I quite often read about the mystery of literary agents.  That to many aspiring writers, agents appear to inhabit some arcane universe, entered only by secret handshakes, coded and cryptic messages, insider knowledge.  And that their decisions are unfathomable and capricious, if not downright cruel. A bit like the election of a Pope by the cardinals, dark smoke probably appears from our windows if an aspiring writer doesn’t achieve representation; white smoke means they’ve hit the jackpot – a new Pope! Everything’s going great!

But where is the logic? How we must be hated sometimes as we sit in judgment in our throne-room, making trite comments (or even worse, no comment at all) on work over which you’ve laboured for years. How you must long to say very rude things to us, shove that middle finger in our faces – and yet you daren’t, because we’re the magic portal by which you can find yourself suddenly teleported on to the desk of a publisher and living the dream.

It’s a tough life as an aspiring writer, but despite what you think, it isn’t all ambrosia for agents either – or publishers.  This is a tough food chain, and the risk and the disappointments and the hunches that go right or wrong travel both up and down the line, all the way to the top. As agents we’re less likely to be sipping champagne than sitting in a Starbucks (because you can only look at contracts so long) with ten manuscripts on our e-reader, wondering where to begin. And there’s nothing to describe the physical sensations you get when an email headed with the title of a current submission plops into the inbox – and you know that this is the long-awaited response from an editor on your author’s work.  Will the smoke be dark (a ‘no’? A ‘can’t decide yet’?) – or could it just possibly (please, please, please!) be white? Deal or no deal – it’s all focused on that moment and it can make you feel positively sick.

If you’re an emotional, passionate person (er, like me), it’s a rollercoaster that can have you sinking to the floor with head in hands, or jumping up and down whooping like a kid.  Or sometimes just wanting to grab an editor by the neck, shake them and yell, ‘Look, just let me know, can you? Enough of the delays, meetings, discussions, vacations, dental appointments - just get on and make a %$#@ decision!’ But it’s no good – we are professionals. We must breathe deeply and be charming, measured and understanding, tempering the excitements, absorbing the pain, always staying positive and encouraging for the author who is hanging on our every word. Because after all, we are omniscient, right?

Most weeks are a mish-mash of so many different events – small victories, setbacks, lots of ordinary office stuff. But then there are the occasional flaming moments of glory – the ones that change everything and bring the sun bursting out. Ha ha, I’m an agent – and there’s nothing to beat it in the world!

I’ve had a few of those moments in the past week or so.  Most excitingly, closing a deal yesterday for Lindsey Leavitt’s teen novel SEAN GRISWOLD’S HEAD, which has been snapped up by Caroline Abbey at Bloomsbury US. So many deals are fascinating sagas, with their own mini-stories attached, and that was true in this case. Bloomsbury narrowly lost out to Hyperion last summer as underbidders for Lindsey’s PRINCESS FOR HIRE. I know that hit them hard – they really loved Lindsey’s wit and voice. So when SEAN went out a few weeks ago, they were really excited to have another crack at acquiring her. It all went swimmingly and we’re so delighted to have SEAN (a novel Lindsey wrote before PFH) with them. And good to know there is still a market for a funny, quirky, poignant contemporary teen love story in our current market. Have a look at our Author section and you’ll see more about SEAN GRISWOLD’S HEAD, which is such a fun and lovely story.

But there have been more bits of great news too.  A mini--auction in the Netherlands for PRINCESS FOR HIRE, resulting in a three-book deal with Uniboek (and I’ve just heard today that other foreign houses have had good preliminary reads following Bologna).  A deal by Hyperion with lovely Tim Ditlow of Brilliance for audio rights in Sarwat Chadda’s DEVIL’S KISS, as well as Rights People’s sale of Japanese rights to Media Factory. Sarwat’s first radio interview on the BBC Asian Network (a star is born).  Great cover proofs of Val Patterson’s THE OTHER SIDE OF BLUE, which looks so classy and enticing. And a new speaking gig lined up in Miami with SCBWI Florida for January 2011 – and more engagements on the way.  Then there are the other things going on that I can’t tell you about (hey, it’s true – we really are secretive!) – the submissions that are out, the revision of the hot manuscript I’m awaiting next week, the quality manuscript I’m currently reading . . .

