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#200 - Daisy Chandley
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Literary agent, Daisy Chandley is here to chat about working at PFD and the career path of an agent as well as how she tackles submissions and what she's looking to add to her list.
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Transcript
Meet Daisy Charnley and Her Career Path
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? You could have fixed plot holes, but if the writing... So some readers love that, and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of a gamble. Hello, and welcome back to the Right and Wrong Podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by one of Peter's Fraser and Dumloft's literary agents, Daisy Charnley. Hello, welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me.
00:00:26
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming. I'd love to sort of start at the beginning of your career, although I think it's quite a direct line. Very, very straight line. Yeah. Was it 2019 when you joined PFT?
00:00:39
Speaker
Yeah, so I joined in 2019.
Remote Work Challenges and Promotion
00:00:42
Speaker
And I was working as the sort of PA a to our CEO for about six months, and and then moved across at the start of 2020, I think literally sort of January, to be the agents assistant for two of us senior agents, and which is a great time to start an entirely new job, which you know, involved yeah learning how to do contracts and you know, really like learning the ropes. ah But you know, like, thankfully, obviously, I was gonna be surrounded by all my colleagues, and which yeah worked out for all of two months um until I had to go home and do my job from a bunk bed um with my sister below me sort of watching tik toks.
00:01:25
Speaker
all day. um So, thankfully, that still somehow worked. And then, yeah, it's been a sort of incredibly straight line since then. um Just, yeah, yeah but I mean, they were incredibly supportive, thankfully. So I, you know, worked under them with their lists, building my own list until you know, at some point, you get the official, you know, associate title. And then more recently, I think about two weeks ago, went to being a full agent, so now have been ah passing off the assisting work to our wonderful new assistant, which is really really weird and feels very, you know,
00:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, the sort of and end of an era, beginning of an era,
Career Progression: Assistant to Full Agent
00:02:14
Speaker
all that. But yeah, and incredibly, I have spent the last, you know, whatever, five years now at the same desk. Oh, you haven't even moved around the office.
00:02:25
Speaker
No, no, I mean, I moved after when I stopped being the PA. But yeah yeah yeah, I have, you know, and I was really it was a quite a big thing. I thought that when I became an agent, I would move desk because you know, that's that desk is near um my sort of old bosses offices. they like no Don't worry, don't worry. Yeah, you don't even got to think about it. It's all it's I mean, I've got to I'm too messy. There's too much of my stuff to even consider moving it. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone would try and tough me out.
00:02:51
Speaker
ah that's fair enough. So is there the difference between like um assistant associate agent, literary agent, like how does the how do the responsibilities change as that kind of progresses? It's a very good question. And a question that my parents and partner would always ask me when those titles changed. And it's sometimes hard to give a definitive answer about. um But I mean, some of the things I really like about agenting actually is just how sort of clear cut the career ladder is, um in some
Building a Client List: From Associate to Agent
00:03:24
Speaker
senses. So, you know, you start off often as an agent assistant or an agency assistant, you know, often the difference being if you're an agency assistant, you're probably assisting a larger number.
00:03:36
Speaker
of agents. If you are an agent's assistant, then it's, you know, one or two, maybe, I was the the second of the two. So I was just assisting two agents. um And then in theory, associate is when you are assisting, but also building your own list.
00:03:54
Speaker
And you will often be doing that for a fair while before you get given that title change in much in the same way that that's the case. And you know, a a lot of jobs, I noticed the same on the editorial side. And then, you know, you'll do that for a while. And then when the I guess going from associate to agent is a bit more of a like solid line because that's when you are no longer in theory is I mean, ah there might be exceptions to this, I don't know, but certainly, you know, at PFD, you will stop doing any assisting work and you will just spend all of your time um on your own client list.
00:04:26
Speaker
So I guess it's, you know, it's it's when you get to a point where, you know, you and the company together feel that, you know, you've got enough of your own list that, you know, you you need to devote all your time to that. And also that you're on your way to sort of sustaining yourself financially in the future, hopefully.
