Beginner’s pluck: Former literary agent Claire Anderson-Wheeler

Claire Anderson-Wheeler: 'Seeing how publishing worked made my writing better.'

A child who lived in her head, Claire wrote a satirical romance aged seven, to share with her friends.

“I loved writing assignments, but didn’t think of writing as an aim or a desire. It didn’t seem realistic,” she says.

Instead, she took a law degree: “But law didn’t feel like my future, so afterwards, I took an MA in creative writing. I loved it! It helped my craft and made me feel taken seriously by established writers.”

She started off writing short stories but then began a novel.

I worked on it for a long time. I got an agent, and it went on two rounds of submission, but it wasn’t published.

Meanwhile, Claire had become a literary agent first in London, then New York:

“I was an agent for 14 years,” she says. “Seeing how publishing worked made my writing better.”

Claire has always loved The Great Gatsby, and close to the centenary, she started thinking of how she could have fun with it: “I was reading a lot of costume crime, and felt I could use the world of Scott Fitzgerald’s novel but make it playful and respectful.

“It lived so strongly in my mind. I wrote the novel in a year.”

Who is Claire Anderson-Wheeler?

Date/place of birth: 1985/ Washington DC. “But moved to Dublin when I was two.”

Education: “School in Geneva from age 10, and in Brussels from 16. Mum was a diplomat.” Trinity College Dublin, law. University of East Anglia, MA in creative writing.

Home: Providence, Rhode Island.

Family: Husband Paval; baby son, Ronan, (seven weeks).

The day job: Full-time writer.

In another life: “I’d be a dancer. It brings me such joy.”

Favourite writers: Scott Fitzgerald; Agatha Christie; Elizabeth Strout; Roald Dahl; Robin Wall Kimmerer; Mary Adkins.

Second book: “Not yet.”

Top tip: Be workmanlike. “Don’t wait for the muse to strike.”

Website: www.claireandersonwheeler.com

The debut

The Gatsby Gambit
Renegade, €19.99

Greta Gatsby arrives at her brother, Jay’s, West Egg mansion, and finds the house full of guests; among them, Tom and Daisy Buchanon, and Nick Carraway.

They party through the night, but the next morning, one of them is dead. Suspicious, Greta is determined to find out why.

The verdict: Hugely enjoyable. Full of atmosphere and charm.