. I’m a Brit and my new snowy thriller features British main characters. I moved to Australia twenty years ago, but the UK has a far bigger book market and far more agents than Australia. I knew I needed to target a bigger market than just Australia to have any chance of writing full time. Of course, the US is a bigger market still, but neither me nor my current project have any links to the US, otherwise I would have tried my hand at finding an American agent.

Once I had a longlist of UK agents, I visited their agency websites. Most have a page detailing what each agent is currently looking for (their ‘wishlist,’) favourite books (and sometimes TV shows and movies), what genres they accept and most importantly if they’re currently open to submissions. If I liked what I saw, I checked out the agent’s clients. Some agents have huge client lists. That tended to put me off. If they had more than 100 clients, who might each write a book a year, how would they have time for me? Some agents don’t edit. I hoped to find an editorial agent – but if an agent had over 100 clients, would they have time to edit or even read my work? (Several writer friends have confessed to me they don’t think their agent has read any of their work!) Other agents only have a few clients. New agents might be full of energy and enthusiasm and have more time available to help their clients, but would they have the contacts and experience necessary to shape my book and deliver it to the most suitable editor at different publishing houses? It’s clearly a tricky balance. As for the clients: were they big sellers? Had they got big deals? Had I read any of their books? If so, I could mention it in my query letter. And if I loved some of the authors the agent represents, it suggested we might share similar taste, which was my top requirement.

After that, I checked out each agent’s social media posts on X and/or Instagram, and/or their personal website or blog if they had one. Did we have anything in common? Did they mention a subgenre or theme of story they were particularly looking for right now? Then I googled each agent and often found interviews with them on author blogs, publishing websites, literary consultancy blogs and podcasts. (See the list of resources at the end.) I also googled the agent’s name and ‘MSWL’ (Manuscript Wish List) to search for lists of what they’d love to find.

I ended up with a long list of possible agents. But who would be best-placed to sell my work? Wanting more information, I subscribed to The Bookseller, the UK’s biggest publishing publication. You can only read 2 free articles per month unless you pay for a subscription. One month’s subscription cost me 17 GBP, about $40 AUD. I spent several days researching agents on my list on The Bookseller, looking at their recent deals and other articles about their careers. Many agents previously worked in publishing houses as editors. I see this as a huge advantage. If they’ve been an editor and buyer for a major publishing house, they will have fantastic editorial skills and know exactly what publishers are looking for and might have great publishing contacts.

Also on the Bookseller website, check out the London and Frankfurt book fair hotlists. These highlight a few titles from each agency, the genre and premise of each book and the agent selling it. They provide a fascinating snapshot of upcoming titles and which agent is selling them – and also show how important a catchy one-line premise is. It’s such a skill coming up with a hooky one-line premise. I added more agents to my list.

With North America being such a huge market, I wanted a clearer idea of what was happening there, so I also subscribed to Publishers Marketplace – just a Quick Pass which allows 24 hours access to their site, or fifty Page Requests, for $10 USD.

I spent a few hours trawling through recent thriller deals and noted the names of UK – and Australian and American agents doing the deals. It offered an interesting insight of what was selling and what was hot in North America.

After that, I spent a whole day ranking the agents on my list according to how much I liked them, to decide who to submit to first. It was a tricky balance between agents who had similar taste to me, experience, and enough time to take on more clients.

All this research took considerable time! My brain works best in the mornings so I tried to reserve the mornings for working on my manuscript and do my research in the afternoons. I also began to put together my submission package.

The submission package

Once I had my shortlist, I returned to each agent’s website, to check they were still open to submissions and see how they wanted authors to submit work. Some agents want the first three chapters, others want the first 30 or 50 pages or first 10,000 words, some let you choose between several options. Some agents want submissions via email; others want submissions via a form on their agency website.

Query Letter

The query letter is a very important document. I edited and polished mine over several weeks. Agents want to know why you are submitting to them, so I included a personalised paragraph for each particular agent.

