Monday 21 March 2011

What an agent does


At the moment, I am obsessed with looking at agents - mianly because I want to get one.

I came across this excellent piece in Mslexia - http://www.mslexia.co.uk/getpublished/getpublished_agents.php

Not only does it tell you whether you need an agent (not enough money in poetry and short stories apparently), but it tells you what an agent does. And, no, they do much more than take a cut of your earnings.

And, there's interviews with six very different agents who offer advice on how best to approch them.

Saturday 19 March 2011

The blurb for Vile City

I'm working on the final edit now and trying to figure out where to send it. But, here's the blurb (here's hoping you'll see something similar on the back of a book soon) -

The women of Glasgow have real reason to be afraid.  A man dubbed ‘the Glasgow Grabber’ is on the loose and they are his prey. 

DI Waddell is the detective called in to save the day.  But, he has problems of his own. 
The paperwork on his desk is piling up faster than the knickers at a porn shoot, he’s a borderline diabetic addicted to Irn Bru, and to top it all, he’s been lumbered with a Hen Broon look-alike with glasses because his finest detective and friend Stevie is languishing in a psychiatric hospital.  And don’t even get him started on his pompous, ex-Army boss and the pain in the bahookie hack who comes round every time she smells the scent of human suffering. 

The last thing Waddell needs is the country’s biggest case to land on his lap. 

Driven by the belief that third victim, the plucky Shelley Craig is still alive Waddell is in a desperate race against time to uncover the truth behind the abductions and to save her.  To do that, he and his team must delve into the seedy underbelly of Scotland’s swingers’ scene and a sick world where women are tricked into the sex trade and traded like cattle.    

Along the way Waddell will discover one thing is true: the female of the species is more deadly than the male.    

Vile City is a tale of criminal skulduggery, set in a city Waddell once loved, but is fast growing to despise because of all the darkness he sees. 

It finally arrived...the Pitlochry Quaich

Yesterday it arrived, an oddly shaped package and I thought 'what on earth is this?' Then I opened it and out popped the Pitlochry Quaich. Until I held it in my hands I didn't believe I had actually won the Scottish Association of Writers award for a crime novel.



Thanks go to the wonderful Barbara Hammond at Writers' Umbrella for ensuring the trophy got to me as I was unable to attend because of personal reasons.

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