[laughs] He already has an audience.

That's right.

And then there's three more in the pipeline.

We've got another one, um, from Rhys Garde, which we have announced, and that came through an agent.

And I...

The agent asked if she could meet and I thought she was so...

She just vibed with us.

Mm.

What difference do you think that could have made for yourself when you were growing up?

Yeah, I think naming it has given me a bit of power over it.

You know, this is to do with anxiety.

I think before it was just this horrible feeling inside me that I didn't know what to do with and I kind of thought I must have been going mad or something.

So now I can go, I know what this is.

It has a name.

I always get through it at the end, even when there have been some really difficult times.

What have you learnt about submissions and the publishing process that can help writers eager to get their work accepted?

I think on that too, when you are thinking about gaps in the market or where children can't see themselves, is that something that you're researching and really deliberate in from the publishing lens? Or is that you get a book and you find something so special and you think, yes, that's missing?

I think it's a bit of both.

I think my writer brain is like, oh, I'd love to write a book about this.

I'd love to write a book about this.

But it doesn't always work for the industry, you know, because there's a million books like that or yours isn't unique or it's not the right time or, you know, we've all been there.

And so I think having that sort of other perspective as well.

I pitched this series to James like about two, probably three years ago.

um when you so this is kind of a publishing question um when you're publishing do you find that you're publishing more books from like manuscript assessments where you have relationships or do you find that you're finding gems in the slash pile in submissions