Eg. I feel we have very similar taste

I love the books of your clients X and Y

I saw you are looking for XYZ

I heard you love a certain subgenre/theme/topic.

My query letter consisted of a sentence giving the title, genre, word count and catchy one-liner about my book. I’ve heard from many sources that a catchy one-line pitch is CRUCIAL right now.

My letter began:

Dear X

Sleeping With the Enemy on ice.

I seek representation for (TITLE), a psychological thriller of 80,000 words that I hope could sit beside Ruth Ware, Lucy Clarke and Amy McCulloch.

This was followed by 3 paragraphs:
1: an enticing blurb about my book
2: a paragraph about why I chose that agent
3: a paragraph about me and my writing credentials.

I won’t share my query letter since this book hasn’t sold yet, but see my query letter for Shiver, which got me my first agent here.

The Synopsis

The synopsis is widely considered one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to write! UK agents typically want a one-page synopsis. In Times New Roman size 12 font (the industry standard), this works out as 450-550 words, if you use single line spacing with line gap between paragraphs as I do. My synopsis is a clear and simple outline of my story including major twists, spoilers and the ending. At the top, I write in italics: includes spoilers! Just to warn any agents who might prefer not to know the spoilers until they’ve read the whole manuscript. Knowing how hard synopses are, I started mine years ago, before I’d even finished writing the story. Over the years, I’ve sent this synopsis to multiple writer friends for feedback and revised it many times over.  

The sample chapters

I edited and polished my whole manuscript many times over. I’m lucky enough to have some amazing beta readers who read and critique my work in return for me doing the same for them. They’d offered extremely helpful advice, which I used to shape the manuscript. I edited the opening chapters even more. I didn’t want typos or bad writing to distract from the story and put agents off.

I submitted to two agents at the top of my list and waited a couple of weeks. Radio silence so I submitted to four more. I got an immediate full request from one, so I then advised all the others that I’d had a full request. This is standard procedure. I couldn’t inform one agent as they were only contactable via their online system. Within hours, I received another request for the full. Then another.

It was the Frankfurt book fair the following week. This and the London Book Fair are extremely busy times for agents so I guessed I’d have a long wait. Agents and the publishing industry as a whole seem to mostly shut down over the Christmas period and during August – so this is probably another time to avoid submitting, or if you do sub, don’t except a prompt response.

Even so, I checked my inbox a million times a day. Querying is a frustrating and often devastating process that requires much patience, resilience and determination. It took six weeks to get a reply. A rejection, sadly. The agent was full of praise but said she’d been hoping for a final shocking twist, which is one of the things she always wants to find in a thriller. I was grateful to get feedback, made careful note of it and tried to see how to revise my manuscript accordingly. One agent who requested the full still didn’t get back to me, to this day, 9 months later. The takeaway: don’t wait too long – you might be waiting forever.

I subbed to another four agents on my list, after checking each was still open to submissions. I got more rejections, another full request, and another rejection.

Stats for this manuscript: ten subs, four full requests.

Querying my New Zealand wilderness thriller

In the meantime, I returned to revising my original Book 3, a wilderness thriller set in New Zealand. The year-long break helped me see it with fresh eyes. My amazing beta-readers had also read it and offered feedback. I spent a few months editing, prepared a query letter and synopsis and researched agents again. I still liked the agents who’d rejected my previous manuscript so I sent it to some of them. One of the agents who’d read the full of my first manuscript asked for the full of this one. I was so excited. I checked my email every day. Finally, over three months later, a request for a phone call. I was overjoyed. I let the other agents know I had a phone call request, and one agent immediately requested the full.

After an hour-long phone-call, the first agent rejected me. I hadn’t heard of this happening before. I think it was because I mentioned ideas for future books that were in subgenres they didn’t represent. The other agent with the full also rejected me. On the plus side, they were positive about the story, had loved the pitch and both offered very helpful feedback, some of which I actioned right away, the rest I made careful note of for future drafts.

