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285 Lauren Gardner | Literary Agent
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Literary agent, Lauren Gardner of Bell Lomax Moreton is here to chat about how she became an agent, how she looks at queries and cover letters and a few things that she's looking to add to her list!
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question. I love Because the writing sort of everything, right? Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by a bookseller, rising star of 2020, a literary agent with Belle Lomax-Morton. It's Lauren Gardner. Hello. Hi, Jamie. Thank you for having me.
00:00:29
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming on and on what is the, I believe, hottest day on record in June in the UK. Yes, it is. and So we'll we'll we'll try and keep our wits about us and and get through this.
Lauren Gardner's Career Journey
00:00:41
Speaker
um Let's start with ah your career in publishing. So you started, I'm right in thinking, you started at BLM in 2014.
00:00:52
Speaker
I did, yeah, 12 years ago now. Yeah, long time. Long time. Was that was that your first job in publishing or had you had you been in the industry before that? It was my first job in publishing, but before i joined the agency, I was actually working in um luxury ah PR and entertainment PR. So had been doing that for about four years since I graduated uni. yeah,
00:01:21
Speaker
not kind of the same but sort of threads of similarity right but it was a big it was a big it was a big shift um at the time what I mean that's um obviously there are transferable skills there but it's a big uh a big change of scenery what was it was publishing something that you'd always sort of wanted to to move into or was it just a sort of the opportunity arose and and you and you jumped on it No, i'd I'd never even really considered it as a career. I think i went to uni with the hope that I would figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And then I left uni and I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.
00:02:03
Speaker
And it was during the kind of last recession. And so if you got offered a job that paid you actual money and not kind of magic beans, then you took it. And so i got offered um a job as a PR assistant and I was like, okay, this seems like fun and will be just like it is in the Devil Wears Prada and I'll go to lots of events and it'll be really great. And um it's actually very hard work as a any publicist will tell you. and yeah
00:02:34
Speaker
I did it for four years before i kind of realized that actually this isn't really what I wanted to do. i still didn't quite know what I wanted, but on the sort of other side of that, just loved reading and love books more than anything and always had done. And a very good friend of mine was an agent, but for, uh, comedy talent, so comedians and okay was kind of having a sort of, uh,
00:03:01
Speaker
a wine and wine night with her and sort of saying, I just, I really don't feel very happy and I want to do something about it. And she says to me, well, you, you read more than anyone I ever know. Why aren't you working in publishing? And was like, well, because,
00:03:17
Speaker
that seems like quite a big jump. And also, I don't know anyone in publishing. And I feel like you have to know people in publishing to get a job in publishing. And can I just do this? And she said, well, you get the bus to work so that you can read for an extra hour in the morning, rather than getting the train. So yeah, I think you should probably give it a go. And what about being an agent?
00:03:37
Speaker
And I was like, what do you mean? She was told me about literary agents. She obviously worked with them for some of her kind of artists that she represented. I was like, that sounds like an amazing job. And I didn't even know it was a job.
00:03:49
Speaker
How do I do that? And so I just started Googling literary agent, literary agencies and, saw if any had any kind of job openings and Bailo Max Morton had a job opening for an assistant and so I sent in ah my CV and a cover letter explaining that I had absolutely zero publishing experience um but thought I was quite a competent publicist and thought there were probably a lot of valuable things that I could transfer over and would they like to take a chance on me and um thankfully luckily for me they decided that they did so yeah and that was 12 years later here we are
00:04:29
Speaker
12 years after, yeah,
Understanding Literary Agents
00:04:30
Speaker
still in the same place. It's amazing. It's so funny to me. And it's not just that I speak to a lot of literary agents and I ask them like, you know, how they, if they always wanted to see do this that. And the number of them that like, I had no idea that a literary agent was a thing. Like I didn't know. but can And i get it because you're outside of publishing.
00:04:45
Speaker
ah People just think author to editor to bookshelf. And like, that's the, that's the links in the chain. And people don't even realize that there's so many more steps that that go into it.