The one thing I can say about being an agent is that there’s very rarely a dull moment!

Welcome to my world. Today, the view from my desk, over my Vegas boots, is set fair – and the smoke is definitely white.

It’s a good thing President Obama married Michelle when he did, because otherwise one of my two sons would have whisked her away.  Or possibly both. Never mind that they are only 22 (yes, both of them) and spend most of their time in London; age and distance are no object when it comes to their reverence for the gorgeousness of the First Lady.

You see, Europe loves the Obamas.  My husband now gets greeted excitedly by customs men at London’s Heathrow airport, simply because he is American and wearing his Obama hat.  French publishers struggle incoherently (zut alors! C’est merveilleux!) to express their excitement over a bottle of wine in a Bologna restaurant, even as Monsieur Sarkozy hovers gnat-like at the President’s shoulder in his desperation to absorb some radiance from the Sun King. And now even the Queen has dropped centuries of stiff-upper-lip and let Michelle embrace her.  What is the world coming to! Touching? Smiling? By rights, the First Lady should be in the Tower by now, waiting to have her head chopped off.

These last two weeks have been all about Europe – both in the big, bad world of politics, in the children’s books industry, and for me personally. It’s not all been easy.  Protests in London (I’m sorry, but what on earth is there to protest about? None of us are exactly thrilled about the economic situation). And then for me, getting sick just before I flew to Bologna for the book fair, and staying sick for the whole thing. In fact, I couldn’t speak (though Julia might say that was a welcome relief). I can tell you, I was mad as a hornet to be lying in bed with a tray of room service while my buddies were sauntering over the cobblestones to La Antica Osteria Romagnola for another smashing dinner, but hey ho, one has to at least try to be mature. The main thing is that it was a great fair for the Greenhouse. Julia and I had bags of appointments (even if I did have to whisper and croak), there was loads of interest in our foreign rights, and follow-up manuscripts are going out to publishers all over the world.  Oh, and we’re also anticipating our first Japanese and audio deals, which is all very cool. Sure, the fair was a bit quieter than usual in terms of the number of feet on the floor, but the editors who were there definitely felt they had a great opportunity to score the best projects around, which made them feel pretty smug.

Then it was on from Bologna to Paris, and a few great days’ vacation in the city with French family and friends.  I love it, I love it, I love it.  I love the grandeur of the architecture – the insanely splendiferous vision of Louis XIV (really quite a small dude, but with awfully big hair) who popped up new palaces on a weekly basis.  Louis XVI who just didn’t see the end coming, and whose Marie-Antoinette was playing milkmaids down at the farm instead of contemplating the possible severance of her head. I love the epic vistas, the gleaming gold leaf, the sun turning stained-glass into jewels; the centuries’ old collection of armour over at the Musee de L’Armee (sorry, no accents on this keyboard), the squares, the gardens and ‘etoiles’. And I love the wallopingly huge edifice of Napoleon’s tomb.

Yes, I have a weakness for a really good tomb. Because at a tomb you can stand and imagine; a tomb is the ultimate leveller; it sorts out the ones you need to go and visit, even in death, and those whom history has passed by. And in Paris there are some crackingly good tombs for all of us obsessed with books and writers. Here on my blog photo is Jean-Paul Sartre, ensconsed down at Montparnasse with Simone de Beavoir. But I also paid a visit to Voltaire, Dumas, Victor Hugo – and Baudelaire. None of them may quite have the tomb-perfection (thin blue light, gloomy hugeness) of General Foch, or the panache of Serge Gainsbourg’s last resting place (‘je t’aime, je t’aime, Jane Birkin . . . ‘), but we know, don’t we, what they contributed to books and letters and how, in their strange and magisterial ways, they influenced us to follow behind, struggling in their wake to master big ideas and this great and difficult craft of words.

Europe. Here is history, untold centuries of it, layered in buildings, books and language.  But also the present day – a political community, hub of commerce for the children’s books industry and so much more. Europe is like the glass pyramid outside the Louvre – the startlingly new abuts the casual grandeur of antiquity.

Can we make what we write and create speak to the present day and to a global marketplace - but also worthy of the vast literary heritage from which we come?
Now that’s a tough one. But you know what? I think we should try. 