Devastated, I searched for more agents. Again, my writing buddies were an amazing support at this time. One of them sent me regular gossipy emails about his own querying experiences. He mentioned literary agent Stephanie Glencross at David Higham Associates. I googled her and loved what I saw. I don’t know why I hadn’t spotted her earlier! She might have been closed to submissions when I first searched. Stephanie represents thrillers and crime novels exclusively, is very editorial, has a short list and most importantly, we seemed to share the same taste. (Takeaway – reach out to other writers, especially querying writers. Pool knowledge!)

I immediately subbed chapters to Stephanie. When she requested the full a few hours later, I nearly fell off my chair. It was Friday evening, so I didn’t expect to hear back for a while but on Sunday, she emailed, apologising for emailing on a Sunday, and offered representation. Without even a phone-call! I hadn’t heard of this happening before. I requested a few days to let the other agents who had my chapters know I’d had an offer, out of courtesy to them. I also asked Stephanie two questions:

a) How ready did she think my story was for submission?
b) What changes did she suggest?

I knew this second question was really putting her on the spot, as she’d only had a short time to read it, but her editorial suggestions were fantastic, raising issues I’d already wondered about and other suggestions that felt very valid. I was completely on board with all her changes. One week later, I happily accepted.

Then I met Stephanie via Zoom. She was full of enthusiasm for my New Zealand thriller – it turned out she loves New Zealand, and I think this gave me a big advantage. You never know what connections you’ll find with agents, as there’s only so much you can find out online. If you keep on revising your story and submitting it, hopefully you’ll eventually get lucky and find someone who loves it.
Stats for my New Zealand thriller: 15 submissions, 3 full requests, 1 offer of representation.

Anyway, I’m absolutely thrilled to have Stephanie representing me and excited (and nervous) about the next stage.

What I did right:

In my six-month break from writing, I kept reading! I read a lot!

I kept beta-reading and critiquing other people’s work. It’s WAY easier to fix other people’s work than your own, right?! It helped me pick up my confidence again.

I kept studying: short courses on writing as well as books on writing.

I spent A LOT of time researching agents. I think this was time well spent because a) it helped ensure I submitted to the best agents for me personally and b) it increased my chances of success because I was able to really personalise my query letters.

I reached out to friends (real life and online) for advice and support.

What I did wrong:

My confidence was crushed. It’s very common for writers (even published writers) to write books that don’t sell but it hit me really hard and took me way too long to pick up my confidence and try again. I wish I’d been a bit tougher.

I should have done more journaling! It might have been useful therapy as well as writing practice.

I also regret waiting so long for certain individual agents to get back to me when I should have been submitting to more agents.

Tips for finding an agent:

  1. Don’t wait too long for a response from agents. You could be waiting forever! Submit in small batches (perhaps 4 agents). When rejections arrive, consider revising your manuscript then get it out again as soon as possible.
  2. Don’t give up too soon. Taste is so personal. Keep on trying. But at the same time, try to be objective about your work. Sometimes the timing is just wrong. A particular book just isn’t right for the current market, or an agent is too busy to take on new clients.
  3. Read! Read new releases in your genre (and subgenre) to understand what’s selling and why! Analyse them! Scour book reviews in magazines and newspapers. Read any books that sound similar to yours. Browse Twitter (X) regularly for book deals for books that will be coming out next year. Keep up to date with the market.
  4. Subscribe to the Bookseller if you’re subbing to UK agents, and/or Publishers’ Marketplace if you’re subbing to North American agents. It’s not cheap but it’s a useful investment that will help you understand the market and see trends.
  5. Never write to a trend. I believe we can only write what we feel passionately about – something we love to read. If you write to a trend, by the time you’ve finished writing your book, the trend might well have ended or the market might be oversaturated.
  6. Read outside your genre. Check the bestseller lists to find popular novels in other genres and see what you can learn from them. E.g. I started reading romantasy when it began to trend and was surprised by how much I loved it as I don’t tend to read or enjoy fantasy. Romantasy reviewers often rave about these books giving them ‘all the feels.’ I realised I loved ‘the feels’ too and decided even thrillers could benefit from a few ‘feels.’
  7. Be strong. Be prepared for highs (if you’re lucky) and lows (likely plenty of them.) Writing is a very bumpy road. Querying can be a tough, brutal, soul destroying and frustrating. Be resilient. Be determined. Don’t give up.