Learning and Gaining Confidence in the Industry
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, I'm picturing it sort of like a like a Venn diagram that's sort of slowly moving as you' as your sort responsibilities change and then separates completely once you become a literary agent. That sounds like a perfect metaphor in the sense that it's like so confusing and hard to picture.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's easy to sort of generalize your duties, I guess. Yeah, um yeah, no, exactly. You just like so are slowly sort of, you know, yeah, doing less of the assisting. But you know, I mean, the assisting is obviously what makes what gives you the skills to do it yourself. And I chose to hold on to doing assisting work maybe even longer than I needed to, partly because I just did feel like I was learning so much from it all the time. And because my bosses do in some ways, quite different books to what I do. It meant that I was seeing a really large range of contracts and dealing with a really large range of situations and you know, people who have managers and lawyers, and getting into all the sort of stuff that, you know, you wouldn't necessarily come across when you're starting to build your own list, but that you just feel so much more confident and prepared for whatever weird situation could come up if you've already seen it all before.
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, because I guess it'll still be your first time. It'll still be daunting when those kinds of things happen, but having sort of experienced those secondhand or like on the sideline or like in an assisting capacity, obviously you kind of know what to expect.
00:06:11
Speaker
Absolutely. And you're sort of, you know, because when you're doing stuff as an assistant, you know, especially once you've been doing it for five years, you are often sort of making choices with people. um You know, you're the one who's, you know, sort of been at the cold face a lot. And you know, your opinion will often be, you know, taken very seriously when there are problems. But at the end of the day, the judgment call is still going to be made by that agent. And so it's sort of watching those judgment calls that's so educational. I think that I'm very detail oriented. This now sounds like it's the part of the interview where I say all the things that I'm really bad at. Unfortunately, I'm too focused on detail. But I'm i'm yeah, i'm I'm detail oriented. And I can get a bit sort of, you know, in my head sometimes about
00:06:56
Speaker
you know, oh but what if this happens? And what if this happens? And I think once you've been in the industry for long enough, you you feel confident enough in yourself and in the way that things work to be like, but it's fine, it won't. the Yeah, that's the sort of confidence that can only come from just watching things happen over and over again. And from just living through it as many times as possible, so that you can be rest assured and saying to a client, look, at the end of the day, this isn't gonna happen. And it doesn't.
00:07:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things that you can be, you can be told how something's going to go or like in detail, ah sort of what the stages are that happen whenever what it is you're talking about goes on. But until you've been in the middle of it, until you've like seen it firsthand, it's hard to fully comprehend the situation.
00:07:41
Speaker
And to know what's normal and to be able to sort of read situations and stuff like that, you can only do it yeah by sort of watching it happen a million times. All of which is to say, i guess that yeah the the sort of way that climbing the ladder and agenting works, where you know you do assist often for years before you're sort of you know on your own two feet, is great. And I know that there are some people, you know, who feel, especially on the publishing side, I think where it can be ah it can be quite tough to move up on the publishing side. But I found the sort of entire process of coming up like that through the company to be fantastic. And like, just really, really worked for me. And again, everyone's been, you know, sort of so supportive at every point of it. So um yeah, shout out PFD. Thank you.
00:08:29
Speaker
Big shout out to PFD. Big shout out.
Daisy's Literary Interests and Genre Focus
00:08:32
Speaker
I know you came in as a PA, but was it always the plan that you wanted to end up as a literary agent?