00:04:57
Speaker
This is very true. Yeah. And I think people maybe are starting to have a little bit more awareness of it, thanks to some of the things like younger, where receipt you see a little men you see a snippet of the publishing world or things like call my agent. You do, people know what an agent is, but I still think it's quite a mysterious side of the publishing industry. I mean, we're not as mysterious as literary scouts because, you know, they are the true, the true ninjas of the publishing world. But yeah, it is. It's one of those things when I, if I'm talking to somebody new that I've never met before, like, what do you do? I always start working publishing. because that generally gives people a sense of it's book related. yeah
00:05:39
Speaker
Whereas I think most people think I put my, my daughter's just convinced I, I sell books, which is true. I do. She's like, yeah, yeah my my mummy sells all the books. I do sell books.
00:05:50
Speaker
i yeah So I'm, I'm at least I, yeah I have her approval on on that front. um But yeah, she doesn't quite understand the full role of it yet. um Like you said, she's not wrong. You are selling books i am to some degree. Yeah. Just not in the way I think that she thinks. Not in the way that she's in her four-year-old brain. She thinks I am.
00:06:11
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. i mean, it's it's a fascinating, it's fascinating energy that so much is going on, but people just don't know, don't kind of know what's happening but beneath the surface. It's also, i think, especially with literary agents, ah when you see Books, authors, like novels and publishing is often so hilariously misrepresented in movies and televisions. And they usually just skip out the agent or the agent somehow is also the editor.
00:06:39
Speaker
all like yes you know The agent's just constantly nagging the author for the next chapters. And it's like, that's just not how this works. Yeah, that's true. Or they're always really, really scary and in a kind of power suit.
00:06:53
Speaker
And I mean, that's just, yeah it's that they it's never they're always so calm and collected as well. There's never any hint of chaos, which often there is a hint of chaos in in the day to day. and Someone once said to me that being an agent is like riding a bike, except the bike is on fire. You're on fire. Everything is on fire and you have to keep riding the bike.
00:07:17
Speaker
And at times that can feel true. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I think, yeah, there's a a lot of, a lot of parts of publishing. There's like people are working very hard and working probably more than you would expect them to be working. And agents are definitely one of those who's just constantly working and in so many fingers and so many different pies and and like doing all these different things at once.
Path to Becoming an Agent
00:07:38
Speaker
um So getting back onto you, ah so you said you started in 2014 as an assistant and that was your first role in publishing. Then six years later, you were bookstaller rising star. between this is This is a pretty well-trodden path to like becoming a literary agent. It's like the route of you're an assistant and then there's a sort of slow transitional phase,
00:08:03
Speaker
a phase where you're learning kind of the ropes you're learning from the people above you and then you're sort of balancing being an assistant and slowly building your own list um when that is there like is it Is it a sort of slow tipping of the scale where your kind of assistant work slowly scales down and and and then your list kind of gets bigger? Or is it more a way that sort of the team comes together and they say, okay, it's time. You're no longer an assistant. We're getting a new assistant. You're an agent now.
00:08:34
Speaker
It's kind of a combination of both. And I think I can only really speak to my experience because I have only ever worked at one one place. I've only ever been at one agency. And i I came in very hungry and very ambitious. um I also came in having sort of four years of kind of work experience behind me. so I was really determined to make a go of this and make a go of it swiftly. yeah i was really, really, really ambitious.
00:09:03
Speaker
And I remember sort of my MD Paul kind of saying to me like, well, we want to bring you on, but you know, we have to do it at a point when it's right for the team. And ultimately,
00:09:15
Speaker
there's a financial element involved where, you know, you have to be paying for yourself to be there in order to kind of tip the scales over into that point where it's more profitable for the agency to have you chasing down new authors and kind of pursuing new deals than it is to have you sort of doing the kind of assistancy work. It's a really fine balance. And I think it's obvious,
00:09:35
Speaker
often one of the things that I think younger agents when they're starting out to feel the most frustrated by is because you're doing deals and you can see that kind of um building for yourself and you can see, you know, your authors being paid and you can see that commission accruing, but also you're still trying to do the job of the assistant and you still have a lot of other responsibilities because ultimately it's those responsibilities that are sort of paying for your salary and for you to kind of be at the agency. So,
00:10:05
Speaker
it's a real it's a real kind of dance of you being ready, but also i think for me, it was about doing it at a time when I felt like I could really give my all to it. And I had to kind of learn really what publishing was. And, you know, I'd never seen a royalty statement before. I'd never seen a contract before. um I'd never listened in on a kind of publicity and marketing meeting. I'd never seen a kind of rights team in action at a book fair. So I had a lot of learning to do. Um, but I signed my first author when I'd been with the agency for about six months, um, because my MD again, very kind of generous with his time. And so I found this book in this, in the slush pile that I really loved and I really wanted to work on and. It didn't feel like it was a fit for any of the other agents. And I kind of made a case for why I thought I could really do something with this. And he said, okay, go for it. If you believe in it, then, you know, let's make this happen.