Useful resources:

Query Tracker is packed with info on agents and publishers and it’s free.

Jericho Writers is a treasure trove of has information on agents and writing – some free – and offers courses, mentoring and editing.

Manuscript Wishlist offers a search tool for agents who take each subgenre, useful blog posts and much more.

Mswishlist has up-to-date wish-lists of agents.

The Blue Pencil Literary Consultancy has some useful agent interviews.

There are over 100 interviews with agents (mostly US) on the Darling Axe blog.

There are fascinating interviews with agents (and other publishing professionals) on UK crime writer JS Clerk’s blog.

Page One Podcast has useful interviews with writers and publishing professionals including agents, on all aspects of publishing – including how various writers (including me, first time around!) found our agents.

The Honest Authors podcast is a British podcast by two bestselling UK authors, Holly Seddon and Gillian McAllister on all aspects of writing.

In Suspense is a fantastic podcast for crime and thriller fiction run by authors Nikki Smith and Lesley Kara.

My First Book Deal has agent news, interviews and competitions.

The Not So Secret Agents Blog features articles on different aspects of publishing and agenting from UK literary agents at the Blair Partnership.

US Editor Alyssa Matesic makes some really useful posts on X on all aspects of publishing and editing as well as YouTube videos

The Word Count Podcast follows the writing journeys of three Australian authors who share all aspects of writing and publishing.

Buy my books here:

SHIVER from Bookshop.org USA

SHIVER from Bookshop.org UK

THE SWELL from Bookshop.org USA

THE BAY from Bookshop.org UK

Best of luck to everyone querying!

Beach-set thrillers

I’m a huge fan of novels with interesting settings. And I LOVE beach settings!
I wrote an article for CrimeReads.com about why the beach makes such a great setting for a thriller. Read it here!


Here are the books I mention in my article:

The Beach by Alex Garland

The Hunted by Roz Nay

The Survivors by Jane Harper

The Honeymoon by Tina Seskis

The Castaways by Lucy Clarke

No Escape by Lucy Clarke

Hell Bay by Kate Rhodes

How to Kill your Best Friend by Lexie Elliot

The Resort (The Dive is the UK title) by Sara Ochs

All the different covers of SHIVER!

I’m so thrilled that my debut thriller SHIVER has sold in 24 territories and been translated into 23 languages.
Here are all the different covers so far. Which one is your favourite?

Top row: UK super advance cover, UK hardback, North American, Australian, UK paperback, French, Portuguese.
Second row: Italian, Spanish, German, Romanian, French Livre du Poche, Finnish, Czech,
Third row: Polish, Greek, English Large Print, Norwegian, Dutch, Bulgarian, Estonian.
Bottom row: Russian, Croatian, Japanese, Serbian, Slovakian, Hungarian, Chinese.

It has also sold in Turkey but I haven’t seen their cover yet. It blows me away to see all the different designs. Some of them use a different alphabet so I can’t even recognise my own name!

I’m so grateful to all my publishers, my amazing agent Kate Burke and the incredible foreign rights team at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency.

How an accident inspired my latest novel.

When you’re an author, life events, good or bad, often make it into your writing. They can even inspire a whole novel.

