For the past four weeks I’ve been biting my tongue and waiting not-very-patiently to make this announcement: I have signed with John Berlyne of the Zeno Literary Agency.

Back in September 2010 when I started my agent hunt, I was disappointed to discover that Zeno were closed to submissions. Not only did they have an exciting client list, from homegrown talent like Maggie Furey and Freda Warrington to huge US names such as Charlaine Harris and Brandon Sanderson, but John B and I share a favourite author in Tim Powers (another of Zeno’s clients).

I put them on my shortlist anyway, and signed up for their RSS feed. A few weeks later they announced they were opening for a short while, and so on 1st December I fired off a query. Maybe it was my carefully-honed pitch, or maybe it was the fact that I already had a publisher interested, but I got a request for sample chapters practically by return of email, and a request for the full manuscript ten days later.

Of course the world of publishing never moves as quickly as we anxious authors would like, so it wasn’t until last month that I finally spoke to John about representation. Since I’m evidently not the only one to be signed up as a result of their two-month opening, I had to wait until they were ready to make an announcement before I could tell the rest of the world. However the embargo is now lifted, and I am free to shout it from the highest hills, even tell the golden da–ffodils…

Because my secret agent’s no secret, any more.

(With apologies to Sammy Fain and Paul-Francis Webster)