00:11:09
Speaker
And so that was my first kind of official signing as an agent. But then it took me another sort of two years to sort of fully relinquish the assistant duties before it was then kind of do this full time.
Focus Areas in Fiction and Non-Fiction
00:11:24
Speaker
And it is frustrating when you're in it, but also you can see that it makes it makes sense. And actually one of the things I feel really grateful for now is that I had such a good grounding and I had so much support from my MD Paul and the team around me. to really enable me to sort of, when I did hit the ground running as a full-time agent, I wasn't then having to kind of look back or think about, oh my gosh, I'm not actually, don't actually have enough kind of business or authors or relationships to really kind of kick this on. I was i was ready. and right
00:11:59
Speaker
So I feel very lucky for that, that that was my experience. um It's probably slightly more swift than maybe, other people's experience but I think that is really dependent on circumstances and the agency that you're working for and the kind of genres that you're working in and I was very lucky that I sort of was able to work across lots of different genres and lots of different um areas I wasn't kind of ah given a particular remit. It was kind of, if you believe in it and you think there's a deal to be done there and you believe in this book, then go for it. um i I'm very, I'm very, i'm I'm very, I think lucky in that respect that I've had that creative kind of ability to build a list of authors that I genuinely really believe in, but that I haven't had to sort of pick a, pick a lane.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You've been given quite a wide birth, like creative freedom, obviously still with the support of the rest of the people at the the agency, but yeah, no, that sounds great. So you mentioned the, there is a sort of financial element to when you can make that swap. So it sounds like if I was to oversimplify it,
00:13:16
Speaker
to some degree you need to have enough did did you need to have sort of enough authors who had sold contracts that you were making like a net positive amount of money for the agency before you can kind of move out of being an assistant and be a full-time agent roughly it's not like an exact like this is the thing Essentially, you have to kind of be paying for yourself um to be there and you have to almost, it's almost, it's almost a kind of very strategic gamble and that you are now paying for yourself.
00:13:52
Speaker
And if we bring in somebody else to take off the sort of assistant duties that you are still doing, that you will then be able to kick yourself on in terms of bringing in more deals and selling more books um that we don't then need to look at putting you back into that assistant role because you are now able to, um make this a kind of success in terms of what you're bringing in and you continue to build year on year on year. i'm So that's, that it's kind of like a tipping point.
00:14:24
Speaker
um It gets to a point where it makes more sense to have you agenting full time than it does to have you agenting and also assisting. Yeah. And I assume that's the, i assume when the agency brings on any new assistant, they're always doing it with the ah with the goal of that assistant eventually becoming an agent.
00:14:45
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. yeah That's, I think that's what we all want is to nurture the next kind of wave of talent coming up, but also retain them so that when they are ready to take that step, that they want to stay with us, um, and continue to build on what we've started together.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, that's cool. And it's, it's always interesting to hear about how these kinds of things work behind the scenes, because I'm sure that there's a lot of people out there who would love to be literary agents, but either don't know that that is a thing that exists or don't know how it works or how you get into it. So it's great to hear, great for people listening to hear like, oh, maybe that is a path that could be viable for me to take.
00:15:29
Speaker
um Let's talk about your list now, more specifically. So in a broad sense, in terms of genre and age groups, what is it? What sort of books, what sort of stories, what sort of authors do you represent?
00:15:42
Speaker
So I represent children's fiction from sort of young fiction up to YA. and then I also step into that new adult crossover and commercial women's fiction space.