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i I think I was too young to really have a ah plan in any sort of capital P sense. um I mean, before I was agenting, I was off in Amsterdam working as a waitress because I'd left UD and none of the jobs that were sort of put in front of me appeal to me in the slightest. I didn't do English at uni like a lot of people um who I work with did. I did PPE, so Politics, Philosophy and Economics. And I really didn't want to be a consultant. I really didn't want to be part of some like vast team that I didn't really know actually what product we were making or selling. um And i I didn't really know what
00:09:26
Speaker
the other options. Well, I didn't know what sounded fun to me. And, you know, the whole sort of pyramid scheme of recruiting where it's like, yeah, you're a recruiter for a recruitment scheme that works in recruiting recruiters for recruitment schemes, a lot of that. And that didn't speak to me. So I just spent all my time at that reading. And I was like, man, imagine if this could be a job applied for a million jobs in publishing. I mean, a million. I still have the list somewhere on my computer of everything I applied for and was, you know, didn't get and got an internship at RCW, ah which is another literary agency. And I remember my first day there, ah yeah I got called in, basically, I got drafted in because the other intern, I think, like dropped out on the day. And they were like, basically, whichever it was a Hunger Games, it was like, it like, whichever of the other interns could turn up can have this.
00:10:13
Speaker
was i but what was what I remember it being. And I i was like, I'm there, I'm there. i've And like i I think I was on my way there, like googling literary agent, because you know, I think a lot of people when they're trying to get into publishing are mostly applying for editorial jobs and stuff like that. And because unless you grow up surrounded by this world of yeah like publishing and media and the arts. It's not that that's the only interesting thing, it's just that it's so hard to know what any of the other jobs entail. it's such a As so many writers say, it's such a mysterious world. you know i I had a vague sense of what a literary agent was, but I was like, but like what do they do on a day-to-day basis? What's this going to actually look like? and I got there, and there was an associate agent probably at the desk next to me, and she had a pile of proofs on her desk, and she was having an argument down the phone. I thought, that's my dream job.
00:11:02
Speaker
Oh my god, she's reading, and she's having an argument. I didn't know you could get paid for reading and having an argument. And and it was. um Both that was the job and that was the dream. and So yeah, I'm not even sure what question of yours I'm answering at this point. I don't think it matters anymore. I'm just getting a glimpse into Daisy Charnley, the literary agent.
00:11:26
Speaker
but be go dick chand lead the talker yeah
00:11:30
Speaker
um let's Let's refocus. Let's get get on to what you kind of are doing. what you So as of recently, full-time literary agent, very exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. What age groups and genres is it that you you have on your list and you're looking to add to your list?
00:11:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I do adult and I don't do any children's, I don't do any YA, not because I don't love it, but just because I don't like read enough of it to know what's good. And we have a fantastic children's YA team at PFD who handle all of that. um So yeah, I do adult and I've had to split it into sort of three categories to make sense of it. um So the most sort of expansive one of those is somewhat dark, ideally witty, really bold fiction. So that can go all the way from the sort of slightly more upmarket, but like really brilliantly written stuff like A Visit from the Goon Squad and Detransition Baby, all the way to super literary, super weird stuff like Under the Skin or In the Cut, or Shirley Jackson. And I've got an incredible Shirley Jackson-esque book out next year called Idle Grounds by Christelle Bamford, which scared the hell out of me the first time I read it is also just so funny and completely original. um And that's what gets me excited more than anything. And so, you know, thrillers and horror could fit into this category, but so could quite unconventionally heartwarming market fiction, and I'm sort less focused on exactly what genre you're writing in.
00:13:08
Speaker
and more if it feels like you're doing something that is brave and playful and interesting, whether that's yeah, whether that's on the more commercial side or more literary and, and then come heavy rom coms again with the funny I've got a brilliant author, Georgia Stone, whose first rom-com The Friendship Fling is out next year, and is a really great example of what I love in this space, which is those books like Greta and Walden or Nora Efron films, which are staggeringly romantic, but really dry and smart. And I'm very open to more literary or unusual romances that might not fit the sort of conventional rom-com packaging like something with one foot in the speculative.
00:13:49
Speaker
But equally, I mean, yeah, I'm certainly not allergic to more conventional, you know, conventional commercial rom coms, as long as they're really funny. And they don't need to be reinventing the wheel. One thing I'll say on the rom com side, is that I think people have got into their heads that the way to make a rom com stand out is having both of the protagonists have really weird jobs.
