NOVELTINA LITERARY AND CRITICAL AGENCY

Mudlark Cottage, The Harbour, Shrimphaven

Dear Fanny Gotobed,

Thank you for your letter, cheque and the manuscript of your novel, One Village, One Heart.

No, I’m sure I can’t imagine why those agents who asked to see your manuscript on receipt of your letter of enquiry expected something much more risqué, unless perhaps they thought your rather unusual name was a pseudonym indicative of your style?

I am so sorry to hear how recently you were widowed, and what a difficult financial situation you now find yourself in, and I truly applaud your bravery in trying to pick up the reins of the writing career you abandoned over fifty years ago. One piece of good news on this score: the charge for reading your manuscript quoted on my flyer is actually a misprint, and I am therefore sending you a cheque to refund half of it. I really must speak to my printer!

Unfortunately, the market for novels has changed slightly over the ensuing years, and apart from the perennial Miss Read I can’t think of another author in print who is writing your kind of sweet, gentle village-affairs sort of book. This is not to say that people don’t want to read them any more, just that publishers don’t think they want to.

I certainly found One Village, One Heart absolutely charming, but I do think you will find it difficult to get a publisher to take it. However, all is not lost: the novel is extremely episodic and would lend itself brilliantly to being divided up into lots of short stories for those magazines catering for the older reader, for whom your work is perfect (list appended), and who pay quite well. I think they would love them, and who knows – once you have had a large number accepted a publisher might just think twice about refusing your next book!

I am quite sure you will be successful, and look forward to reading your stories soon in magazines.

By the way, as soon as you can manage it I would at least upgrade to an electric typewriter. It will make your work much easier to read and so vastly increase the chances of having it accepted.

Good luck with your writing.

Yours sincerely,

Tina Devino

Much coverage of the party in the press, with everyone looking half-cut, especially the roped-in Lemonia clients, and no one told me that that famous actor was there! (Not that I’ve seen him in anything, but I have heard of him.)

All the press coverage called me ‘bestselling novelist Tina Devino’, which was gratifying, and most also mentioned my new, beautiful, clingy, smoky-purple, hand-beaded and embroidered dress, which I refused to tell anyone the source of, even Linny, because I wanted to keep the fairies at the bottom of my garden to myself.