"You're too old to be a young author..."

My agent, Sid, says this to me over the phone as I'm crashed out on my sofa, shattered and eating a duty free-sized Toblerone. I have called him for a pep talk, a pick-me-up from the man who believes in me more than anyone else alive because his pay check depends upon it.

Sometimes, it seems, he forgets this. I am merely talking aloud about my dream of being included in some magazine article called 'Britain's Best Young Authors' when he cuts me off mid-sentence. "You're too old to be a young author."

There is a stunned silence on my end and the sound of running water at his.

"Are you... flushing your toilet?" I ask when I recover the power of speech.

"No," he replies after an unconvincing pause. The water stops with a glug.

"I'm only thirty years old."

"Officially that's the cut-off point. Once you're out of your twenties you're a latecomer, if anything."

"Where did you read this 'official' ruling?"

The sound of a packet of crisps being torn open. "Well, perhaps not official. It's common sense though, isn't it? Perhaps the author of the article will have a different, more generous scale. Which magazine is it again? I'll give them a call, see what I can do."

"No, it's not real. I want to be in the next one. They have them quite regularly, don't they?"

"I don't know," he tells me through a mouthful of savoury snacks. "Do you fancy a pint?"

Perhaps we've become too friendly. At first I was pleased when Sid wanted to meet up for a few drinks on weekday afternoons, impressed with his spare-time generosity over evening dinners in Soho steakhouses. But after a couple of Saturday nights out during which my own drunkenness was ruined by Sid's shambolic, leering, abusive intoxication, then an intimate, confessional dinner with my wife Cheryl cooking at home, I quickly realised Sid was just lonely.

He refuses to talk about his other clients, and I suspect, sadly, there are none. And now that the book deal is signed he has relaxed and forgotten his job description.

Cheryl, of course, is great. All fledging writer's spouses are great because they allow most of their precious togetherness time to be spent apart while the writer struggles to yank this monster out of himself and onto a page on top of holding down a job that actually pays the bills. She rubs my head, and reads the words I write before anyone else, but she cannot change things in my creative life. Sid can. Sid should. He is paid to understand the business and make me feel positive.

The reason I am slumped on the couch in the spare bedroom/office, stuffing comfort food into my greedy mouth, is something he appears unconcerned about. I met with my editor, Chris, as he has now had a chance to "Study the manuscript" and "Take some notes."

He pulled some pages from a drawer in his Collins office and they thudded onto his desk next to my novel. They looked almost as long.

"How many copies have you made?" I asked him numbly.

"I am known for my thoroughness," he said. "At the front I've bullet pointed a summary of areas to work on."

I scanned the list. "But this is a complete re-write," I tried not to squeal. "I thought you liked the book."

"Oh, we do, we do. It's just that we think it could be even better."

I couldn't speak.

"It's a competitive market," he continued. "We need to make each product we put out as crowd-pleasing as possible." He leaned forward. "We think you're very talented, and we want to make sure you succeed. There's nothing more heart-breaking than seeing someone with potential failing on his first book because his editor didn't do the best he could for him. This is all standard procedure. Your agent should have gone through this with you."

I managed a bitter chuckle. "Well, this will take me months. Months. Surely we don't have time to get all this done."

"Oh, we've got about a year."

"What? A year? I've been telling acquaintances to look out for it in W H Smith."

He sucked breath in through his teeth. "Tough to get into Smith's. Tough."

"But why does it take a year?"

"You'll be surprised. Let me arrange a meeting for you with publicity."



"Sid," I say over the phone. "I've already started working on the second book. Now I have to write the first one all over again."

"There is some good news," he says.

"What? Tell me."

"No one knows anything about you. We can always lie about your age."