Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

Chris recalls his first attempts to break into the world of literature…

Last week I told you about my dealings with scary publishers. I missed one person out in my faltering career as an author – the agent.

An agent’s role is to find an author, get them a publisher, and then spend the next few years trying to prod them into producing another worthwhile piece of work.

As I may have mentioned, my own first book was about cats. It came out at around the same time as the hugely successful MarleyandMe, all about the relationship between a man and his dog.

The fact this was a huge international success, and my cat book did OK, wasn’t lost on my agent, Bob.

An incredibly well-spoken and intelligent man, Bob was in the latter stages of his career when I came to him, and I think representing someone who wrote “cat disaster comedies” must’ve felt like a crashing comedown. But he put up with me as well as could be expected.

Bob called me about a second book. “Chris,” said the voice on my phone, “I’ve got one word for you... dogs.” “Dogs?” “Dogs, Chris! You’ve done cats, do dogs. All the rage!”

“But I write cat books… well, not right at the moment, but I’m working on –”

“Chris! Dogs!”

“Well, I’ll have a think about it, but I don’t really –”

“Great news! Look forward to seeing your manuscript!” With that he was gone. I thought long and hard about Bob’s advice. Then completely forgot about it. A long time later, and following a radical shift from writing cat books to working on a battlefield travelogue-comepub guide, I finally sent my newly finished manuscript to Bob. The inevitable phone call followed.

“I’ve just got your book. You do remember I asked you to write about dogs? You seem to have written a book about the English civil war.” “Yes, but…” “And, you seem to be mainly drunk in pubs all through the book.”

“Yes, but –”

“I really can’t see this appealing to the market I had in mind, Chris. It doesn’t even have any dogs in it.”

My final book submission to Bob fared no better.

I’d attempted to write a light hearted sci-fi comedy about an alien species of evolved cats visiting a sleepy little village.

Bob’s response was unexpected. I received my manuscript back, along with a copy of a slasher-horror, and the accompanying note: Your book is not bad, Chris, but I didn’ t find it scary at all. I’ ve enclosed a book. If you’ re serious about switching from dogs to horror, I suggest you read it.

Horror? It was meant to be a comedy!

Plus, I’d never actually written anything about dogs. Ever. It was at that point we decided we should probably split on the grounds of “literary differences” – he was literary and I fell short of the mark.

He was great though, and I owe the publication of my first books completely to him.

However, I’ve got on fine without him – I now clean out cat litter trays for a living…

I’d attempted to write a sci-fi comedy about alien cats