Three years ago, I was surfing at my local beach when my board smashed me hard in the side of the head. I felt myself starting to black out, but fought it, because I was in deep water and feared I would drown. I clung tightly to my surfboard and made it in to the beach lying on my board. Apart from a growing egg-sized lump on my head, I didn’t feel too bad.

But that afternoon, as I sat at home with an ice pack, I noticed strange gaps in my vision. I rushed to a local optician who freaked out and said my retina was detaching. So I rushed to Emergency, but it turned out my retina was merely loose. If a retina comes detached, emergency surgery is needed to save your vision but if it’s just loose, there’s nothing they can do, and once loose it will always be loose. To my relief, my vision soon returned to normal, apart from a few strange floaters.

But the next day my brain started to scramble. It was the weirdest feeling. Time seemed to slow and I realised I struggling to form thoughts. I headed back to Emergency for a CT scan. The doctor diagnosed delayed concussion and wanted to keep me in hospital but I’m a single mum of two young kids, so he reluctantly allowed me to go home, with strict instructions to rest. I also had to get a rota of kind friends to phone me at two hourly intervals through that first night, to check I could wake up.

Apart from relief, my main reaction was annoyance. “How long until I can surf again?”

It’s the same every time I injure myself. I imagine it’s the same for anyone who loves a sport.

The doctor looked at me like I was mad and told me: 14 days.

I waited 14 days. Then, feeling guilty and reckless and selfish, I went surfing again on day 15. I was cautious, knowing another head injury could be serious.

I was supposed to be writing my next book but I didn’t have the concentration to even read. My concentration took months to improve and I had to train myself to avoid distractions. I still struggle to multi-task. I can’t listen to music while I read or drive, and loud noises and bright light bother me more than they used to.

A few months later, just as I thought I was in the clear, I went for a deep-sand run and completely lost the vision in one eye. Maybe my brain overheated or got too shaken around. I rushed back to Emergency thinking my retina had detached, but it was apparently a brain issue not an eye issue and my retina was still merely loose. My vision returned a few hours later but I still have occasional vision issues.

I’ve done myself a fair bit of damage over the years, from the sports I’ve done, but this is my most serious injury to date. Naturally the accident inspired the book I was writing. Sport is good for you, they tell us. But my accident made me question this. What if (like me) the sports you enjoy are dangerous ones that smash you up?😅Is surfing good for me or is it an unhealthy, dangerous addiction? That got me thinking about where my limit would be – and where that limit might be for other people. How far might someone go to pursue their addiction? What price might they pay to continue surfing?

Then I began thinking about the different ways sports can damage us: the physical and mental trauma that accidents can cause. In The Bay / The Swell, a group of young keen surfers have claimed a remote Australian beach as their own. Surfing and other sports have damaged them in different ways, but they will do whatever it takes to keep surfing.

KENNA lost the love of her life in a surfing accident.
MIKKI’s addiction to surfing has torn her from family and friends.
JACK lives in constant pain from his accident.
VICTOR has PTSD from his accident.
RYAN uses surfing as a means to opt out of real life.

I love damaged characters. Trap them together and who knows what they might do?

The Bay is out now in the UK and ANZ. It’s out in North America under the title title The Swell.

Thrillers with a strong sense of place

I love thrillers with a strong sense of place, especially ones set in dangerous natural environments. Here are some of my favourites!

@ericaferencik‘s thrillers always have THE most unique settings! #TheRiverAtNight is set on a raging remote river in Maine, where a group of female friends are white-water rafting. It’s possibly my favourite thriller ever! #IntoTheJungle is set in the Bolivian Amazon. It’s full of natural dangers from anacondas and jaguars to poisonous plants. Her latest, #GirlInIce is set in the Arctic.

I love Jane Harper’s novels which all have different settings, from the parching heat of #TheDry, to the lush green national park of #ForceOfNature, to the stormy windswept beach of #TheSurvivors, all equally vividly described.