00:15:58
Speaker
but with a real focus on um the kind of romantic romance romantic comedy i'm sort of genres. i'm I'm not a kind of crime girl. i'm i'm I'm not a kind of science fiction girl. I have quite particular taste i'm on my kind of new new adult and then sort of at commercial women's fiction um books And then I also do nonfiction, um again, for sort of children up to adult. And that can be anything from memoir to more sort of like historical nonfiction or popular science, um pop culture, essentially anything where I think with my nonfiction, if I need a book, about something that I'm particularly dealing with in my life or
00:16:56
Speaker
I can't find one to help me answer a question that I'm kind of asking myself, then I know that I have to go away and find somebody to write that book. oh That's my kind of benchmark for nonfiction. It's interesting people who are kind of having extraordinary adventures or living remarkable lives, or it's problem based in that I really need a book about why my children are sick all the time and are never in nursery. So is there a brilliant pediatrician? who can write that book for me, there is let me go and ask them if they've ever thought about writing a book before and then let's go away and make that happen. So it's often problem based in the nonfiction. right I have an issue and I need someone to tell me how to make it better. So I'll go and find someone who can write a book about it.
00:17:45
Speaker
that I can start to it Well that's right, very proactive. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. And what's great about that is like almost always if you have an issue there'll be hundreds if not thousands of other people that also have this issue so you're probably tapping into an audience anyway. Exactly. So from that could I gauge that the majority of your non-fiction is you going out to find it as opposed to it being queried to you?
00:18:07
Speaker
Yes, yes. I would say sort of 90% of my nonfiction is me going out and finding somebody to write this book for me Every so often, a truly kind of extraordinary memoir will come through the submission inbox. And that's the kind of, that's sort of the golden the golden ticket when you find someone who has lived an incredible life and wants to write about it and can do so, you know, in a really kind of,
00:18:37
Speaker
gripping spine tingling make you change your kind of view of the world sort of um yeah but that is the that's the kind of the rarity most of the time 90 of the time it is me I think there's a book here can I go away and find someone to write it or I'll be listening to um desert island discs and it will be somebody like a you know the UK's first ever female um vascular surgeon and I'm like well she's incredible and she's 93 has she written a book she absolutely should um that's the kind of sometimes things just sort of bolts of inspiration strike or you hear someone on a podcast and you think what they've said is so interesting i really want to know more about it let's see if they've written a book they haven't great let's go and see if we can find them and often it's the case of sliding into people's dms or yeah i sliding into their emails however we we can um but yeah it's
00:19:36
Speaker
90% of that is generated rather than waiting for it to come to us. Okay. And in terms of the list as a whole, what, what kind of split is the fiction versus the nonfiction?
00:19:47
Speaker
It goes in kind of swing swings, swings and roundabouts at the moment. It's definitely much more heavily weighted towards the fiction. um and I think that's because, um, that's really what has been sort of exciting me the most. Um, I've had two little ones in the last four years. So I've had a couple of periods of maternity um leave in that time. And i think one of the things that when I've come back that I've really been looking for as a reader and as an agent is that sense of being able to sort of escape into something lovely at the end of the day. And for me that has, that escape has been in fiction. So I think that's why at the moment I am much more kind of weighted towards the fiction side. um
00:20:33
Speaker
But I also fully expect it to kind of swing back. And I think that's sort of the beauty of having the list and the balance that I do is um it can sort of move in that way. But also often with the nonfiction, um if it's memoir in particular, it is only one book.
00:20:51
Speaker
um It's very rare that you have somebody write two or three or four memoirs, whereas with fiction, you know, the sky's the limit. So often you work with people on the nonfiction side for a very intense period of time, and then the book is out and you continue to caretake that
Author-Agent Relationship Dynamics
00:21:07
Speaker
book with them. But you don't have the daily contact in the way that you do with, say, your fiction authors.
