“I wrote nearly every evening, then typed the whole thing out myself on an old manual typewriter, covered the first three chapters in a nice plastic folder and sent them off to an agent. They were returned so fast, they must have been sent back the same day they arrived.
But at the second attempt, Christopher Little wrote back asking to see the rest of the manuscript. It was far and away the best letter I had ever received in my life – and it was only two sentences long.”