Sarah Pearse creates the most sinister settings ever! Her debut #TheSanatorium is set in a hotel that used to be a TB sanatorium, her latest #TheRetreat is set on a rocky island known as Reaper’s Rock, which has a very dark history.

Ruth Ware’s books all have very different settings too. Her debut #InADarkDarkWood, set on a hen party at an isolated house surrounded by dense forest, was one of the books that got me hooked on psychological thrillers! The settings are all intense in Lucy Foley’s novels too. I loved the remote hunting lodge in far north Scotland of #TheHuntingParty, complete with icy lake, creepy forest and sinister statues.

Karen Dionne’s #TheMarshKingsDaughter (titled Home in the UK) is set on a harsh, freezing marsh far from civilisation. The author drew off her experiences living off the land for three years with her young family, building a cabin and homesteading. No wonder the setting feels so authentic. #TheWickedSister is set mostly at a remote hunting lodge surrounded by wilderness, complete with wolves and bears.

Australian author @shelleyburr‘s crime debut #Wake is set in a small town in outback Australia. I’ve never been to the outback but I could picture it so clearly! Australian author @KylePerry‘s haunting and atmospheric debut #TheBluffs is set in Tasmanian wilderness with a history of young girls going missing.

The story behind these rocks

I took the UK hardback edition of my new thriller #TheBay for a photoshoot!

Funny story about the rocks in the photo. It’s a famous surf spot here on the Gold Coast: Burleigh Point. When the waves are big, you have to jump off the rocks with your surfboard to get out because the currents are too strong to paddle from the beach.

Twenty years ago I’d only been surfing for six months. I’d just met my future husband (now my ex-husband because we divorced) and he invited me for a surf at Burleigh for our second date.

He clearly overestimated my surfing ability.
“Follow me!” he said and jumped off the rocks.
Keen to impress, I gamely followed him and jumped, but I timed it wrong. The waves had a bit of size that day and a larger wave rushed in and swept me back over the rocks. The barnacles shredded my feet and legs. I dragged myself back over the rocks into the ocean where I sat on my surfboard, cuts stinging, then realised I was bleeding in about ten places. Thinking how sharks can smell one drop of blood in a thousand Olympic swimming pools, I reluctantly said goodbye to my date and paddled in to the beach, then walked through the town of Burleigh leaving a trail of blood behind me.😂😂


I have a bad record with rocks. Another time, I jumped off rocks onto my board and landed on it badly, breaking several ribs. I’ve also busted fins. I never manage to time it right. These days I mostly stick to beach breaks.

#TheBay is out now in Australia and out on 23 June in the UK. It comes out on 19 July in North America, with its American title: #TheSwell.

2 d

How I Found An Agent:

KATE BURKE

I found my agent, Kate Burke of Blake Friedmann Literary Agency in London, through the slush pile. Here’s how I went about it.

I was born and raised in the UK but moved to Australia fifteen years ago. There aren’t many literary agents in Australia, and many weren’t currently accepting submissions, plus Australia’s smaller population means a smaller book market. Since SHIVER is set in the French Alps and most of the characters are British, I hoped it would appeal to the UK market, so I decided to look for a UK agent rather than an Australian one. Fortunately, UK agents didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t live in the UK.

To find suitable agents, I headed to Jericho Writers’ website. Using their excellent Agent Match search tool, I searched for UK literary agents, who accepted my genre (thriller) and who were actively taking on new clients. The tool brought up about 250 agents.|

For years, I’ve been reading the acknowledgements section in the backs of novels, and blogs and interviews of my favourite authors, so there were a few familiar names amongst this list of agents. I researched each agent individually (giving priority to the agents of my favourite authors) by going to their agency website to learn exactly what they were looking for, and checked their client lists to see if I’d read and enjoyed any of the authors they represented. If they still sounded suitable, I googled them to find interviews with them or their clients, and checked their twitter feeds. I even went as far as reading some of their clients’ books – if I liked the books, I could mention that in my query letter.

