David Haviland, Andrew Lownie
David is an agent at the Andrew Lownie agency, he is also a writer, editor, and ghostwriter, with a number of bestselling books to his name.The Andrew Lownie Literary Agency Ltd, founded in 1988, is now one of the UK’s leading boutique literary agencies with some two hundred non-fiction and fiction authors and is actively building its fiction list. David is looking for fiction in all genres, and vivid, dramatic stories will always get his attention.He is particularly interested in crime, thrillers, mysteries and adventure stories.

When did you come into agenting? What did you do before? And why agenting?

I’ve only been an agent for a few months, but I’ve worked with the Andrew Lownie Literary Agency for nine years in a variety of roles, before taking on authors myself. In that time, I was ghostwriting, editing, developing proposals, as well as writing my own books, so it was really a natural progression to taking on authors myself.

What sort of books do you love?

I love stories that are dramatic and surprising, with intriguing and appealing characters, that try to address some kind of interesting, troubling question in the real world. I love crime novels and thrillers, but I find it frustrating when many of these books are purely mechanical and plot-driven, without any emotional or thematic tension.

Have you ever opened a new manuscript, read a single page, and thought ‘I’m going to end up making an offer on this’? What was it about that page which excited you?

No, because being able to write terrific prose is only one of the skills I’m looking for. Lots of writers can write good prose, and can craft a scene, with good dialogue, and so on. However, crafting an effective, novel-length narrative is a quite different skill, and arguably more difficult.

What’s your pet peeve on covering letters?

I’m not very keen on empty boasts. Occasionally I receive cover letters in which unpublished authors tell me that they’re the new F. Scott Fitzgerald or Kerouac, and I’m afraid the impression it creates is that they’re a bit deluded.

What Unique Selling Points do you have as an agent or agency?

The Andrew Lownie Literary Agency celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and has grown to become one of the UK’s leading non-fiction agencies, with authors in the bestseller lists every week, and placing over fifty books a year with UK publishers, quite apart from foreign rights and film deals. Now it hopes to do the same with fiction.

David is one of the agents appearing at this year’s Festival of Writing. Each year we invite important agents who are hungry for new talent and who look after some of the best authors in the business. Don’t miss your chance to book a one-to-one session with an agent of your choice.

There was a debate by an organisation called Intelligence Squared at the Royal Institution last Tuesday 23rd April where the motion was ‘pornography is good for us: without it we would be a far more repressed society.’ I didn’t attend the debate itself, but apparently at the outset 60% of the audience supported this motion, and by the end this had only reduced to 50%. Germaine Greer opposed it, arguing that pornography doesn’t rescue us from repression, it actually feeds off it, because without some form of repression there would be no pornography. Either way, it looks as if we – or at least the intelligentsia sitting in a debating chamber – are still pretty equally divided in our opinions. I wonder how such a debate would go if it was enacted by parents, teachers, therapists, criminologists…?

We live in a society where we are lucky to have access to whatever literature or images we choose, but as an adult I choose to avoid going anywhere near the troubling modern day, dead-eyed porn in all its blatant, fleshy, garishly-lit, visual crudity. It’s starting to make Emmanuelle look like Mary Poppins and it terrifies the life out of most parents. So had I been debating this issue I would have gone further and suggested that even the word ‘repression’ is surely outmoded in this day and age in which case so should porn be, that is, why do we apparently still ‘need’ it? Far from liberating us or taking us away into fantasies, it merely takes sex, something that is beautiful, if basic, and turns it something ugly, brutish or even violent at best, and at worst is starting to damage and frighten the young, evolving minds that watch it.

Some might say this is rich coming from a writer of erotica, but the two prime words I have just used are ‘watch’ and ‘writer’. One of the many tags that irritated me about the 50 Shades phenomenon was its description as ‘mummy porn’, which, without getting too heavy, seemed to link two opposing words in an extremely unpleasant way. The writer of it happened to be a mother, and the readers were often mothers, but the only mother in the narrative is an abusive, drug-taking prostitute in the hero’s back story. Similarly the ‘porn’ involved in the story relates to the use of domination, punishment and sex toys (albeit in a consensual relationship), but then the book is also described as erotica. So, which is it? Erotica, or porn? In my view, it can’t be both.

I am not a natural debater – I tend to get heated, emotional and as you can see from this piece, opinionated – but if I am challenged on the basis that I’ve written some pretty experimental sexual practices in some of my earlier work, I prefer to simplify matters for myself and for my audience by making a stark distinction. To me, porn is immediate, unimaginative, visual, and predominantly male-orientated. Erotica seeks to arouse through the written word and imagination, and is primarily by women, for women. It’s the difference between brutality and sensuality. Insult and compliment. Relationship and encounter. Consent and imposition. Porn seeks to lower, erotica to elevate. Porn is imposed, violent, debasing. Erotica celebrates sex within an adult, and with the genre of ‘erotica romance’ catching on, increasingly intense, romantic relationships.