00:14:13
Speaker
you don't like You don't need to go through all of that, just make them sound like real people and make them have fun with each other. and Lastly, sleuths. um I was a huge Nancy Drew kid, and I'm a really big fan of Japanese detective fiction and Twin Peaks.
00:14:30
Speaker
ah So I'm really drawn to an amateur sleuth or an unconventional detective. I don't do straightforward police procedurals. So when I say detective, we're thinking more sort of Benoit Blanc knives out or Dale Cooper than a grizzled DI. I love clues and twists.
00:14:46
Speaker
and sort of as ever, I'm happy for this to sit anywhere from the more dark and literary side to a more playful commercial approach. um So for instance, I've got one author, Anna Fitzgerald Healy, whose book Etiquette for Lovers and Killers is out next year, which is a sort of playfully dark, sharp, sexy mystery with quite the body count. um Whereas that I've got a wonderful writing duo, JD Brinkworth, who've got a series called the Pie and Mash Detective Agency, um which is more on the sort of cozy, funny side. So I think by going, I try and be quite specific with, you know, those sort of categories that I like. And then I really like to see people, you know, not interpreting my brief in different ways, but who have written things
00:15:34
Speaker
that fall into those spaces, but in a really large variety of tones and approaches. um So yeah, if it, you know, anything that feels like it's sort of ticking those boxes, anything that's weird and brave, and that can be brave in terms of the voice, or brave in terms of, you know, like, like tackling something in the plot, um then i'm I'm always really excited to see that.
00:16:02
Speaker
Okay, so there's something more out of the box, something bit unusual is what you're looking for, something to make you kind of stop and think, hmm. Absolutely. And yeah, witty. I mean, when I say witty, you know, I've i've got books like Phoebe Stux's Amazing Dead Animals, which came out last year, which, you know, are really heart wrenching and quite dark. And it might be like, well, how is that witty? But actually, I mean, there are moments of real humor in it. But I think it's witty more than anything just in the sense of being sort of self-aware and you know maybe having a bit of something like tongue and cheek to it are a little bit playful even if that's in the most sort of dark and heart-wrenching way possible just yeah something a little bit wry your arch about it really really works for me okay and you also rep non-fiction
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah, I do also do nonfiction. um And on that front, it's much harder to sort of sum
Exploring Emerging Book Trends and Genres
00:16:57
Speaker
up because to be honest, it's anything that feels like a book, which sounds ridiculous, but it's just um I think I like things that are helpful. um And that can be I mean, I do like gift books. So I've got a handful of i I don't think any of them specifically have been um announced yet. But you know, like be beautifully designed gift books, um stuff in the like art history space. um Like sort of more fun pop cultural history stuff.
00:17:34
Speaker
um But then, you know, I've like, I have a client called Lauren McQuiston with an amazing Instagram account um called brutal recovery. And she's got her book no loss causes club, which is about having to get sober when she was in her early 20s. But it's sort of a combination of like self help and memoir.
00:17:55
Speaker
with this, again, a really sort of darkly funny tone to it. um But again, it's something that's helpful and something that has a really clear audience who are going to pick up a cup for a reason and get something out of it. And I love reading really beautiful narrative nonfiction is definitely something that I'd like to do more of. But the things that I do find that excite me when they come in or when I come across those authors is something where I'm like, Oh, my God, this is a book.
00:18:21
Speaker
this is something which people would really want to pick up and which hasn't been gone into in this much detail by someone who knows this much about it, and which is going to be like genuinely helpful of people in their lives, whether that's like emotionally or to take around a gallery with them. And and there's something in that that I find really satisfying. Okay. In terms of your list, do you have like a, is it sort of an even split between fiction and nonfiction or do you lean one way?
