I know that this is slightly redundant now, Leila, seeing as by the time you read this it will all be behind you...but for what it's worth, I'd agree with Luisa that it's a lot like an informal job interview, with slightly more personal questions.

I had the feeling he was 'sizing me up' for potential saleability.

I smiled when I read this - also very true!

I'm late to this, as I only just found the thread.

I just wanted to wish you the best of luck with your meeting.

When I met my agent, she was very friendly and all that, but she came with a terrifying undercurrent I couldn't put my finger on. I think 'formidable' is the word.
(She told me I'd written a really bad synopsis.)

As everyone has already said, she asked about my writing life and my other life (I have no other life). She was unimpressed that I work as a nanny because it's not very glamorous dealing with baby poo all the time. She told me that my initial plans for my second novel needed a lot of work. She insists that 'Mothernight' is a psychological thriller, and that my next book must also be a psychological thriller because 'that is what my readers will be expecting.' I must churn out thriller after thriller and fill every page with lesbian sex forever.

She then told me I have a great image and will be easy to sell, at which point I nearly wept with relief.

I enjoyed meeting her, though, and her office was really exciting and full of leather sofas and a lovely big coffee machine.

Good luck!!!

Sarah

I used to think that being pigeonholed was a bad thing, and I wanted the freedom that other writers I really admire have, and then I realised that that freedom is channelled. For example, one of my favourite children's authors is David Almond, and even though his stories are very different, you do know what to expect when you pick up a David Almond novel, even though the story will surprise you, whereas Philip Pullman doesn't have that, and his stories don't sit quite so well together. (This is possibly because because his big break came after so many other novels had already been published, some of which are so out of print they have been lost forever!)

My own problem is that my first novel to be accepted is a socially realistic children's story, whereas the novel in the wings is science fiction, and another pure fantasy. I wasn't "told" by my agent to put these other novels aside, but when I made that decision for myself, and chose to work on something fresh that would be a suitable back up for this first book, she did agree that it was probably for the best.

So that's my take. My current project is a very different story to the one accepted and follows a different pattern, but they both have the same "feel". (death and misery, mainly).

I must churn out thriller after thriller and fill every page with lesbian sex forever.

I hope you won't if you don't want to.

Colin, I think you've pinned it down - you can know a book's by the same writer without it being the same book. It's when your agent/editor demand that you write to too strict a formula that some of us balk. No matter what genre you're writing in, your own books will always have a family resemblance to each other, if only in the shape and rhythm of sentences, and the deeper preoccupations that you can't help coming back to.

Emma

I agree. To a point, at least, I actually think all novels are psychological thrillers - there has to be something to keep readers turning the pages (and, for that matter, to keep writers writing them).

My next book - which I am researching, but keep being distracted by irrelevant but mega-interesting detours - will be historical and a very different story, but, as Colin says, with the same 'feel' and the same sentence rythmns and all that other stuff.

My work is also all about death and misery, Colin!

Let's hear it for Iain Banks!!!

There was an HOUR LONG interview with him on BBC4 the other night with Mark Lawson. Brilliant. To have such a long interview really allows for a loose, relaxed chat.

There was a programme on radio 4 yesterday where a listener was asking for contemporary novels steeped in misery. We could be the new fashion gurus.