Letter to the Agent

Sent to Andrea Messent at Darren and Associates:

Dear Darren & Associates,

It is with some regret that I sit down to write this correspondence. I understand your reluctance to read voluminous missives so I will keep this missive as unchunky as my e-pen allows.

On Sep 4^th 2010 I sent to your agency, via recorded delivery, my novel When Bees Attack. I sent this following a verbal agreement between myself and your agent Cariller Cray when I met her at a catered affair for Bernard Share’s eightieth birthday. We had a thoroughly encouraging conversation about the passion for knowledge common to fellows in the academic arena—the “epistemology of the heart,” to quote my own phrase. At the climax of this discussion I mentioned in passing my sexually provocative novel When Bees Attack about a retired Oxford professor who opens a bee sanctuary on the Norfolk coast. Ms Cray was deeply impressed at the breadth of my apian knowledge and offered to read my manuscript with a view to representation by your agency. 

I received no response for six months save for a Tower Bridge postcard sent by Cariller with “we cannot use” scribbled in (what appeared to be) child’s crayon. Upon a closer inspection with my nose, I did indeed ascertain this message to have been written in crayon. I sent a polite enquiry letter a week later, asking for a more formal response to my manuscript. The following week I received my returned manuscript, each page covered in crayon marks, with large blood-red scrawlings of ‘HA HA HA’ in the margins. I sent yet another polite enquiry. A week later I received a single page of foolscap with the same scrawlings—‘HA HA HA’—across the page. This is not professional conduct. I am a patient man and I do not appreciate being treated in such a bizarre manner.

All I seek is confirmation that my novel, When Bees Attack, has been read by your agency, and whether representation is possible on the strength of the material submitted.

Yours truly,

William Mason

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Reply:

Dear Terence,

I’m think you may have got our Agency confused as there is no Darren or Cariller Cray working here!

Best wishes,

Andrea