Novelicious.com | The Women's Fiction Blog for Readers and Writers

Agent Wishlist Week – Lizzy Kremer of David Higham Associates

Lizzy Kremer is head of the books department at David Higham Associates, where she has been a literary agent for ten years. Lizzy represents lots of our favourite authors including Lucy Robinson, Ali Harris, Rowan Coleman and Lucy Diamond.

I am open to reading and loving any novel. I don't have many preconceptions about what I will and won't enjoy. I love unself-conscious, direct storytelling styles –  books which shoot straight for the heart and have a strong point-of-view. My favourite novel ever is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. I love books about the female experience, whether they're love stories, thrillers or literary fiction. They could be set in the past, the present or the future. There probably won't be any aliens on-scene though.

Agent Wishlist Week – Clare Wallace of the Darley Anderson Agency

Clare Wallace joined the Darley Anderson Agency in January 2011. Clare is actively scouting for new talent and, as the Head of Rights, she also negotiates deals for translation rights all around the world for all the Agency’s authors.

We receive over 300 submissions a week, and almost all of our authors have been discovered in the slush pile. I would really like to find some more contemporary commercial women’s fiction and I’m also looking for accessible literary general fiction, alongside looking for new children's authors. Whether it’s a picture book text, middle grade, YA or for adults, the voice and characters have to sparkle and the story has to captivate. And I do love an unusual concept.

You can find more information, advice and tips from Claire on the Darley Anderson website www.darleyanderson.com and blog www.darleyandersonblog.com. You can also connect with Clare on Twitter @CPWally

Agent Wishlist Week – Rowan Lawton of Furniss Lawton

Rowan Lawton is here to share her manuscript wishlist today. A literary agent and the co-founder of Furniss Lawton – the literary division of the James Grant Group – Rowan represents writers of both fiction and non-fiction and her taste is wide-ranging. Current fiction clients include a number of debut novelists and contemporary women’s fiction authors including Novelicious award-winner Emylia Hall, author of The Book of Summers, a Richard & Judy 2012 Book Club selection, and Lindsey Kelk, whose most recent novel, I Heart Christmas, was a Sunday Times Bestseller. Over to you, Rowan.

I’m always on the look-out for a gem in the slush pile and would love to see submissions from Novelicious readers. See our website for the specific guidelines of how to submit to me and do mention in your covering letter that you’re getting in touch after reading this.

I love women’s fiction in all its guises – from contemporary romance and romantic comedy to psychological thrillers and wider reading group fiction. Here are three specific areas in which I’m very keen to find new writers. It goes without saying that I love the writing and novels of authors I currently represent. Therefore, in the main part I’m going to use other books and writers who I don’t work with to give you a feel for my taste.

Contemporary romance/ romantic comedy – I like a bit of edge to my romance novels, whether that be a really distinctive voice or the way in which you write about sex. ideally, in this area, I am looking for books with a British or Irish female central character. If you’re trying to make me laugh, I want it to be so funny that I spit some tea out while reading (which is what happens when I read Lucy-Anne Holmes and Lucy Robinson). I want to really identify with the emotional life of the protagonist, I love it when a novel hits on a nubby moral or emotional issue. My client Nicola Doherty does this wonderfully in both of her novels and others authors I really admire particularly for this quality are Jojo Moyes, Stella Newman (with Pear Shaped) and Gemma Burgess (in A Girl Like You) .

Agent Wishlist Week – Madeleine Milburn

This afternoon, we're welcoming Madeleine Milburn to Novelicious to share her manuscript wishlist. The Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency is a boutique, London-based agency, with a reputation for finding and launching new writers. Representing a wide range of fiction from literary, crime and thrillers, psychological suspense, horror, women’s, historical, new adult and young adult, to middle grade and children’s books, Madeleine’s current clients include Victoria Fox, C. L. Taylor, Anouska Knight and C. J. Daugherty. Madeleine is actively seeking new clients (including self-published authors), so get those submissions in quick!

People often ask me what I’m looking for. It’s always a hard one to answer. But, in short, I’m looking for anything and everything that will make me fall in love with it.

