My, there’s the clocks forward already! Wonderful, isn’t it, how the year’s markers keep coming. And what a terrific culture we have in Edinburgh and Scotland for new writing. This month I went to a seminar in Glasgow run by the Scottish Book Trust on the dark art of the agent. It turns out they are really nice people. Scales fell from my eyes. Turns out I don’t need to get my own illustrator, or cartographer. That’s a real weight off my mind. And it seems agents who take you on will go through a couple of re-writes. What I need to do is persuade an agent not to like my work but to judge that it will sell.
Which is where the much-vaunted City of Literature comes in. They had a tenth anniversary bash at the City Chambers last night, and it’s clear to me that putting an internationally acclaimed cultural phenomenon of the 1990s firmly into geography and history will commend itself to the self-conscious literati of this great city of ours. So that’s my cover letter to the agent half drafted already. All that remains to be done is finish the thing. Not much more to do now.