I think I’m going to make it.  It was touch and go at times, but I prevailed.  The fog has cleared, I’ve climbed up the tree and can almost see the plain below . . . Yes, there’s scope for metaphor in the hectic days leading up to the Bologna Book Fair!

Some of you will know all about Bologna, others of you will have vaguely heard that something bookish happens there. But still more of you may be thinking . . . Bologna? What’s that? Here then, in my first-ever self-interview, is a guide to everything you need to know about the Bologna Book Fair.  Including the bits that most professionals will never tell you.

So, Sarah, what and where is Bologna? 

Bologna is a very beautiful town in northern Italy – in fact, it is the capital of Emilia-Romagna, located between the Po River and the Apennines.  It was founded by the Etruscans in c. 534 BC and has had a long, varied, and at times rather bloody history since then.  It is home to the oldest university in the world – the Alma Mater Studiorum, founded in 1088.  It is also, apparently, consistently rated one of the most attractive and desirable Italian cities in which to live and . . .

Sarah, do us a favour and shut up.  What we REALLY want to know is – why are you going there?  After all, you’re supposed to be a literary agent of children’s books, not a medieval scholar.

Doh, you Philistine. OK, Bologna is also home to the annual international children’s book fair, which is held each Spring in a gigantic complex of exhibition halls just outside the city. Publishers, agents and other industry professionals flock to Bologna for about 4 days to do business, to talk about business they might do, and to make and cement the networks of connections that could enable them to do business in the future. It is a melting pot of people, information, images, languages - and business cards are the currency of this huge international melee.

Wow! But why do you need to go all that way just to see people?  Aren’t internet and email good enough?

You’re a spoilsport, aren’t you! Though you’ve got a point – or you would have if this business was a science and not an art.  You will never get around the fact that this is an industry lubricated by the oil of relationships, and (as in any business) you tend to engage in commerce with those you know – and like.  You chat with them, and you know their tastes – so you submit work to them.  They’ve seen your wares – so they ask to see something you’re representing.  You pick up ideas, information and tips ‘on the wires’ (you might say). What is hot, what will be hot, what’s out there, who’s snapped up something good.  It’s a buzzy business and it’s the job of publishers and agents to be up to date with the buzz.  Plus, actual deals are often done at the fair (though not so much with fiction, which requires a longer read), with a lot more in the subsequent follow-up. Bologna can be worth thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars or pounds to a publisher. It’s a trade fair, it’s about buying and selling – it’s not a writers’ conference (though some organizations like SCBWI have events running alongside).

OK, enough already, you’ve convinced me.  But what exactly is being bought and sold? Not actual copies of books, surely.

You’re right! Every book is a Work – an intellectual property in which there are numerous ‘rights’, which are sliced up and sold in different segments.  These segments are what are sold at Bologna – or in which interest (with a view to sales) is solicited.  For Greenhouse, being a transatlantic business, the most important segments are the US/Canada and UK/ Commonwealth chunks. Then there’s the ‘translation rights’ chunk, represented (usually) by my colleagues in Rights People. Film/TV (aka ‘dramatic’) and merchandising rights are further chunks, which we always retain to be sold separately, while audio (physical and non-physical formats) is up for debate, often but not always falling in with volume rights, along with electronic.  All these chunks are of interest at the fair.
I pitch some Works at Bologna which haven’t even been submitted to publishers yet, while chunks of the rights in others have been sold already.  Last year the baby Greenhouse had only sold one author by the fair - this year we have a whole portfolio. 

How does it all work, what does it look like, and who goes?

Imagine rows and rows of exhibition halls, a bit like warehouses. There are grassy bits with benches in between the halls, where you can grab a cappuccino or panini and sit if the weather’s good.  If it’s bad you run between them. US and UK have a couple of halls, with European halls adjoining.  The further you go the more exotic it all gets – Iraq, Africa etc etc. I’ve never been to the furthest reaches, but it’s a real eye-opener to the sheer scale of the industry. The halls are packed with publishers’ stands, most designed so you can’t see inside (for fear of piracy), and with giant ‘panels’ of book jackets on display. Agents have an area all their own, with lots of small tables for one-to-one discussions.  Mostly, attendees schedule their days in half-hour slots, often without a break from 8.30 to 6pm.  Sellers tend to remain on their stand; buyers walk miles between stands.