In the genre categories, I am always on the lookout for crime & thrillers, YA, memoirs, romantic, historical, and accessible literary fiction. At the moment, I’m particularly looking for Richard and Judy style reading club books: anything with a captivating premise and a strong, unique voice. Books I’ve devoured recently include The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty, Me Before You by Jojo Moyes and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

I’d love to find a really powerful piece of historical fiction: something that surprises me, or challenges what I assumed to be true about the period whilst immersing me entirely in this past world. I’m fascinated by war literature, and would love to find a fresh, contemporary voice on the subject: books like The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne and Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels.

In the crime & thriller category, I’m looking for something that has an edge to it – a unique protagonist or element to the story/setting that subverts the genre and makes it really stand out. I love books by Tana French, Donna Tartt, Harlan Coben, Lee Child, Jo Nesbo and Gillian Flynn.

It’s also my small wish to find the next big horror writer. This is such a difficult area to write in – it takes a lot more to scare readers today – so, again, I’m looking for a new angle that makes the book very chilling and compelling to read. My assistant, Cara, also has a penchant for zombies: things that are as gripping as The Walking Dead, World War Z and The Passage Trilogy. She’s keen to find me a new take on the zombie apocalypse!

Agent Wishlist Week – Laura Longrigg of MBA Literary and Script Agents

Continuing Agent Wishlist Week with another literary agent's manuscript wants, we’re joined by Laura Longrigg today. Laura is joint Managing Director of the long-established MBA Literary and Script Agents based in Central London. Previously, she worked as an editor for several publishers including Penguin and HarperCollins, and founded a prize for unpublished fiction, The Harry Bowling Prize, now in its seventh year. Here's what Laura's after.

I would like to have discovered John Green whose YA novel, The Fault in Our Stars, I am currently crying buckets over. I can’t wish for particular authors because they already have wonderful agents, but if someone could clone Andrea Levy, Maggie O’Farrell and Curtis Sittenfeld, I would push to the head of the agenting queue.  

A more realistic wishlist is for some non fiction authors: nostalgia (Jennifer Worth), investigative (Philomena), historical (Juliet Nicholson). I would love to find anyone like them on our slushpile!  

Also writers who can mix several genres – script writers who also write novels, science fiction aficionados who can turn their hand to crime and romance (yes, I do have a client who does that already so I know it is possible). Readers like to mix and match their genres and I am sure authors prefer to spread their writing wings and not be typecast in a particular genre.

Reckon you have just the thing tucked away in a drawer? You can find Laura's submission details here. Best of luck!

Agent Wishlist Week – Kate Burke of Diane Banks Associates

Welcome to Agent Wishlist Week! Every day at different times, we’ll be publishing the wishlists of leading literary agents – details of the manuscripts they’re hoping to stumble across in their slush piles, plus information on how to submit. Be sure to check back often as we’ll occasonally be posting more than one wishlist a day.

Today we’re kicking things off with Kate Burke’s manuscript wants. Kate is a literary agent at Diane Banks Associates, a hugely successful agency which handles book, TV and film rights for fiction and non-fiction clients. Kate’s primary focus is to build up the fiction side of the agency. She is actively taking on new writers and has recently sold two debut novelists in multi-publisher auctions, to major publishers in the UK (Penguin and HarperCollins) as well as abroad for six-figure deals. Over to you, Kate!

Psychological suspense: My top priority in 2014 is to find and take on new suspense writers, particularly female writers with female protagonists, but I really don’t mean to discriminate so male writers are welcome too! I adore this genre – contemporary suspense novels which have a crime element, but are not necessarily a detective-chasing-a-killer story (though the presence of a detective is fine!). They often have a female character at their core and the story centres around a crime, which they are either involved in or which affects their life. These novels are often about an ordinary woman with an ordinary life when something dark, unexpected and unsettling happens out of the blue. It could be a stalker, an affair that goes wrong, a missing child, a spouse who disappears – I really don’t mind as long as there’s some sort of unexpected crime event, which turns her life upside down. There has to be a strong sense of pace, suspense and atmosphere, and what’s absolutely key is that it has that gripping, keep-the-reader-guessing quality and that it delivers a strong twist. I’m looking for novels, which will sit on the shelf alongside SJ Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty and The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty.