slush

so I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I grew up, until it hit me that there was this thing called publishing which meant you actually got to work making the things I like best in the world, books, and actually paid to read some of the time. It was like a light bulb going on.

Still, graduating at the height of a recession along with a million other useless Eng. Lit. degree holders all with the same idea, and without any contacts at all, made it tricky to find a job. Still after 9 months of interviewing, temping, signing on, banging head against the wall, I did, I found a publishing job, and it made me so happy. Though no one else was very impressed, it gave me a buzz when they asked me what I did to answer 'editorial assistant', like it might give someone else a buzz to answer 'rock guitarist' or 'brain surgeon'.

True, they weren't Penguin or Macmillan or anybody respectable, they did make their name on *whisper* Mind Body and Spirit books (books about angels, and crystals, and feng shui, you get the idea) true, their fiction list did mainly feature large print hardbacks with a woman wearing clogs and a shawl on the jacket, and were mainly read by library users with a magnifying glass, but hey, it was a start.

And they decided to launch a contemporary fiction list. As the lowest of the low, it was my job to read through the slush pile - unsolicited manuscripts sent by hopeful would-be authors (and the occasional one from the less successful literary agents).

Most of them were pretty dire but you have to give them credit, they sat down and imagined a whole story in their heads and bashed it out, something most of us don't manage to do. It doesn't take long to tell if it's rubbish - you can scan a page, or a even a couple of lines, and though they might form a sentence perfectly well - subject, verb, adjective, object, all present and correct - the writing is flat as a pancake, it's dead on the page. There is just something missing.

So picture my delight when looking at a 65 year old, first time writer's historical murder mystery - it is funny, gripping, gruesome, dark - her prose is razor sharp and filled with black humour. It's apparent that this isn't some amateur effort, this is a real publishable book. I take it to my editor and she likes it. 'Tell you what' she says. 'You can call her and let her know we want to take it on.'

The pure happiness of ringing someone up and telling them you want to publish them, probably the high point of my working life so far, can probably only be matched by having someone ring you up and tell you they want to publish your book. Over the phone, between us we were increasing the sum total of human happiness, (which makes a nice change in one's working life.)

So it was unfortunate that later that week, and entirely out of the blue, I was fired. The bitterest regret was that I wouldn't be there to push it through, and with me gone, chances were it wouldn't get published. I felt very much for the poor author.

Thus endeth my publishing career. There is a happy ending to this story though - some years later, when wandering around the English books section of a Barcelona bookshop, I saw on the shelf that same book by that same author, published by Orion, a pretty respectable publishing house, and it made me smile that she had got published in the end - and I had known how to pick a winner.



slush pile
publishing
work