00:18:50
Speaker
it's it's very like buses coming along at once. So it it i'll I'll find that I have a sort of chunk of nonfiction coming up and then a chunk of fiction coming up. um I think it's it's probably a little bit more fiction. um But now that I'm agenting full time, I've got more time for the nonfiction side because often nonfiction projects come out of approaching somebody. Obviously, you know we do get nonfiction submitted to us. But I would say that probably a larger portion of people's nonfiction lists than fiction lists come out of the agent approaching a client. And so obviously having more time frees me up to do more of that. So maybe the balance will even out a bit.
00:19:34
Speaker
Okay, okay. And I just had one follow-up question. you So just adult, you don't represent young adult. Where do you stand on this sort of emerging space of new adult?
00:19:50
Speaker
i i mean I haven't seen a submission that calls itself new adult. I'm sure I might have had some of them and not spotted it. Personally, it's it's not it's not something that has come up really in any conversations I've had with publishers. um Again, I'm not remotely saying that it's not happening and it's not out there. I think maybe it's happening more in spaces that I'm not in as much like the sort of more romanticy type spaces where I know that things are the sort of age is in those more fancy romantic spaces are getting really blurred because, you know, sort of people really want stuff that's at sort of the top end of YA as it were, you know, yeah because it's they want stuff that's maybe a little bit more adult, maybe a little bit more sexy, um but sort of still generally in that way space and those are the sorts of situations where I can see
00:20:45
Speaker
new adult coming up as a conversation. And for the most part, I think that if you're submitting, it's probably worth committing to it being adult or YA, based on what it feels like the agent that you are sending it to mostly does.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. Because if I see new adults in a submission, I would probably think that might be a little bit YA for my tastes and for my list. and Whereas if you're writing it and you genuinely, you know, if you genuinely think that this is a book for albeit new adults, adult then I would just say,
00:21:25
Speaker
adult. um And, and sort of leave that to the agent to see if they want to pitch it onwards in that way and maybe raise it, you know, if if it gets to the point where you're having a conversation with the agent, you know, maybe bring this up. But I think it might be something that sort of scared people off a bit about it not falling into their adult or into their YA world.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because, yeah, the agents I've spoken to who have seen this the most, I think, and who are kind of taking this on on their list is agents who represent young adult. And I guess, yeah, it makes sense with what you're saying where if you've written this thing and you would say new adult to maybe a YA agent, but if you're sending it to an agent who reps adult, you can just say adult. They don't need that categorization, I guess. Exactly.
00:22:16
Speaker
yeah Exactly. And it it makes sense that YA agents are seeing more of that. Again, yeah, because I think the age categories are blurring more on their end than they are on ours. Yes. Yeah, I agree. um And you brought up romanticy. I did want to ask a bit about this because obviously it's a it's having a a sort of boom at the moment. It's the big trend. And then probably before that, we had like cosy crime and stuff like that. And that's not to say that these are going anywhere. they'll i Cosy crime definitely, I think will become a mainstay now, like psychological water relations stuff. But
00:22:47
Speaker
ah Have you got any predictions or or maybe are you hopeful that some but whatever the next book trends might be? I mean, one thing that I'm really seeing at the moment is stuff with one to at this point, both feet in horror, which works very well for me, both in terms of my taste and my list. um But a lot of the editors that I'm meeting with, who yeah, once upon a time, ah were maybe happy for something to sort of have its yeah toes in horror. And now,
00:23:24
Speaker
like looking for the biggest and biggest sort of shock factor possible, which I think, you know, there were some really big books like boy parts, that I think shifted our perception of what the sort of normal level of unpleasantness can be in a relatively mainstream book. And it it feels now like it's sort of a race to the bottom or race to the top of you know,
00:23:52
Speaker
coming up with more and more insane, and yeah, slightly grim concepts. And I think part of that, I think there are a lot of things that are feeding into that. And again, you this is obviously not remotely on the scale of romanticy, or cozy crime, because this is more, you know, in the sort of literary space. um But I think it's the influence of Japanese fiction being so big, a lot of which, you know, like, is quite dark. I think it's also just looking, you know, books that are that like that have these really wild horror elements, you know, it it gives them that one line pitch a lot of the time. Whereas, yeah, you know, sort of slightly more