00:21:14
Speaker
Do you many of it, was so like in a situation like that, in fact, a friend of mine, ah she recently released ah her her first book as a nonfiction book, um but she would like to get into fiction. Do you, do you, do you often have that with authors where they'll, you'll sign someone, you'll, you'll, you know, get the contract, release their first book, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. And then they say, oh, I actually want to jump over the fence here and do the other thing.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yes, yes, I have had that happen. And it's wonderful when it does, because it means that you get to stay with that person and work with them in an entirely new kind of way you obviously have an established kind of shorthand in that you've edited them before you've worked with them kind of creatively before on a proposal and the difference being obviously with fiction is that you need the full manuscripts to submit yes whereas with non-fiction it's usually on three or four sample chapters and then a kind of chapter outline and wider proposal so I think that is often the biggest difference for people when they're making that jump is oh hang on I've got to write
00:22:16
Speaker
80, 100,000 words now. um Yeah. But it's a real, it's a real joy when it does happen. um One of my authors, Sophie McCartney, it's a great example of someone where we, you know, we we started out writing kind of funny and parenting kind of memoir together. And then she had this incredible idea for a hilarious book comedy mum kind of uh dark uh thriller and i was like yes this is great please write this and so she did and now we're on to book number um two and which will be coming out next year and we're just starting work on book three um so one um one memoir and now two novels
00:23:05
Speaker
Okay, great. Amazing. Okay, yeah. So it's it's good to hear that that's like something that is not so uncommon and and is, off I presume, like pretty useful for you as an agent because it's like, okay, great. This is, it's kind of like adding a whole new person to your list, but without having to do any of the additional logistics.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And you get to, you get to kind of keep fostering that person's creativity, which is always really, really joyful getting to see them kind of explore, um especially in fiction, some of the things that maybe they would love to say or want to do in their real life, but can't because, you know, we have to be grownups, but in fiction we can have a bit more fun.
00:23:43
Speaker
Yes, sadly we do have to be grown ups. The website said, according to the website, ah you've got approximately 60 authors in your list. Does that sound about right?
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds about right. um Does it become more challenging to find the space to sign new writers as your list gets bigger?
00:24:07
Speaker
um Challenging in some ways, yes. Because I think as agents, I think the temptation is often to look for the shiny new thing, because that seems to be often what publishing is always asking us for is the kind of shiny new thing. um i think for me, the balance that I've been really lucky to strike is that I work with people who are incredibly talented authors and they are incredibly talented authors in the space that we started working together in. So that might be middle grade. But that also means that they might then have a brilliant YA idea. They might have a brilliant commercial women's fiction idea. And one of the things that I've really tried to work hard to do is is foster that side of the list. So just because we signed for a middle grade doesn't mean that that precludes us from working on something else together further down the line. And that for me is where, in terms of my kind of real sort of
00:25:09
Speaker
ah busiest authors it is because we are working across multiple genres on multiple projects at any one time and so that then is the thing that allows me to then take a sort of step back and look at where maybe the gaps in my list are where I don't have somebody writing brilliant cozy crime middle grade so that's what I know that I really would love to see so I can be quite um targeted in what I start to look for and what I'm hoping to kind of see come through in the submissions um so it is a balance and it's also that thing of I think for me I really want to be able to if I take someone on and it is their debut and they've never been in this process before I want to make sure that I've got
00:25:58
Speaker
the time to be able to really hold their hand through this process and look after them and make sure that they enjoy it. um Whereas some of my more kind of established authors, we speak regularly. I'm there if they need me. I am always ready to kind of jump in on the trickier things or the, some of the bigger kind of problems that might arise. But,
00:26:25
Speaker
I don't like to step into that relationship between them and their editor because it's really well established. and They've been working brilliantly now for six, seven years. So they don't need me in the same way that somebody who is a debut might need me. And so you do find that the more experienced authors on your list start to need you to hold their hand less and they need you just to sort of be there as that sounding board, that friend, that person who can helicopter in and, you know, bring out the big guns if necessary. yeah But that day-to-day sort of support, they're good.
00:27:02
Speaker
Like they they've got this um and I've got them if they need me, but they don't need me in the same way as a debut might. So that's the kind of balance is that the more you have authors who have been in this industry for a longer time, they start to kind of,
00:27:17
Speaker
fly on their own and then that leaves you room to be able to take on one or two people that you really believe in as a debut and you want to be able to kind of give them that support so again it's really it's really kind of cyclical the way that that works like sometimes you might find that you've got four or five debuts in the space of a year and they really really need you and other times it might be that you know you only take on one or two new authors a year it's It's really kind of dependent on what you're looking for, what you think the gaps in your kind of list are, and then that balance of actually what can you kind of dedicate your time to.
00:27:56
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That's ah very well explained. But like I like all things in publishing, there's no like, yes or no. There's no hard answer. There's no like, oh, I know I'm going to get this many. It's like, it depends. It depends on what my authors need, on you know, what I find, what happens
Publishing Trends and Personal Preferences
00:28:14
Speaker
with the industry. Yeah.
