Gulp...

I just did it. I’ve made my first attempt.

I just sent the pitch letter (in about its fifteenth incarnation), synopsis and first 10,000 words of “Gabriel Yeats” to the first literary agency on my list. There. Now I’ve done it once, it can only get easier, no? I hope so (I feel all quivery at the moment).

It’s Friday, it’s five o’clock and I’m going home to try not to think about what I’ve just done. Cold beer ahoy (after I’ve done the watering).

It’s been a wonderful, scorching hot day. I went out into the Gardens on my bike at lunch, to see how the Rose Section is looking. Stunning, is the answer, despite needing a bit of dead-heading. One could smell all the roses as one came up the path, even from behind the ten foot yew hedges. In fact, everywhere I went the air seemed to be scented; linden blossom, pine needles, dry grass, lavender, roses, the resiny fragrance of Cistus ladanifer…

“There still remains summer, the yellow essence,
And your hands touching the sea bells in the water.
Your eyes unveiled suddenly, the first eyes of the world,
And the marine caves.
Bare feet on the red earth.
There still remains summer, the fair-haired marble youth;
A little salt that has dried in the hollow of a rock,
A few pine needles left after the rain
Raggedly strewn, and red like tattered nets…”

George Seferis; from “A word for summer” (translated by Rex Warner).

It’s that kind of summer day.

And I have finally made a start on trying to get an agent for “Gabriel Yeats”.