True

Blood.

I was obsessed with paranormal romance and urban fantasy.

So I totally get the romanticist craze right now because I was in it when it was paranormal vampires and werewolves.

I understand.

That's all that I was reading.

That's all that I was writing for a really long time.

I feel like hearing you now, I can also understand where you're coming from, but would love to hear about your advocacy as well.

I think it's really hard for writers or authors to go, okay, is this feedback telling me to keep going, to drop this manuscript and move on or, you know, and how would you sort of, I know that's a really hard question to sort of, ask in general, but would

love your thoughts or your take.

Because that's also really hard because one of the things you have to learn as an artist is to move on.

And as an agent, myself and Jacinta have this kind of ethos that when we offer to represent somebody, we're not offering to represent a book.

We're offering to represent that person, that creative, that illustrator, that author.

And our hope is that they don't have one book in them.

Our hope is that they have an entire career in them.

It was going to be like an

Why Shakespeare?

Gosh, why Shakespeare? It's such a good question.

It is actually such a good question.

Why does he persist? Why does it seem like Shakespeare was invented to torture high school students? Purely for that reason.

I think if you'd gone back in time, perhaps that's one of my time travel TARDIS requests, to go and meet Shakespeare.

I know they already did that episode, but I'd still quite like to do it myself.

I think he'd be quite mortified at the idea that he is... inflicted upon teenagers.

Does that distance still matter?

Danielle Binks is a fan fiction and regular fiction writer and literary agent who's seen how fan fiction evolved from a fringe cultural phenomenon to a launchpad for young writers.

It was where I first grew a tough skin getting feedback and reviews.

That was tough, putting your stuff out there for the general public to comment on.

Stuff that wasn't necessarily very good, so they could be very honest and brutal.

You know, it wasn't necessarily amazing editorial feedback, but it did get me used to rejection (laughs).

It did get me used to the brutality of online reviews.

And I would say-Part of the genius of fan fiction is it's basically mimicry.

(laughs)