Who goes?  Publishing rights-selling staff (they sell - and are the engine-room of the fair), senior editorial staff (they want to buy – and are looking for new projects), scouts (both book and film), agents, representatives of more niche businesses – whether marketing, ebook/electronic, retail. And trade journalists. Though this year will be leaner than most, due to the global economy. Authors are sometimes hosted at the fair – if they are a really international property. This year Greenhouse is taking Sarwat Chadda (DEVIL’S KISS) for 24 hours. It’s a brilliant opportunity for him to meet face to face nearly all his international publishers in one place and at one time.  Even if we all have to go to Italy to do it!  But then, from London it’s a very quick hop.

Come on, Sarah, we know this is really all about great food and lots of fun, isn’t it?

Well, it’s true that you won’t starve at Bologna, and the evenings are a highlight. You scramble back to your hotel for a very quick turnaround, then usually out for drinks/dinner at one of the city’s many great restaurants (you have to book early!).  The food is fantastic, usually lots of little courses, and it’s fun dining out with people you don’t normally get to see – especially when they’re from different parts of the world. I’ve been to around 10 fairs and have got to know a lot of people. I always say this is a very international business, and at Bologna you live and breathe that.

So, go on - tell us the bits that most people don’t know. Like you promised?

Aha, I knew it! You want the good stuff. OK:

The Pink Bar:  This is down at the bottom of the Via Independenza and is where the hard-core, cool people hang out till the early hours.  By midnight I can hardly stand up I’m so shattered, so you’ve got to hand it to anyone who’s still up for it at 2am. Often you can see quite famous authors there, looking a bit wild.

The Bologna Haircut and Outfit:  It’s lost in antiquity, but everyone (well, everyone female) knows you have to get your ‘do’ done just before Bologna. And there must be at least one new item in your suitcase. It’s just law. Could be because we pasty-faced, lumpy-looking Brits and Americans have to stroll up and down past the fabulously beautiful Italians, all chic little Armani suits, tans and black manes of hair.  It’s tough in a place where even the bus drivers could model for Vogue.

The Book of the Fair:  This is what you always wish you had.  This mythic Work that is so hot it’s practically sizzling, that sets the halls a-buzz with envy and speculation. Who’s got it, who wants it, what they have paid for it or would pay for it.  Believe me, if you’ve got The Book you just float as people lurch up to you with wine-glass in hand hoping to stand in the shadow of your greatness.

The Bologna illness:  It’s guaranteed. You’ll get it before, during, or after.  Take your pick. This year I’ve chosen before. Or it’s chosen me.

The Lost Luggage: Ha ha! Always gleeful schadenfreude when it happens to others - as it does every year, to Americans.  Because there’s nothing more horrific than imagining oneself at the fair without even a spare pair of underpants.

The Dark Glasses:  What you see on the faces of many ‘industry professionals’ as they sit in Bologna airport, waiting to fly home. If you talk without ceasing for 18 hours per day for 4 or 5 days, stay up much too late and get up much too early, drink too much prosecco and eat way too much mascarpone . . . well, only enormous dark glasses can save you now.

Thank you, Sarah, though why I should thank you for going to Italy, I don’t know. Rumour has it that you’re even going off on vacation after the fair to an Undisclosed European Destination.  Tell me it’s not true or I’ll hate you even more?

Er, actually it is true – but only for a few days.  Back in the hotseat on April 1.  See you then!  Ciao!

What do you get when you take one very busy trip to London (including a talk to about 50 SCBWI members on ‘writing the breakout novel’), add an upcoming Bologna book fair (complete with schedules to fix and decisions to be made on work to be pitched), throw in a large pinch of eye problems (the eye doctor is now my best friend), season with a towering manuscript pile that has all delivered simultaneously, and then top everything off with some hefty contract negotiation.  Oh, and did I mention the book deal? 
What you get is . . . absolutely no blogging.  For three weeks.  No, I didn’t vanish from the face of the earth – I just got a bit busy, and next week is going to be even more packed.  (But did you guess that I love it all?)

The really exciting news is that both Julia and I have clinched deals in the past week – and very strangely, in similar genres and to the same house – Bloomsbury!  The path by which one reaches a deal destination can be very long and circuitous, but it can also be fast and amazingly direct, and these two deals exemplify both.