00:28:15
Speaker
Yeah. And and it's often it's often like buses, like you could say, you know, I haven't seen any like great vampire books for years. And then suddenly six come along at once. It's like, what have I spoken out into the universe that now means vampires are coming back? um So yeah, we all have our kind of particular things that we're always really looking for. um in the hope that you know that kind of unicorn book will just sort of email its way into the submissions and then you can kind of jump on it but um it's it's not often not the case yeah yeah um I just have one question before we head over to the cabin and this is question I always like to ask uh agents um is would you ever like to write or publish any stories or books of your own
00:29:08
Speaker
no no absolutely not. No, never, never, never, never. I couldn't do it. um It takes such discipline.
00:29:20
Speaker
And I also just, I'm just so excited to work on my author's ideas. I genuinely don't think I could have one of my own. I really enjoy that partnership and that kind of ability to bounce ideas off with someone else. i I think I would find it quite lonely and quite isolating if the pressure was entirely on me to sit there and come up with this amazing concept and decide whether it should be close third or first person, or should I do dual POV? And I, just I just, wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to start anything because I'd just be asking myself too many questions. Um, I, I know what I'm good at and I'm very good at helping other people bring their stories into the world. Um, I don't think that anyone would need one of mine.
00:30:10
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Well, I have a follow-up question just for you because, uh, twice on this podcast, I have had Chloe Seeger as a guest he and Chloe, obviously very successful agent in her own right, but also has authored several books at this point. Is it, is it strange working with, ah like another agent who is an author?
00:30:36
Speaker
I mean, Chloe and I have worked together now, i think for almost a decade as as author and agent. So we obviously have a kind of agent-agent relationship. We have an author-agent relationship and then we have a friendship as well. So it's it's strange in some ways because people know and I think publishing is one of those industries where it does often feel quite incestuous at points um and often lots of people are writing and i mean,
00:31:06
Speaker
it's never felt awkward or weird or strange. And I think we've always taken the approach that actually one of the things we have to be able to do is talk about it. If it ever does feel awkward or weird or strange, and we've always been able to do that. And I think one of the things that Chloe is very good at as an author and not as an in a you know kind of author agent and is just being an author so when we're talking it is in you know she's got her author hat on she's not got her agent hat on um you know she's looking to our relationship to figure out what is the issue with this manuscript or who do i think would be the best person to submit this to based on the relationships that I have with them and sometimes it might be that she also has a relationship with that person and that's you know that's useful of course but she's she's coming to the table as an author you know as a kind of author agent hybrid um and we've always managed to find a way to make that work okay yeah it's probably nice for her I think so sometimes having that pressure off Yeah, exactly. i This is someone else's problem now. I can just be an author. But
00:32:19
Speaker
but yeah, she's, she's amazing. um And a very talented author and a very talented agent.
Personal Favorites and Adaptations
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how she finds the time, to be honest. I don't. This is one of the things that we often do. We're like, are you sleeping? Yeah, exactly. When are you doing the writing? When are you doing this?
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah, stay healthy, Chloe. Yes. So we're at the point in the episode where I ask you, if you were snowed in at a cozy woodland cabin in the middle of nowhere, which book would you hope to have with you?
00:32:48
Speaker
oh ah Firstly, it would be so lovely to be snowed in a cabin today. I agree. So warm outside. um i've i've when you When you told me that this was the question you were going to ask, i honestly, I really struggled, Jamie, because it's like the most impossible question to answer because I have so many favourite books that i return to every year and are my kind of like comfort blanket reads. And I think because also I'm not, because I do the children's books,
00:33:21
Speaker
and the adult and the nonfiction there's a different I have a different comfort read for what I need in that moment but if you were really going to twist my arm and push me i would probably say and anyone who knows me will not be surprised by this but I would probably say it would be um Louise Renison's Angus Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging Okay. Because it is just my favorite book of all time and is probably the book that referenced the most when anyone asks me.
00:33:58
Speaker
to give them an example of what I think the perfect teen book is. um But also it's one of those books that I think has stayed with me and also my my kind of very good group of friends from home. It was the book that we we loved and we traded as as teenagers and that we still refer to and reference and find so much kind of comfort in. um and I think one of my one of the things I would love the most would be in this kind of age of like Jacqueline Wilson kind of revisiting some of her sort of best loved characters um in the form of um Ellie from Girls in Love or Dolphin from The Illustrated Mum.
