Getting published: thirty years of hurt

I still have the letter. It smells musty and is splatted with celebratory red wine. It wasn't meant to happen. Getting a literary agent, everyone had told me, was hard, but I'd landed my first choice. Moreover, she (let's call her Agent 1) wanted to contract me immediately. I was invited up to her London offices, where praise was lavished upon my debut novel, The River Woman.

Like many young writers, I knew little about agents. "Choose an author you look up to," I'd been advised. "Then approach the agent who represents them." For me, that author was John Fowles - and, incredibly, I was being signed by his agency.

Six months later, I wasn't so ecstatic...