Ask the Industry Expert: Literary Agent, Madeleine Milburn

Literary agent Madeleine Milburn is our agent in the spotlight this month and has kindly dropped in to chat to Helena Fairfax. Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, Madeleine!

Please tell us a little about the Madeleine Milburn Agency, how long it’s been established, and how you came to set it up.

Madeleine Milburn. Photo credit: Libi Pedder

I started MMLA at the beginning of 2012 because I wanted to run my own ship. 

What do enjoy most about your job? And least?

I love finding new talent, looking after authors and negotiating deals. My least favourite part is rejecting someone’s work.  

What is it you are looking for when a manuscript lands on your desk? Are there any specific plots or themes you’d like to see?

I like emotional stories.  I’m really looking for the strongest love story of all time... I loved One Day, by David Nicholls, because it was basically a love story but told in a different way. 

Do you ever find authors outside the slush pile? If so, how?

99% of my authors come from the slush pile! But I do go to writing events to let writers know what I’m looking for. 

What advice would you give someone submitting to you?

 Do your research, find out what I like reading and make it clear that you have personally submitted to MMLA because you want to be represented by us!  

Do you think these days aspiring romance writers have a better chance of being published if they are planning a series? Are stand-alone novels more likely to be rejected by publishers and agents?

It depends what platform you are writing for. I think series work really well as ebooks because they tend to be published with short gaps between publications.  I love stand-alone novels but when I fall in love with a character it’s wonderful to know that they might make it into the next book.  

Aspiring writers are often advised to build a social media platform. How important do you think this is? As an agent, do you check out a writer’s online presence when you receive an interesting submission?

For fiction, I think this is far more important in the run up to publication when you have a publisher.  At the outset, all I’m concerned with is your voice.  We can teach everything else!  

What’s your favourite romance novel of all time?

One Day, by David Nicholls

Apart from your own authors, which book have you enjoyed the most in the past twelve months, and why?

I really liked The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett because it felt like a modern Sliding Doors, and I liked the overall message.  I really devoured some of the popular suspense titles like The Couple Next Door and The Ice Twins.  

What do you like to do in your spare time?

My only hobby is reading!  

If you could describe your working-day in just three words, what would they be?

Deals, deals, deals

Thanks so much for taking the time to speak to us today, Madeleine. Reading is the best hobby!

If you've enjoyed Madeleine's interview, or have any questions at all, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you!

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Helena Fairfax's engaging contemporary romances have been shortlisted for The Exeter Novel Prize,the Global Ebook Awards and the I Heart Indie Awards. Her latest release is a romantic suspense called A Year of Light and Shadows, available on Amazon in ebook and print, and from other e-book retailers.

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Thank you, Helena and Madeleine for a most interesting interview. If you would like to write for the blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

Janet Macleod Trotter takes the bus to Kathmandu

Janet joins us today with tales of her journey as a teenager overland to India and how it led thirty years later to her novel, The Vanishing of Ruth.

Janet in 1976

Aged 18, I boarded a bus in London bound for Kathmandu and spent four months travelling overland. Over 30 years later, the trip was the inspiration behind my mystery/romantic suspense novel The Vanishing of Ruth. For all of you who enjoy arm-chair travelling or are nostalgic about past travel on the overland route to India, you may have tuned into BBC Radio 2's recent programme, ‘Magic Bus’ (narrated by Tony Wheeler of Lonely Planet fame). It featured music from the hippy trail – what was played aboard the buses and along the route – as well as interviews with travellers such as myself. I contributed with anecdotes and extracts from my travel diary: a teenager’s wide-eyed observations of a vanished world in which young western travellers went east to experience different cultures, live more simply and have fun. I was inspired by stories from my mum and grandparents of their life in bygone India where my grandfather had been a conservator of forests, and my adventurous Granny went out to marry him and live an itinerant life among the Himalayan foothills.

My mum had tales of pacing the length of a man-eating tiger’s entrails and watching soup being sieved through a turban. The head of said tiger greeted us in the entrance of my grandparents’ home in Edinburgh. The Beatles had hung out in India and it had changed their music; books such as EM Forster’s Passage to India whetted my appetite for the mysticism of the subcontinent. India beckoned, and so I went!

The Vanishing of Ruth switches between the hippy trail in the 1970s and the present day.

1976: friends, Marcus and Ruth, go missing in Afghanistan during an overland bus trip to Kathmandu. A generation later, Ruth’s niece Amber, haunted by the disintegration of her family, determines to get at the truth of their disappearance. Was it murder, as her father suspected, or a suicide pact as the police believed?

Tracking down the trip’s bus driver, Cassidy, Amber starts to piece together a lost world - the mystical vibrant hippy trail to India – and colourful characters like Juliet, who imagined herself the reincarnation of an Edwardian traveller. As the mystery surrounding her aunt and the charismatic Marcus unfolds, Amber begins a journey of discovery of her own, that will lead her not only into the dark secrets of the past and lost love, but face to face with a tragedy much closer to home.

This was my first novel as an indie author five years ago (after fifteen years with Headline as a Saga writer) and became a bestselling ebook on Waterstones online in both Romance and Crime categories. My friends in the Border Reivers chapter of the RNA supported me greatly through the transition to self-publishing, and I've since had many best-sellers on Amazon. I'm now a hybrid author, with foreign editions being sold through the Madeleine Milburn Agency who has made me a bestseller in France and Russia!

The Magic Bus programme is available on iPlayer until the end of August:

Links:

BBC Radio 2 – The Magic Bus

Website

Blog:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/MacLeodTrotter

Thank you, Janet, for sharing your past and present adventures with us.

The RNA blog is brought to you by  

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman 

If you would like to write for the RNA blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com