I started working with Jon Mayhew some months ago.  As soon as I saw his draft for MORTLOCK, a middle-grade Victorian gothic chiller, I knew he was on to something with great commercial potential. Quite simply, it’s gloriously, fabulously over the top in its evil and it romps along with a panache that is outstandingly child friendly.  It’s all about Josie, an orphan who performs as a knife-thrower alongside her guardian, the conjuror known as the Great Cardamom. But Cardamom has secrets – many years ago he and his two friends, Lord Corvis and Mortlock, discovered the Amarant, a pulsating red plant that gives its possessor power over life and death. When three aged ‘aunts’ turn up at the house, kill the conjuror and transform into giant eviscerating crows (who are truly fantastic!), it becomes clear that the Amarant’s power is far from dormant – and that somehow Josie must destroy it. So off she goes – with her newly discovered twin Alfie, an undertaker’s ‘mute’ - on a terrifying quest that involves a circus of the living dead, and a ghastly encounter with the Amarant in a graveyard where Mortlock certainly does not ‘rest in peace’. 

Here is a story that is high-concept, pacy, and very commercial – a great fit for today’s market. Lots of publishers really liked it, but finally we had a shoot-out between two houses that totally fell in love with the story, resulting in victory for Ele Fountain at Bloomsbury UK, who’s signed Jon in a three-book deal.  A wonderful result, which will enable Jon really to develop as an author, backed by lead-author status and marketing campaign on a list that has so successfully built Angie Sage in the same genre. Congratulations, Jon! 
This is a book with considerable international potential, and I’m looking forward to going out with it in the USA – plus we’re already getting interest from scouts for other territories.  All great timing, with Bologna opening just over a week from now.

But hold on!  Was that all our news? No, it was not – because Julia has been busy too over there in London.  I’ll hand you over to Julia herself to tell you about it:

Exciting news from the UK. I’ve just tied up a deal for a chilling murder mystery for 10+ by Michael Ford. The Ghosts of Greave Hall is about a Victorian servant, haunted by her mother’s ghost, who is pitted against a sadistic housekeeper. Very creepy, with shades of JANE EYRE and THE WOMAN IN BLACK. Ele Fountain at Bloomsbury UK was the acquiring editor. It was sold on the strength of a partial manuscript and detailed synopsis, which doesn’t happen very often, and that’s testament to the quality of the author’s writing and concept. Michael is himself a book editor and one of those people with tonnes of great ideas, who are such fun to work with. I can’t wait to see how the novel grows in the next few months.

A bit more about the story:  The year is 1856, and orphan Abigail Tamper lives below stairs in Greave Hall, a crumbling manor house in London. Lord Greave is plagued by madness, and with his son Samuel away fighting in the Crimea, the running of Greave Hall is left to the tyrannical housekeeper, Mrs Cotton. The only solace for the beleaguered staff is to frighten Mrs Cotton by pretending the house is haunted.

So when a real ghost makes an appearance - that of her beloved mother - no one is more surprised than Abi. The spirit has a revelation that threatens to destroy Abi’s already fragile existence: she was murdered, and by someone under their very own roof. With Samuel returned to England badly wounded, it’s up to Abi to nurse him back to health, while trying to discover the identity of the killer in their midst. As the chilling truth dawns, Abi’s world is turned upside down.

The Greenhouse UK juggernaut is on the road and we’ve just smashed a bottle of champagne over it! Cheers!

Back to Sarah: Yes, well, thank you, Julia – don’t get over-excited now with those ‘juggernauts’.  But in honour of your first Greenhouse deal, and Bloomsbury UK, I’ve topped this blog post with a photo to remind us all of England . . . My husband was given these wind-up figures for Christmas by our nieces, and they always make me smile.

So, my office looks like a bomb has gone off in it.  There’s a still unopened scanner sitting in its box in the corner, a ‘soft phone’ sent from our London office so we can speak direct through the internet (which of course requires copious voltage converters, adaptors etc), and paper everywhere. But I can assure you there is method in the madness and everything will (I think) be where it should be by the time I leave for Bologna a week Saturday. 

Cheers, everyone, I’ll be writing again soon.

