Hello, I’m Peter Newman and I write fast paced fantasy with strange and dark edges. I’m probably best known for The Vagrant trilogy, which features a silent protagonist, a baby and a goat wandering a far future world that has suffered a demonic apocalypse. My current trilogy, The Deathless, is about rival immortal families who reincarnate into their own descendants, and protect humanity from the Wild. It's a twisty turny tale that’s one part high fantasy, one part Grimm's tales, with dashes of weird and sinister sprinkled throughout. The third (and final) book in that series, The Boundless, was published on the 6th August.

I also write for Wild Cards (a long running series of super hero novels), and the latest book, Three Kings, has just come out in the UK.

What’s the first novel you remember completing and was this the first book you had published?

The first novel I completed was about greek gods in the modern age, and was explaining the modern era through them (Aphrodite, Hephaestus, and Hermes were having a good time, let me tell you!) It was pretty terrible and did not leave my house, but it did help me start to figure out how to write a book. The second novel I wrote was pretty awful too but not quite as awful as the first one.

The third book I wrote wasn’t awful at all, but it wasn’t quite good enough either. I redrafted that several times to try and get it into a state where I could put it on submission, but ultimately dropped it because I was working on a fourth novel, which was called The Vagrant.

What was your journey to gaining representation like?

Straightforward and vanilla I’d say! When it came time to go on submission, I went to conventions and attended panels on how to get an agent. I looked at current authors that I liked in SFF and who was representing them. Then I went to their websites and read the requirements of each one. Agents all seem to have slightly different preferences in terms of what they want you to send and the absolute baseline thing you can do as a writer is read the guidelines guidelines of the people you want to submit to and THEN FOLLOW THEM. That may sound obvious, but I’m constantly surprised by people who think they’re the exception, and that by ignoring the rules, they’ll be seen as special rather than someone that will be terrible to work with.

So I drew up a dream list of agents (true fact: Juliet was at the top of it) and sent out my sample and covering letter to those that were open to submission, tweaking each one to the requirements. I also looked at SFF publishers who were accepting unsolicited manuscripts. And, no prizes for guessing, I looked up their requirements and followed them too. I did this at the same time, reasoning that if I got a publisher, my chances of getting an agent would go up. Going on submission felt very exciting and very scary.

Then there was lots of waiting and refreshing emails.

And more waiting.

And yet more waiting.

It’s worth saying that time does not behave normally when you’re waiting to see if your dreams might come true, but waiting for news is a big part of being a writer, so going out on submission is very good training for this!

What advice would you give to writers who are submitting to literary agents?

Oh, I think I might have covered this above. But in case you missed it: Read the guidelines. Follow them. And when you write your cover letter, be clear what your book is about, and do not send anything until you have finished your book. I’ll say that again: FINISH YOUR BOOK FIRST. Then submit a sample. Because nothing is going to annoy your prospective agent more than if they love the sample and ask for the full manuscript to then discover it only exists in your imagination.

The other thing I’d say is don’t rush. You only get one chance to make a first impression. When a writer finishes a manuscript they are too close to it to read it objectively. So don’t send it off immediately or it’ll be like an email you dashed out (or a tweet!) where you notice the errors just after you hit send. Let it sit in a drawer (or your hard drive) for as long as you can bear. I’d recommend at least a month but better if it’s two or three so you can forget what you wrote a little and look at it in the way a reader might.

Oh, and probably don’t try and be funny in your letter. The key thing is to show is that you are professional, then make it as easy as possible for your agent to see what your book is about, then get out of the way so they can read it.

What are you working on at the moment? / What are you writing next?

As I mentioned above, I’m currently promoting The Boundless (out now, go buy it!). Behind the scenes I’m working on two more Wild Card projects and The Next Big Thing to submit for publication. This is as exciting and scary as it is every time. The good news for me is that I have a wonderful agent these days, so I’m not alone. I cannot overstate how valuable it is to have a professional in your corner for the ups and downs of a writing career.