This research took several days. I thought about what I most wanted from an agent and decided that most of all, I wanted someone who was hands on editorially. Someone who would read my work and help me improve it. Agents get 15-20% commission on writers’ advances and royalties, so it made sense to me to look for an agent who could add value to my work. I also wanted an agent with enough experience that I felt I could trust their judgement, but preferably someone without a massive list, so they would have enough time for me. I ended up with a shortlist of about 30 agents who I loved.

I felt fairly confident about my query letter thanks to a course I’d done with Curtis Brown Creative a year earlier. I did three short online courses with Curtis Brown in total. (See my interview on their blog where I talk about my experience of their courses.) Their Edit and Pitch course is a 6-week online course that looks specifically at your query package: the query letter, synopsis and first chapters. Following the advice on the course, I’d put together a query letter with three paragraphs including an enticing blurb about my novel, a paragraph about why I was submitting to that particular agent, and a paragraph about me and my writing background.

Literary agents may receive up to 10,000 submissions a year, so I deliberately kept my query letter as short as possible – 200 words in my case. My query letter wasn’t something hurriedly drafted. I spent ages on it, forming it weeks before my manuscript was ready, asking writer friends for feedback and revising it over and over. (See the end for the actual query letter that got me my agent.)

The synopsis is widely regarded as the hardest page you will ever have to write. I must have done hundreds of drafts of the synopsis for SHIVER, seeking help from my long-suffering writer friends, who suggested revisions. UK agents commonly ask for a 1-page synopsis. One page in size 12 font with single line spacing and a line gap between each paragraph gave me about 450 words. It’s incredibly hard to condense the plot of a novel into just 450 words – particularly a thriller with lots of twists. It doesn’t help either, that there’s no consensus on whether or not your synopsis should give away the ending of your story. Looking back, I probably spent too long on my synopsis. I went in circles and pulled my hair out over it. Eventually I conceded there’s no ‘perfect’ synopsis and settled on a 1-page document that gave the main plot points.

In February 2019 I submitted my first chapters to four literary agents. I promptly received three form rejections. Two of them arrived within 24 hours of my submission! Devastated, I trimmed my first three chapters, questioning every single word, to see if I really needed it. I was absolutely ruthless. I cut adverbs where possible and made my verbs stronger. If I’d used two adjectives before a noun, I cut the weaker one – or even both. If I had one sentence that meant nearly the same thing as the next, I cut the weaker one.

There are some excellent books available on editing. My favourites are:
The First Five Pages by US literary agent Noah Lukeman
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
Thanks, But This isn’t For Us, by Jessica Page Morrell.

Kate Burke at Blake Friedmann apparently liked thrillers and cold, bleak settings, so in March 2019, I sent my revised manuscript to her and three other agents, on what I thought was the day after the London Book Fair. Except in my sleep-deprived, mum-of-two-little-kids brain, I’d muddled the date and it was actually the first day of the book fair – the biggest event in the UK book industry. You’d think it was the worst possible time to submit, but amazingly, just four hours later, an email arrived. One of the agents wanted to see the full manuscript! It was lucky my manuscript was edited and ready to submit. If I’d been impatient and submitted earlier, thinking I’d have time to edit, I’d have been in a huge panic! Crossing my fingers, I sent off the full.

If an agent requests to see the full manuscript, writers are advised to inform any other agents they’ve submitted to, so I tapped out an email, but before I hit ‘send,’ an incoming email from Kate arrived, requesting the full. I informed the remaining two agents, and one immediately requested the full. I didn’t get much sleep that night. I woke up to a full request from the fourth agent. And an email from Kate asking if she could phone me my evening – her morning. (There’s a massive time difference between the UK and Australia.)

It was another nail-biting wait. My hand shook as I answered my phone. Kate, in her lilting Irish accent, told me how much she loved SHIVER. I asked about her experience, and what changes if any, she’d suggest making to my manuscript. She asked about my writing, my plans for future novels, and offered to represent me.