On January 26 - just two days after our first anniversary - we welcomed a new agent to the Greenhouse. Julia Churchill is in London, England, and her job is to grow the UK side of our business, which is exciting news for aspiring and established authors on that side of the Pond. You can read more about Julia in the About Us section of this site, but here is our very first interview with Julia (who, I have to tell you, is quite brilliant!). 

Hi there, Julia!  It’s great to have you in the Greenhouse, building our UK author list.  Can you tell us a bit about your career to date and what made you join Greenhouse? 

It’s wonderful to be here!

I started out as a Press Office intern at Sheldrake Press in London, and then in 2002 joined the Darley Anderson Literary, TV & Film Agency as an assistant. Two years later I was the Agency Manager, and then in 2005 was made Associate Agent with a brief to build the children’s books side of the business.

I’d been watching Greenhouse’s progress with a lot of interest over the course of 2008. I kept on reading about these great deals and amazing-sounding books in the trade press, and I was aware the agency was selling books to both the USA and the UK. Most young agencies can take a few years to get out of the blocks so I was really impressed that so much was happening in a short space of time.

I like it when something is from more than one place, and Greenhouse feels truly international. That’s something that strikes a chord with me personally and obviously makes business sense too. If I were an English-language writer I’d want to be represented by a transatlantic agency that had feet on the ground in both English-language markets. I was also very impressed that Greenhouse has its own rights-selling sister company, Rights People – it is just so strong internationally.

What led you into agenting and what do you love most about it?

Funnily enough, when I was a teenager my mum told me I should become a literary agent. I’m not sure what she saw in me, but I loved books and was a mini wheeler-dealer in the playground – selling sweets, food, collectables, music. I didn’t think much of her suggestion at the time – I probably rolled my eyes a bit.

Then a few years later I’d graduated and knew I wanted to work in the book business. I applied to hundreds of places – publishers, packagers, agents, scouts. Pretty much everybody in the Writers and Artists Yearbook got a resumé from me. I was in the interview at Darley Anderson’s, hearing about the role and about what literary agents do and I remember thinking, ‘I need to get this. I have to make this my thing.’ I had white knuckles.

There is a lot to love about this job. Every day is a treasure hunt. All agents are beachcombers - heads down looking for something heart-stopping in the sand. It’s a thrill to find talent, it’s a thrill to help develop it, and it’s a thrill to do great deals for my authors. I love sending them the big cheques and sending them the little cheques too – for Danish bookclub audio, Dutch public-lending rights, Taiwanese large print.

It’s magic, and starts with one person who quietly believes that they have a story to tell. And they give up their spare time and their thinking space, tap, tap, tap on a keyboard and they create worlds. It still blows my mind when I find a great manuscript – goose-bumps, sleeplessness, nervous energy, sometimes even a few tears.

Right now somebody somewhere is sitting at home tapping out the book that’s going to change the publishing landscape of 2011 or 2012.  And it’s exciting to be jostling on the front line of that.

You’re going to be based in London and specifically looking for UK-based authors.  What kinds of books do you particularly like – and what will you be looking for? 

I‘ve got broad taste in books and like anything as long as it’s good! I’m as happy in the book aisle at ASDA as I am in the ‘staff picks’ section of Daunts. I like books that scare me and books that make me laugh. Fantasy adventure, graphic novels, romance, horror, silliness, really sad stuff, heavy, light, dark. I just like to be in the hands of a storyteller who can do their thing.

I’m looking for children’s and teen fiction - for boys, for girls, for all ages, though we’re not representing picturebook texts or illustrators at the moment. I’m looking for anything with storytelling magic, really!

Can you tell us a bit about the UK market at the moment and what you feel is particularly working (or not working) there in terms of children’s and teen fiction? 

The lists are dominated by Stephenie Meyer right now. This is really significant. It means we’re going to see a lot more teen fiction making it in the UK. We’ve been predicting it for along time - the teen market smashing things up a bit. And it’s really happening now which is super exciting. The Twilight books could well do for teen what Potter did for middle grade – a big old shot in the arm. I really hope so because in the UK that market has struggled (unlike in the USA) and this might be the watershed moment. It’s also a golden time for middle grade (8-12). New authors breaking through, and publishers are still very keen to acquire for that core group.

