I have been reading a cross section of books recently. Barrack Obama – The Promised Land, Conn Iggulden – Emperor The Gates of Rome, Miranda Aldhouse-Green – Sacred Britain, and Nicholas J Higham – How England Began. Partly research for my own writing and out of interest after hearing about Conn Iggluden’s writing who I had been comparing my manuscript to in the pitch letter to agents. I even pitched to his agent and got a slightly terse but polite ‘not interested’.
It has been entertaining, informative and insightful. Barrack Obama is a distraction, leisure reading. Conn Iggluden on the other hand has been insightful. I can see behind the page and understand what has been happening, the thoughts and processes that left those words. Where there are risks in the narrative and where he has been surefooted abut the story line. His work, like mine, is a re-imagining of ancient life using the known bits to anchor the story and then weave the writers voice through to tie the characters and events into some sense of a past reality. I can see flaws and things I wouldn’t do but I cannot criticise, I do the same things for the same reasons.
My aim is that my comparison to him can be recognised and the potential for my writing can have an audience. Agents need to be bolder and ignore the Waterstones top twenty or the gossip in the book fairs and trust in writing and story-telling that can have a long life on the bookshop shelves.
The frustration with agents’ responses, when one is actually received, and the implication that publishers are becoming beholden to lower and lower common denominators mounts. My effort to get over this barricade increases.
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