00:24:36
Speaker
lyrical, Gothic stuff might not. And so i'm I'm definitely that is a thing that's coming out of a lot of my meetings with editors. And when I look at sort of, you know, stacks of books coming out next year, the number of them that, yeah, once upon a time would have probably been considered you know, sort of in the genre horror space, and are now being, you know, sort of so celebrated and sold as literary fiction is fantastic. I think it's great. And I think it does, it it makes me aware of the whole sort of pitch ability thing, which, you know, I think writers probably struggle with, you know, as much as we do, and editors do, and you know, sales teams do, is just
00:25:20
Speaker
the, you know, ever increasing desire to be able to sort of sum something up in a line, um and to have a really, really grabby hook to it. And yeah, that often does make a book, you know, or not make a book, it often means that a book has something really original that it's doing, if you can say something in a line, and someone goes, Oh, like' I've not read something like that before, that's dealing with this new thing, that's, you know, a really, like, smart setup.
00:25:47
Speaker
But there are so many books that we all know and love that you probably couldn't really do that for. And so yeah it is a bit of a shame in that respect that you you know that it needs to have such a sort of shocking one line pitch to be like breaking through at the moment. Well, yeah if if the payoff is that we get sort of fantastic, horrible, gothy books, then i I'll put up with it.
00:26:11
Speaker
um Yeah, about that kind of, when you talk about everything, feel all this horror stuff feels like it needs to be more kind of shocking and more kind of jaw-dropping. I really felt yeah this. I worry about that like how desensitized we are becoming as ah as a sort of audience, because I was talking to my friends the other day about The Gentlemen, the television series. yeah It's the Guy Ritchie thingy. But and I watched all of that and my friend said, oh she was saying, yeah, I had to stop watching after like two episodes because there was this scene and I was like, i was it was just too much. And I thought to myself, what scene could possibly be too much in that? And then I realized I've watched all of the boys and nothing in The Gentlemen even like remotely horrifies me, even though it should.
00:27:01
Speaker
should it? I mean, I, you know, and lot this bits in it. I'm, I'm probably the wrong person for that question. Because I'm, I mean, I'm a huge, like, ah American psycho fan, the book, not even the nice film with no rodents that put anywhere they shouldn't be. And I i mean i'm not going to I'm not going to try and wade into um you know sort of issues of what like shouldn't be in books, but I don't feel like novels on the whole are likely to be desensitising us too much. I
The Role of Literature in Media Desensitization
00:27:34
Speaker
think that we are all
00:27:36
Speaker
If anything, you know we're being desensitized by the way that news is handled more than anything, and I think that you know I love dark, irreverent fiction. I think often the point of those books is that you are meant to feel unsettled and uncomfortable, um often more so than their TV counterparts, again, going back to boy parts, just because sort of, you know, I referenced that. And I guess that was one of the sort of turning points in the genre. That's meant to be a really unpleasant book. And you know, I know that author herself is confused sometimes when people are really hardcore rooting for female protagonist. And so I think that
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah, you know, we can't control what response a person has to a book, I guess. um You know, people can feel a gleeful response at a horrible book that was, you know, the author of anything maybe, you know, intended them to feel a bit unsettled by it. But that's what happens when you know write and publish a book, it's out of your hands. And, you know, it's probably not I don't think it's rotting the minds of the nation, thankfully.
00:28:43
Speaker
No,
Desert Island Books and Wrap-Up
00:28:44
Speaker
i think I think I agree because, and you know, one and one of the great things about literature and like reading a book is that you are a participant as the reader. Like you get to take what the author has written and then with your own imagination, think of it so you can kind of scale that as much or as little as you want in your head. I think, yeah, I think it's much more an issue for television where I'm, I've seen too many, um how to phrase this, I've seen too many exploding appendages in on television.