One of the things I love about the business is that there is always a big surprise round the corner – massive bestsellers that no one saw coming. Books on odd subjects, books published by tiny presses, books that are initially self-published. And these unexpected, odd books come along and just push everything else off the mat. It’s quite inspiring.

Rumour has it that you’re quite a world-traveller (very much in keeping with Greenhouse’s international spirit!).  Can you tell us a bit about that?

I’ve got a Dutch mother and my family is spread throughout the world so I spend Thankgiving in Boston, Christmas in France, Easter in Spain and holidays in Holland. Last year I spent six months living up a mountain in La Gomera, Spain. I have a need to climb up things – trees, walls, volcanic plugs. It’s the goat in me – Capricorn. So I indulged that to the max.

Which authors do you most enjoy reading and are there any who have been particularly influential in drawing you into a career focused on literature for young people?

As a kid I was an obsessive collector of the Hardy Boys. I love all that Robinson Crusoe/ Survival Handbook/island adventure stuff. Very tomboy-ish. Tintin, Asterix. Boys’ books really. And then when I got to about twelve I made the switch to adult fiction because at the time there wasn’t much teen. So I loved Steven King and James Herbert – dark, nightmare stuff. Also adored Judy Blume and then a bit later Sidney Sheldon.

At the moment I’ve got Captain Underpants by the side of my bed and I’ve just finished Last Exit to Brooklyn which I’ve read a hundred times.

Are you open to submissions and how should writers contact you? 

I’m wide open to submissions - the more the merrier. I am specifically looking to build our list on this side of the Pond, so if you’re in England, Wales, Scotland or Ireland do get in touch. If you’re American (or rather, living in the USA/Canada) please remember that you should be writing to Sarah. If you’re in Australia or New Zealand, take your pick. While Sarah and I talk most days and discuss promising submissions together, it does help to divide things up geographically at the outset, simply because that’s the way publishing contracts work. Rights for the UK and Commonwealth are generally packaged together, with North American rights forming a separate contractual package.

If you want to send me a submission, please first check out our submission guidelines on this site – everything you need to know is on here.

Anything else that we should know about you?  How do you like to spend your time when you’re not working?

Much like a dog, I really love my walks! I cook a lot too. I have in my possession right now a recipe for mango chutney which features flaked almonds and pistachios and is insane. And I love very loud music.

Thanks, Julia. Great to welcome you to the Greenhouse.  And bon appetit!

It’s 6.15 – still early, but too many ideas and things to do, and I’ve lost all taste for languishing. A quick cup of coffee, a glance at the Washington Post.  (Go on, guys, just bail us out, stimulate us – before the blood of more publishers stains our words.) On with an ancient pair of track pants, hoodie, walking boots and off I go, up the road towards the lake.

Past the empty lot, and a dart of scarlet, brilliant and gone almost before I can take it in.  A Red Cardinal, whirring through the winter foliage. Up the road, down the hill, saying hi to a rabble of Golden Retrievers ripping through the yards, and the friendliest maintenance guys you could ever find (and never in London). Cutting through the wooded path that winds round to the lake.

A commotion in the bushes to my left. And suddenly five does burst out of the trees a few feet in front of me, their white-bob tails wiggling to attention.  They stop. I stop.  They regard me silently from the earth above, and I stare up at them with soft eyes. We bid each other good day and move quietly on. The woods are full of sound, but we are alone in this early morning as the pale sky turns to blue through patchwork branches.

Up the sharp bank, where once a puppy named Hogan tipped and rolled, eyes of light, bright tongue flapping. Down to the lake, the ice gone. A staccato honking and I glance upwards, to see the Royal Flight of Canada geese in their vast, perfect arrow formation arcing across the sky above me. I sit on the wooden bench, looking out over the smooth, quiet water.  I know it now –the weight of stone in my hand as it skims, the twig that tests ice, the deep dark of weed and silt. Trees turning, the balance of sky, water and light.  I see through my inward lens, each day different, the small sounds of transformation.

Back up the long tarmac road and the tat-tat-tat of woodpeckers on hollow trees. Busy, determined, jobs to do. Reminding me that it is February 11, that it is time to hurry home and re-enter my virtual urban world.

But I am the Greenhouse and here is my compass. Here is my heart.