About Zeno

Zeno Agency Limited is a partnership between veteran literary agent John Parker and freelance literary consultant and genre critic, John Berlyne. Neither can recall exactly when they first met, but undoubtedly it was at some social occasion – a book launch or more likely a science fiction convention. Over a few years, their association grew, with Berlyne becoming a regular reader and consultant for Parker who was at that time – and had been for many years – a senior agent with MBA. Never one to rest on his laurels, in July 2008 John Parker took the huge step towards agent independence, splitting off from MBA and joining forces with Berlyne whose genre knowledge and internet savvy quickly proved indispensable. Along with the huge benefits this move offered to existing clients, the start up company was perfectly placed to help develop the careers of new authors and Zeno’s aim of bringing writers of excellence and originality to the attention of both the industry and the public is already paying dividends.

John Parker : I started my publishing career in Production, and progressed to being an editor at a now defunct conglomerate. Despite editing such distinguished authors as J.P. Donleavy I realised working for corporations was not in my nature. Offered a job over lunch I became a literary agent with a small company that later became a bigger company by taking over the agency that handled Ian Fleming’s Estate. I later became a double agent working for two companies, until the workload meant I had to choose one and resulted in me becoming an agent with MBA where I remained for many years before staring up Zeno in 2008.

Being the son of a writer, four things have become obvious to me about this profession, the nature of publishing and the media and this is probably true for anyone wanting to be an agent as well as a writer…

Hard work is as important as talent.
Serendipity plays a huge part in success.
Perseverance is essential as a writing career rarely goes in a straight line.
… and finally (as one of his mother’s publishers once said to her) find your own voice and be nobody else… and don’t be afraid to self-promote, thereby you will have a long career.

My taste is wide ranging. I like good reads and intellectually and /or emotionally challenging texts, in both fiction and non-fiction. I favour the writer who, knowing a genre or subject well, can add an original perspective or interpretation or even subvert it. I like authors to move on with each book and to take on new challenges and to learn to take their readers with them. I believe that the narrative – however complex – must keep the attention of the reader, and that the greatest sins are overwriting and pretension.

John Berlyne: I started my professional life working as an actor, a career that I managed somehow to keep afloat for thirteen years, but one which I’m not sorry to have left behind me. It is useful with regards to looking after writers though, because I have considerable personal experience of being a freelancer and I know it’s a tricky and solitary path a lot of the time. It’s important to be responsive as an agent, I think – even “There’s no news,” is news to a client!

Until recently I was for many years a reviewer of science fiction and fantasy for Sfrevu – one of the oldest genre sites on the internet. I also moonlighted at other review venues when time allowed – mainly for Roger Turner’s invaluable SfSite. This long service has allowed me to develop a very keen sense of the marketplace all over the world, to spot the trends and fashions in fiction and to get to know the people in the business who pay authors for their work and publish their books. This last is not hard where SF/F is concerned – it’s a sociable and inclusive community and any prospective genre writer should make it their business to go to cons and find out who’s who. No agent can do that stuff for you!

What am I looking for? My tastes in fiction tend to be pretty conservative – I’m a sucker for a good old plot-driven narrative. I’ll happily gorge on adventure and escapism until my eyes give out! To break this down further, I like books in which things happen to people – in which a character is faced with a problem and in which the meat of the novel is about them solving that problem. Good fiction is about forward momentum and the plot is the engine that should drive a story onwards. There are infinite variations and riffs on this classic approach – here’s just four examples of novels, recent and not so recent – that I think encapsulate it to perfection. Whether they’re SF, Fantasy or Horror, they all move forward inexorably and they’re all terrific novels:-

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (plus the two other novels in this superb trilogy)
The Terror by Dan Simmons
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers (want to learn how to plot? – then read this!)

I’ll read most kinds of fantasy – but anodyne Tolkien derivatives will be given short shrift and I can spot ‘em a mile off! I want fantasy that pushes the boundaries of the genre. I like cool monsters and heavy magic and I like books in which magic seeps into contemporary life. Neil Gaiman does this kind of thing beautifully but don’t send me Gaiman derivatives either – be inspired by brilliant writers, but don’t try to replicate their work. I’ll read Urban Fantasy, but with caveats attached – there is such a glut of this stuff on the market and much of it is the same kind of bland kick-ass-female-protagonist-with-vampire-boyfriend clone. I’m not the target demographic for this kind of stuff so note that I’m only looking for the highest quality material. Anything less than exceptional will be bounced back to you. I’ll gladly read YA stuff – if you can ignite my sense of wonder, lost so long ago, buried beneath a black mountain of cynicism, then I’ll get the drinks in! And I’ll read horror, and thrillers and crime and historical fiction and combinations of all of the above – surprise me! And if it helps you further to target your submission, don’t send me political treatise disguised as fiction, or anything too whimsical or stuff that purports to be funny but isn’t. And read our submission guidelines!