An unlikely champion of this viewpoint was D H Lawrence. Recently, preparing for my erotica workshop, I re-read parts of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and realised that the ‘obscenity’ in it relates more to the context, the language used, and the times in which it was written, rather than the explicit yet tender descriptions of the sex itself.
I suppose in conclusion that if I was going to put my money where my mouth was, I’d have to imagine my teenage son’s reaction if he read one of my books. Mostly he’d snap the book shut as soon as he realised what was going on, but if he did read it more closely he would see that everything happening was part of an intense, loving journey between consenting adults. The worst that could happen is that he’d be deeply embarrassed, not deeply damaged.

Anastasia Parkes has an MA in English Literature from Oxford and has lived in London and Cairo. She presently works as a secretary for criminal defence lawyers and as a portrait photographer. She also writes freelance features for publications such as The Times, The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, The Lady and You And Your Baby magazine. Under the pseudonym Primula Bond, she has written three erotic novels (Country Pleasures, Club Crème and Behind the Curtain) and numerous short stories for Virgin Books, a novella (Out of Focus) and solo collection of short stories for Xcite Books, and a further novella (Sisters in Sin) and numerous short stories for the HarperCollins imprint Avon. When she’s not also working on completing a literary novel, she works as a book editor for aspiring erotic, romatic and literary writers.

Anastasia is running a number of workshops at our upcoming Festival of Writing, including one on  Writing Erotica: ‘Behind closed doors’ More details can be found here: http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/Festival-2013-workshops.html

As I write this, I am in limbo. I’ve just sent back my notes on the first proofs of my next book Crap Towns Returns: Back By Unpopular demand, and although there’s another proofing stage to go, I’m starting to realise that there’s very little more I can do for the book.

A few weeks ago, when I was in the thick of writing, wondering if I was really going to finish on time, desperately trying to find out new facts about Bury St Edmunds, to trim down my (then) ridiculously long history of the City of London, to find that killer fact about Gateshead, not to mention when I was schlepping round the M25 to grab last minute photographs of Jaywick, Camberley and Southampton – back then I would have told you I couldn’t wait for this moment.

But, as I imagine every writer knows, getting to the end isn’t entirely delightful. I feel, instead, bereft. It isn’t just that writing can be such a peculiar and intense joy. (And I mean joy. Coming up with the right picture caption or one-liner sets me dancing round my study in delight.) It’s that it gives you a sense of purpose and meaning. Even writing a book as daft as Crap Towns is wonderfully validating. The feeling must be extraordinary for novelists – but the come down must also be correspondingly hard. Where do you go after having such a good outlet for your pet obsessions such a long time? What do you do?

It isn’t just that I suddenly have far less to do with my time, and a pressing need to find a new project. It’s also that my book is leaving my hands – and that soon I’ve got to hope it lands in as many other hands as possible. This thought is terrifying. Especially right at this minute, when there’s very little I can do about it. Launch isn’t until September. There are a few things I can do before then to help build interest, but my main job is to wait. And try to resist the urge to email my publisher’s PR people every ten minutes to ask why I’m not on the front page of The Times, who they’ve phoned about my book in the last, I don’t know TEN SECONDS, what they’re planning… I also have to try to remember that while the book is the centre of my universe, it’s just one in a huge constellation for everyone else along the line. The PR people, booksellers, journalists I’m going to need so much nearer to launch time probably don’t even know I’m there. I don’t exist. Oh God! I told you I was in limbo. There must be something I can do…

No, actually, there isn’t much, and that’s really quite disconcerting. The truth is that I’ve also got to start letting go of my book. Every writer must do the same. And I’m sure every writer will tell you it isn’t easy. But I know I shouldn’t complain. The thing to remember is that 12 months ago, when I was putting the finishing touches to my pitch, I’d have been delighted to be in this position. Overjoyed. Two years ago, I’d have been amazed. When you bring a book into the world, it often feels like the goalposts are forever moving backwards. As soon as your proposal is accepted you have to write and edit the thing. Then you have to help proof it. Then help publicise it. Then come up with the next idea. Then get a proposal in… But even if the back of the net always seems to be frustratingly far away, it’s fun at least to be on the pitch.

Sam was born in Alnwick Northumberland and now lives in Norfolk.

After studying Classics at Cambridge he spent some time in the Ardeche region of France where he was a goatherd. He has been earning a living as a writer since the year 2000. He is the author of five books (including the best-selling Crap Towns and Sod That!: 103 Things Not To Do Before You Die ).

He also writes features and articles regularly for the Guardian – and has written for most other national papers in the UK. He is also a part-time film reviewer.

He is currently interested in the middle classes and has a website investigating their strange habits at organicpeasandorderlyqueues.com He is quite middle class himself and lives in Norwich with his partner, who is also a writer.