00:34:40
Speaker
I would love it if Louise Renison was still here to give us a kind of what is 30 year old Georgia Nicholson doing is she married to a sex God what what does her life look like um that's my biggest kind of would be my biggest wish for a book that I would love to see um sadly I don't think we will but um yeah that would be my my kind of book I could read anywhere in a log cabin, on a plane, in a submarine.
00:35:10
Speaker
It just gives me that kind of, that hug and that feeling of being seen as a teenage girl when very often you feel so invisible and sometimes you wish to be invisible.
00:35:22
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it is a modern classic, I would say and in the, in the YA space for sure. Um, did you like the movie or the DVD two movies, one movie? They did one movie. um I actually rewatched it the other day um okay with my four-year-old. I don't know that it's entirely, I mean, a lot of it went over her head, but um she seemed to like the music. um I loved the casting of Georgia Groom. I think it was incredible casting. i love Gurinder Chadha as a director. I think she's amazing. and i'm
00:35:53
Speaker
Did it deliver for me on the book? Not entirely. And they had to change the name to Perfect Snogging because, you know, we couldn't have Full Frontal. And I just don't think that was necessary. It felt a bit over the top. It was like, come on, Full Frontal is not even really rude. not even that bad, guys, you know. I could understand if it was, you know, the kind think it's like the third book where it's like Trouser Snakes in the title. Yeah. But, you know, I think Full Frontal we could have had. But no, it's a great, it's a great film. And yeah, Georgia Groom was an incredible Georgia.
00:36:29
Speaker
So, happy with the casting. Okay, good. Because is there's nothing, I mean, i didn't think any film is ever going to live up to know one of your favorite books ever. But it's nice that it at least isn't like a total disappointment and you like never watch the film. Ever. Yeah, yeah. Because that happens a lot. So, yeah.
00:36:47
Speaker
It does. That's true. Yeah. That's how i felt about, Artemis Fowl that I just was like, you shouldn't have made this. You shouldn't have made this movie. It was, it was not. You didn't need to Yeah. You ruined it. You absolutely ruined it. I'm sorry.
00:37:02
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you so much. I think, yeah, I felt bad for Owen Colfer as well. Cause I was like, yeah this, this book deserved so much better than the, the more weak, what was given her.
Conclusion and Farewell
00:37:13
Speaker
um Anyway, next up, we're going to get into queries and cover letters, how submissions work at BLM and and all that jazz. That will be available with ah with all the other extended episodes at patreon.com forward slash right and wrong.
00:37:28
Speaker
No, they don't. Although it feels like maybe they're starting to acknowledge that, you know, romance readers and anyone who you know, a romance lover that we exist and that, you know, we are, um when when we do really fall hard for something, we turn out and we support it.
00:37:44
Speaker
m Yeah. Well, let's see, because I know that they're making, aren't they making the fourth wing movie and they're making, so. Allegedly. We'll see how, we'll see how these out. We'll see. We'll see what age restriction they put on them as well.
00:38:00
Speaker
Can you imagine? yeah um Awesome. Well, there's some great stuff in there and ah and we've covered a lot of about how you look at submissions and queries and that. So hopefully there's some really useful things for anyone listening who's thinking about submitting to to Lauren or to to to any agent. There's just some good advice in there in general.
00:38:19
Speaker
Thank you so much, Lauren, for coming on the podcast and chatting with me, telling us all about your your career, getting into publishing and and everything that that you're up to. It's been great chatting with you. Oh, no, thank you for having me. I'm going to go and stick my head in the freezer now. Yes. Yeah, I might do the same thing.
00:38:35
Speaker
Amazing. um For anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what with what Lauren's doing, you can find her on Instagram at LitAgentLauren. And if you want to submit to her or anyone else, any other members of the team over at BellLomaxMorton.com, you can find the the website um and the agents page there's bios and all of them and says what they're what they're looking for what they represent all of that good stuff to support this podcast like follow and subscribe join the patreon for adway extended episodes and check out my other podcasts the chosen ones and other tropes thanks again to lauren and thanks to everyone listening we will catch you on the next episode