Another agent also wanted to phone. I had the same conversation with this agent, then accepted Kate’s offer. One of the reasons I chose Kate was her editorial experience – she’d worked in publishing for ten years before she switched to agenting, and she was very hands-on editorially.

A few people have asked me what changes I made to my manuscript between my first batch of submissions to agents and the second batch. The answer is not much. Mostly just tightening and trying to be very specific and thoughtful about word choice. Maybe I hit the first batch of agents at a busy time of year: they were trying to clear their inboxes ahead of the book fair? Reading taste is so personal. Perhaps the first batch of agents just happened not to be as keen on SHIVER as the agents in the second batch?

Anyway over the next two months, Kate took my manuscript through several rounds of revisions, to make it as commercial as possible, and went on to sell SHIVER in a ten-publisher auction. The first round was a ‘big picture’ edit which pushed me to my limit as a writer and involved me writing 12 new scenes. The other rounds were smaller detail.

Something I found confusing as an aspiring author was knowing the ‘best’ word count for a novel. Each genre (and sub-genre) has a different ideal word count, and if a manuscript is way shorter or longer than the norm, agents (and publishers) may be put off. I’d researched word counts for thrillers and thought my manuscript was about the right length. It was 77,000 words when I submitted it to Kate, but she said it was a bit short. After I’d made the revisions she suggested, she submitted it to publishers at 83,000 words. After several more rounds of revisions from my publishers, SHIVER ended up at around 92,000 words.

My tips for authors who are searching for agents:
1. Edit like crazy. Trim and polish your work to try to get it perfect. Little mistakes may put agents off and look unprofessional. From talking to Kate, I get the impression that agents receive many submissions that are full of typos and other mistakes.
2. Read like crazy. Read recent titles in your genre. You need to know where your book sits in the market: the genre and subgenre. For example, if it’s a thriller, is it a crime thriller, techno-thriller, domestic suspense or psychological thriller? In the query letter you need to mention comparable titles and/or authors (preferably recent big sellers) and reading widely will help you find some. This helps make your book seem marketable.

Here’s my query letter, as I submitted it to Kate. Kate later said it was one of the best query letters she’d seen and used it as an example in a workshop she taught on querying.

Dear Kate

And Then There Were None… on a glacier, with snowboarders.

THE ICEBREAKER is a thriller (77,000 words) that I hope could sit beside CL Taylor, Ruth Ware and Laura Marshall.

Secrets are crawling out of the ice. Friendships are turning glacial.
And everything’s about to crack…

When ultra-competitive ex pro snowboarder Milla Anderson joins four former friends for an isolated mountaintop reunion ten years on from tragedy, a twisted icebreaker suggests one of them is a killer. But the cable-car isn’t running. There’s no easy way down.

I heard you love strong female main characters, cold and bleak settings, dual timelines and psychological suspense with a mystery at its heart, so I hope The Icebreaker with its feisty heroine and theme of female rivalry in sport might appeal. I see my ‘brand’ as female-led psychological thrillers set in dangerous natural environments, from high mountains to remote surf beaches.

I was once a freestyle snowboarder in the UK top ten like my protagonist. For fifteen years I taught English. Now I’m a freelance writer with 100 sales of short commercial fiction to women’s magazines in the UK, Australia, Sweden and South Africa and thirteen romances to anthologies.

I attach the synopsis and first three chapters for your consideration.

Many thanks,

Allie Reynolds

You’ll notice several lines in italics, which are like the straplines you see on book jackets. This was something I learnt in Curtis Brown’s Edit and Pitch course. Note that when I originally submitted it, the title of my novel was THE ICEBREAKER but Kate didn’t feel it was a strong enough title and came up with the suggestion of SHIVER which I loved. It’s just one of many reasons why I’m so grateful to her.