Once upon a time, when you were, oh, let’s say, about 13 or so for sake of argument, you probably had your very first crush. Not that you knew then what a crush was as such, or remotely why you had it. No. All that happened was that one day you were the proud owner of a whole range of feelings and sensations that you had never had before. Upon that day, everything about you changed irrevocably irreversibly and forever. You didn’t know that then either; you just thought there was something strangely compelling about Adam Ant. Especially the way he swung through the stained glass window in the video for Stand and Deliver.


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Camilla Bolton joined Darley Anderson Agency in August 2007. She is an Associate Agent for Crime and Thriller fiction, having formerly been in newspaper journalism.


Which 3 authors, dead or alive, would you invite to dinner?
Stephen King, Roald Dahl and Maeve Binchy.

Email or phone?
Phone definitely as I’m not the best at spelling or grammar.

Cosy crime – passé or popular?
Good page-turning cosy crime will return, especially with authors like Alexander McCall Smith re-inventing it with a unique twist. So I’d say it’s zoomed past passé and is heading for popularity.

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It's all very well the radio saying don't go out unless your journey is really necessary, but I'd been looking forward to 'La Boheme' for weeks.

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Having finally worked out how to transfer photos from my phone to the computer, I have unfortunately (but possibly, for those who know me, unsurprisingly) misplaced the USB cable that would allow me to do so. Happily, however, I took the camera rather than the phone with me on my walk today...


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What do these topics have in common?

1. Premature babies
2. Exotic carpets
3. The lifecycle of wolves
4. Native American superstitions
5. Inner workings of fairground carousels
6. Anglo Saxon burial methods


The answer is nothing, but they’re all subjects I’ve had to research for my fiction. Not for the same book, I might add (hmm..maybe that’s where I’ve gone wrong) but they all had two things in common: they were vital to the story and I knew zilch about them. Researching your novel can be a daunting business for the unpublished.

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Not that I'm that well up on American Presidents, either. For me, they generally come heavily mediated by Hollywood films, and if Frank Langella's current portrayal of Richard Nixon is anything to go by there's probably little connection with reality.


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In order to give myself the sense of having achieved something during this period when I can't write because of my un-well-ness, I tidied, at long last, our enormous bookcase. This is just novels - short stories, non-fiction, science, other sections are in other rooms. Alphabetically arranged. It is so tall I had to get on a ladder to get to the A - E sections.
It is now beautifully arranged, and dusted. And while I was sorting it all out I found that we have four John Updike books so I decided to make one of them my Shabbat reading as a tribute to the man who wrote, among other things, twelve short story collections between the years 1959 and this year. The book J picked out for me, The Afterlife and Other Stories, was published in 1994 and the title seemed fitting.I have read Updike's stories over the years in the New Yorker, as well as his essays and criticism, but have never considered him to be a favourite of mine. As I started reading it I wondered why on earth I hadn't read more. Hese stories illustrate exactly the point I was trying to make to my short story workshop participants about not giving a reader any excuse, any reason to stop reading your story..........

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Thought it was time for another update. Things, as they have a funny habit of doing, have happened. Firstly, I 'lost' my job. Honestly, I don't know where I put it. One day, I woke up, caught the bus, and just didn't know where I was going anymore. Go figure...

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The life of a swimming widow...

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Well, today is officially the last day on which you can wish a 'Happy New Year' to someone you haven't seen in a long time. By February all hope is lost - it'll either be a happy year or it won't, but either way there's no turning back.

2009 has already been something of a mixed bag for me. Positive highlights include attending a very interesting and informative 'Get Started in Voice Overs' workshop at Shining Management, confirming two school visits for March and starting work on my first playscript. On the negative side, my mother had to go into hospital for 8 days, the playwriting course I wanted to do was cancelled at the last minute and I've also found myself plagued by strange dreams about people I haven't seen in years - very odd!


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