I began my publishing career in 1987 as an editorial assistant in the fiction department at Pan Books. Working with a mix of commercial and more literary novelists, I served my apprenticeship and moved on to become Commissioning Editor at Century/Arrow (Random House). In 1992 I moved to Simon and Schuster as Editorial Director with a brief to develop a list of homegrown fiction titles, and where I edited and published a wide range of authors, from Louise Doughty to Alan Titchmarsh. In 1997 I was approached to become an agent and board director of AP Watt Literary Agency, with a brief again to develop the agency’s output of new talent in mainstream fiction. I nurtured the careers of new novelists such as Jojo Moyes, Tania Unsworth and Santa Montefiore, as well as representing some more established writers like Marika Cobbold, Fiona Walker and Isla Dewar, and a small number of narrative non-fiction authors. In 2003, following a move to Oxford, I left AP Watt and have worked since as a freelance literary consultant. In this role, I have worked on women’s fiction, thrillers, literary, historical and young adult novels,  as well as securing  representation for clients by a literary agent.