My poor blog, along with everything else in my life, has
been a little neglected as of late. Late
July/early August has been a whirlwind: several trips (including one to meet my
lovely and amazing agent in London!), an online class, tutoring,
writing/editing, and preplanning week at school. Now that it’s all listed out like that I’m
starting to wonder how I got any sleep.
No wonder I’m exhausted!
But now I’m starting to catch up (tell that to the pile of
laundry haunting my hamper), so no more blog neglect. I have a couple of things I want to post
about, but since the most exciting thing that happened was London that gets top
priority.
It started with a whim.
I get regular emails from Delta airlines with info about sales, and one
came the first week of July advertising a sale for one day only, and only to
London from certain cities. Long story
short: the rates were bargain basement, the timing was right, and Atlanta was
one of those cities. How could my
husband and I not go? So we booked it—completely
oblivious to the fact that we’d be going the day after the Olympic opening
ceremonies. I was 100% focused on the
fact that I’d actually get the chance to meet my agent, Clare Wallace of the
Darley Anderson Agency, in person.
My husband spent a semester abroad in the UK, so he chose
the hotel and we were off. Clare
generously offered to take me to lunch, so I met her at the agency on Tuesday
afternoon. I presented her with a bottle
of champagne and chocolates for the agency to share, as well as genuinely tacky
“Georgia: Peach State!” shot glasses for Clare and Vicki. A good Southern girl never shows up
empty-handed.
I got to meet a couple of people, including Darley Anderson
himself (though sadly some of the agency was out of town hiding from the Olympics, so I didn't get to meet everyone). I got to have a nice
conversation with him, as he was kind enough to drive me and Clare to our
lunch. He is really such a fascinating
man, a wealth of information about publishing.
Even in a twenty-minute car ride he had a lot of great advice to
offer. The agency is currently preparing
for the release of the Jack Reacher movie, starring Tom Cruise and based on one
of Darley’s client’s books.
As Clare and I had lunch we discussed the latest iteration
of Blessed Among Women. I had to pick my
jaw up off the floor when she said it’s ready to go out to publishers. I know that’s always been the endgame, but it
always seemed so abstract (a separate post on that later). Now it’s happening: Blessed is going out to
editors in September in advance of the Frankfurt Book Fair in October (again, I’m
feeling a lot of feelings about that, they’ll get covered in a later post).
The thing that struck me most as we chatted was that I
couldn’t have dreamed up an agent that would suit me better than Clare. She really gets my writing and feels so passionately
about her work. As we discussed it I
could tell that she understood on a deep level what I was trying to say with
the novel, how I wanted to present the characters and their world, their
triumphs and failures. I’m going to stop
gushing, but I’ll just say if I was happy to be working with her before we met
I’m ecstatic now.
Okay: gushing over. London
was spectacular, although the closest we got to any of the Olympic events was
the TV at the pub (hey, we just wanted to experience the games like true Brits,
okay?). We did get to spend several hours at the
British museum, which is where I spotted the plate in the picture at the top of this
post. Guess who that is? That’s Diane de Poitiers. Of all the treasures the museum could
contain, and of the very few I got to see, I stumble on a portrait of my inspiration. And it’s probably a plate she owned.
I like to think it’s a sign.