00:29:13
Speaker
that if i that now I'm just like, okay, I've seen that many times before, you know what I mean? But it's different in with a yeah when you're imagining it, when you're like, oh, you know, you can imagine things in different ways. And and that's the magic of reading, really.
00:29:28
Speaker
It is the magic of reading. Exactly. We are at the point in the episode where we ship Daisy off to be marooned. And I ask, Daisy, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
00:29:44
Speaker
So it would be very easy to say one of the various books that I reference is saying, I would love to find something like this, sp but but like, I don't want to be on a desert island with in the cut, um or with under the skin, I really, really don't, I've got enough problems already. And so I don't want my ultimate comfort book, which is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. um Which I have listened to I mean, ah like hundreds of times maybe over the course of my life. I've had it as an audiobook since I was really young and used to just play it on loop until it occurred to me at the age of 17 to maybe listen to any of the others in the series, um which are all fantastic as well, but none of them are the first one. um I have a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tattoo because they let 18-year-olds make choices. a wow And ah so I thought it would have to be that. And also it it's got the spirit of being marooned and trying to get yourself out of sticky situations. it It would feel appropriate. It would feel like it would maybe it would motivate me and inspire me to believe that I could probably somehow get off the island in one piece. Yeah, because the the earth is probably going to get destroyed anyway to make way for her.
00:31:06
Speaker
like either motivate and inspire me or it would just like allow me to like slip into a state of completely not caring um and just waiting for sort of death to come. It's exactly, get you a book that can do both. What, if you mind me asking, what's the tattoo?
00:31:24
Speaker
um It is, I drew it myself, ah which, again, choices. um It is the whale, which anyone who's read it will actually, I think, see the dreadful film with Zoey Deschanel. So the the the whale is called Petunia.
00:31:43
Speaker
I named her Petunia. I didn't do the Petunias as well. um So she's called Petunia. And she's saying, don't panic. There's a speech bubble. Yeah, you can picture how how great this thing I drew on the team looks. There's a speech bubble saying don't panic. And my parents did sign off on it when I was 18. Because, you know, as they should, I'd had the idea for many years, I'm an adult, you know, you can do what you want with with your body. But I, yeah I came back and their sort of faces went white. And they realized they'd never asked me how big it was going to be.
00:32:13
Speaker
um and And the answer is reasonably large. um I don't regret it. I don't regret it. Okay, good. um Yeah, I absolutely adore that book. It's definitely on my list if if I were to pick a book to to go to the desert island with. Do you like any of the other ones in the series?
00:32:33
Speaker
Um, the thing is, it was such, it's been such a long time since I read the whole set, but I every now and again do reread or like listen to the first one again. Cause it's like short and so it's a, it's a great one to just like, if I'm in like a reading rut. It's just so good. Yeah. Yeah. It'll, it'll get you right back out.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I literally reread it last month. Oh, a fellow fan. It's excellent. Awesome. So next up, we're going to get into cover letters, queries, maybe even some super specific things that Daisy might be excited to see in her inbox. um But that's going to be in the extended episode available on Patreon.
00:33:16
Speaker
um no adam and out of it Yes, exactly. um Well, thank you so much Daisy for coming on the podcast and telling us all about um your kind of experiences in publishing your journey as a literary agent and everything you've been up to these past few years. It's it's been really cool chatting with you. Thank you.
00:33:35
Speaker
um And if anyone wants to keep up with what Daisy is doing, you can follow her on Twitter, at daisychandly. And if you're interested in querying Daisy or or any of the other PFT agents, head over to petersphraserdunnock.com, where you'll find the submission guidelines and a detailed description of what Daisy and the other agents are looking for, as well as their email addresses. To support the podcast, like, follow, and subscribe. Join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:34:05
Speaker
Thanks again Daisy, and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.