SPOTLIGHT FEATURE: Devon Halliday from Transatlantic Agency

Good morning, everyone!

Today I’m thrilled to share a wonderful interview with Devon Halliday!

Devon is a literary agent with Transatlantic Agency in Canada. She loves working editorially with her clients and enjoys seeing manuscripts through from their early form to the final product. Prior to this she worked as a literary agent at Susanna Lea Associates and as a scouting assistant at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.

Devon represents a diverse range of authors in genres including fiction (literary, speculative, psychological suspense, upmarket, short stories, graphic) and non-fiction (journalistic, research-based, memoir, essay collections, illustrated).

Check out some highlights from our interview with Devon below.

“You have to enjoy the craft of writing in order to have stamina in this business. As long as you are continually exploring revisions, thinking about new projects, and looking ahead instead of behind, you’re doing the right thing.”

Good afternoon Devon, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today! We would love to know more about how you became an agent, what you’re looking for in submissions, and more about your role as an agent.

Q. What brought you to agenting?

I first came to agenting out of a love of editing. I knew that I wanted to work with writers, and I ended up interning at a few literary agencies, where I found that I was able to do some really in-depth and exciting editorial work. As an agent, you first see a manuscript in its roughest original form, and you try to tease out the full potential of the story and help direct it towards its final form. I loved the chance to work on both structural and highly specific edits, and I’ve stayed with agenting ever since.

Q: What is a day in the life of an agent like for you?

It’s always changing, as I’m sure many agents can attest to. My day is fairly email-driven, so I’ll often wake up in the morning with an idea of what I want to accomplish and what I’m going to do that day‚ and then I check my inbox and see that five new things have come in that I need to deal with and my whole plan changes. It’s a very reactive role, keeping on top of my own priorities while also making sure to put out any fires that happen to flare up. A large part of my job is editorial work with clients as we prepare to go on submission, so I always have a digital stack of manuscripts to read and send notes on. I try to find a quiet time in the day when I can focus on reading. And of course there are always meetings, both internal and external; internal meetings with my colleagues where we’ll troubleshoot or discuss the state of the market, and external meetings with editors and current and potential clients. So the average day is a bit of a back-and-forth negotiation between emails, meetings, and reading‚ all while I try to chip away at my original plan for the day!

Q. What’s at the top of your fiction wish-list? What authors do you love? What kind of books?

For me writing is the most important criterion, and I always look at the writing first for an original style, an original voice, and a writer with original things to say, with some urgency to them, some way of seeing the world that begs to be communicated. So as long as that’s present, I’m happy to work with almost any genre.

Genres I gravitate towards include the more straightforward contemporary literary fiction. I also like anything with a speculative element or twist to it, not hard-core sci-fi or fantasy, but always magical realism, layered timelines or meta elements, anything with a near-future aesthetic. I enjoy stories that are psychological and philosophical in their interpretations of the world. That can be psychological suspense, if it looks more broadly at the way our world functions, though nothing too gory or horror-driven for me. I also really enjoy more light-hearted upmarket women’s fiction and rom-coms with a great twist (especially a speculative twist). Always, I’m looking for diverse voices and perspectives, from authors who can bring new worlds and realities to readers.

Q. What do you love when it comes to non-fiction? What topics fire you up? Which genres leave you cold?

My taste in non-fiction is a little more niche. I love very particular deep dives into subjects that I might not be so familiar with, but the writer is passionate about the subject and can articulate its greater relevance. Anything that can capture our modern lives and all the social and cultural complications and fault lines. Lately I’ve been especially interested in anything dealing with technology, the information age, social media, gaming, fandom, communities – all these social spaces that the internet has enabled. I’m fascinated by the way cultures are emerging online, and I would love to see work that takes a more anthropological look at digital culture. I’m also interested generally in esoteric but fascinating subjects, anything unique and offbeat.

Q. Is there any genre you’d rather not receive?

Sometimes I’ll claim disinterest in a certain genre, and then immediately a book turns up in that genre that I happen to love‚ so my genre preferences aren’t necessarily set in stone. I’m very rarely a fit for action, gore, horror, thriller. I’m also not a great fit for very commercial fiction that’s extremely plot-driven; I’m a writing obsessive, and I always look for great layers and depth in a cast of characters.

On the nonfiction side, I’m probably not the right person for serious, big-picture works on politics and history; I just don’t have the background to be able to edit those with the necessary precision. I tend not to be a great fit for memoir, unless it has a research-backed societal critique to it.

Q. What are you looking for in the opening pages of a novel? What really excites you and makes you ask to see more?

I’m always looking to be pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I read a query and I can tell right away that it’s not a fit for me. Other times I’m reading along and the writer hasn’t made any mistakes, the story is holding together, the writing is solid, but I’m not feeling totally hooked. What I’m looking for to push me over the edge is that pleasant surprise. Maybe the paragraph takes a turn I wasn’t expecting, or a sentence lands with particular impact because it’s so original and precise, or it’s a description that feels intuitively true and right that no one else would have thought to describe that way.

That’s the way all readers read, I think. We all have a little checklist in our mind of pluses and minuses, tallying every time we’re surprised or disappointed as we read. As an agent, I’m reading much more quickly and critically than someone reading for pleasure, so those pleasant surprises need to happen quickly, as early as page one, I need to see that the writer has fresh ideas and an unprecedented way of expressing them.

It’s the unfamiliar that really stands out to me. Not unfamiliar for the sake of sounding experimental or clever or weird, but unfamiliar because you have something unusual to say and this is the only way you can say it. There’s an idea that needs to be communicated, and it’s too interesting to be communicated in any of the ordinary ways, so you’ve had to get creative.

Q. What makes for a successful author-agent relationship? How can both parties get the most out of that relationship?

Incredible trust is required, and that’s something that you develop over time and not something that you have right away when you sign with an agent. But trust is essential to an affirming and long-term author-agent relationship. When an agent receives a new manuscript from a client, they can trust that it’s good and thoughtfully constructed and that there are interesting ideas at work; and when the author receives editorial notes they can trust that they’re written in good faith and meant to preserve the mood, tone and spirit of the book. And onwards through the publication process, trust continues to be important: the agent and author are always on the same team, working jointly to help the book succeed.

Q. Do you have any final advice for authors who are currently writing or are in the querying process?

The query process can often be difficult, frustrating, obscure and hard to interpret, and what I encourage writers to do is to take everything that comes their way as a form of feedback. If you query widely and you get silence in response, it’s very easy to throw your hands up and say “this process is insane, it’s a lottery, the gatekeepers aren’t even reading my work”. But if you look at this silence as a form of feedback, you can take another look at your query letter, you can share your sample pages with beta readers, you can use this as an opportunity to improve your craft. And then you might find that when you send out your query again, you start to get a few full requests. And then you can look at what you did right, what attracted those agents to your query, and you can use that feedback going forward.

You have to enjoy the craft of writing in order to have stamina in this business. As long as you are continually exploring revisions, thinking about new projects, and looking ahead instead of behind, you’re doing the right thing. That idea of forward motion and charging ahead and using everything from the past as a learning opportunity for your next project, that’s what will keep you focused, and engaged with your writing, and excited about everything that comes your way.

The full interview can be found on Devon’s AgentMatch profile.

In the meantime, if you’re struggling with your query letter and synopsis, do check out our free resources on our website. We have lots of info to help you on your way. Or, better still, if you’re a Premium Member with us, our lovely Writers Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review!