Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to this new episode of Before the Applause with me, your host, david Watson. In this episode, I talk to Maya Gabriel, perhaps better known to some and millions of young people as bestselling children's author, mg Leonard. We explore her remarkable journey from being a musical mogul with the band the Divine Comedy to producing digital content for some of the UK's most iconic cultural institutions, including Shakespeare's Globe, the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre. Eventually, she realised to dream of becoming a children's author. With now 20 books to her name, including the hit debut Beetle Boys series, adventures on Trains and the Twitches May is now on track to achieve an extraordinary milestone. And the twitches May is now on track to achieve an extraordinary milestone one million books sold in the UK alone.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Our conversation covers the challenge of being a woman in a male-dominated industry, the power of breaking barriers and the role of digital innovation in the arts. We also dive into the complexities of writing, the dark side of AI, the evolving expectations placed on authors to promote their own work and the importance of connecting authentically with young readers. Maya is one of the country's sharpest and most imaginative authors, a master of escapism and exploration who creates magical worlds for children and adults alike and reminds us all the enduring power of storytelling. Grab a cup of something nice and join us as we discover more. Before the applause Maya, hello, hello.

Speaker 2: 1:31

Welcome to the show. I'm delighted to be here, David. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Thank you so much. I know you're super busy making magic everywhere and you probably don't get a lot of time to breathe and you've got an injury and a family, so I really appreciate you taking the time out to do this with me, and you're my bestie and I've been wanting to do this for ages, so I'm really happy that I managed to get you on season two.

Speaker 2: 1:53

To be fair, if you hadn't invited me, I may have been offended, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:59

I'm saving it up. I'm saving it up, so let's get into it. So I've known you for a while now. I had the pleasure of working with you back in the day at the Royal Opera House.

Speaker 2: 2:10

Like 15 years ago. Oh, it makes me feel old.

Speaker 1: 2:15

I didn't add the years in my notes to avoid that, but you've just said it. We were part of the first ever digital team that Royal Opera House had, which I very proud of and you were a digital content producer. Yes, I was, so we created lots of digital products, amazing content and experiences, but the thing that is really important is we had so much bloody fun it was wild because there were no rules back in those days.

Speaker 2: 2:42

They were like uh, we don't know what digital is. The arts council say we need some digital things. You guys are all really good at digital. We'll steal you from other organisations because I'd previously worked at the Shakespeare's Globe and then just do what you think you need to do. So we basically got to kind of define what the Royal Opera House's digital offering was back then, which was quite exciting and sometimes a little bit risky. I think we took quite a lot of risks actually.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Maybe in the moment we didn't think we were taking that much risk, but we were, and we didn't really have the feedback from audiences in the way we do now. So we were creating, telling stories and going for it, but importantly, having a good laugh along the way, and working with some crazy people yeah, which is amazing, and randomly I was out in London the other day, went to the, the, the Nell all the dancers were there it was such a weird thing. So 15 years is wowzer. It makes me feel very old.

Speaker 2: 3:39

The Nell, the pub that obviously we all used to go to after work. But, more importantly, the name that I gave my used to go to after work. But, more importantly, the name that I gave my dog, because when we got the puppy I was like, well, she has to be called Nell, because that's obviously where I met my lovely husband, who also worked at the opera house a very important place the, the Christmas party first, first encounter.

Speaker 1: 4:01

I remember that very well. We'll leave that one to the side. Yes, so, as you know, because I always tell you, but I've always been very impressed by you, and definitely from the first time I met you, not just because of what you'd done before, but I also felt you had this like rock star badass life Because you worked with music, but you're pretty badass and I was instantly attracted to you. And we'll get onto all the things that you've done and what you're doing now. But do you ever get a moment to reflect on you being in that space in that time and really going for it and standing up, because it's pretty male-dominated digital back then?

Speaker 2: 4:43

Oh yeah, and there's a couple of things Like I have a naturally rebellious personality, so if you put me, in a.

Speaker 1: 4:51

I'm going to test to that.

Speaker 2: 4:52

Yeah, if you put me in an arena where a woman is supposed to behave or perform in a certain way, everything in my body wants to do the complete opposite. So much so that, like you know, I would quite happily talk to Sir Tony Hall, who was our director at the time, in the lift about what I thought should be happening, even though he had no clue as to who I was, because I was a small cog in an epically giant wheel. So I didn't really observe hierarchy. I've never have, actually sometimes to my detriment, because I do get in trouble. But I also don't really care what people think of me.

Speaker 2: 5:29

I'm much more invested in the creative product, like whatever it is that we're making, whether it's a video on a ballet or whether it's a website or whether, like, I'm so invested in creating the thing that I think that if I have to ride roughshod over rules and hierarchies and chains of command, so be it. That makes me very effective in large, cumbersome organisations like the Royal Opera House. Let's face it, it's very cumbersome and lots of people's jobs are just to stop people from talking to the people higher up. It does get you into a bit of trouble but this is.

Speaker 1: 6:05

This is why you're badass and and I think you know the world has very much changed and I think a lot more people have this kind of attitude and hierarchy. Let's bust it. Of course we have job titles and positions, but you did that 15 years ago, yeah, well, that wasn't a thing and in the opera house and the etiquette that you had to follow yeah, I mean the opera house, probably the most kind of rigid organisation at the time.

Speaker 2: 6:29

I've no idea what it's like now.

Speaker 2: 6:30

But the other thing that was really interesting is the only remit we had from the Opera House and the Arts Council was to try and reach out beyond the Royal Opera House's traditional audience which, let's face it, are mostly of a certain age and a certain financial status, and those people definitely back then, but even now are not on X or Twitter or any social media platform, and so it was like trying to reach people who thought the opera and ballet just wasn't for them, and so there was no way for us to really at the time, measure, other than Google Analytics, the success of some of these projects.

Speaker 2: 7:10

It's only kind of years later that we can see something's worked incredibly well and, of course, with digital projects, platforms for example, itunes U, which was iTunes University educational content that I created back then 15 years ago that even no longer exists. But when you create a piece of content, whether it's video or a podcast or any piece of media or even a text like blog post, it exists as a piece of content forever and it's very valuable to a cultural organization that maybe wants to encourage people to like listen to some Verdi, because that man could write an opera, you know, and it is a way that you know. At the time everyone was like, oh, the young people are on the internet.

Speaker 2: 7:52

We must reach the young people, so you had to hire cowboys like me who would make yeah, exactly to break the rules and try and reach out, to find those people to, to help the art form have a future, and I think that's very important and that is why I was suited to that role. But I definitely ruffled a few feathers.

Speaker 1: 8:13

I think that's good. That's what we did. We definitely did, and you know the fruits of that. You know I've watched the team grow and expand and they have design UX designers and coders and developers, but actually it's one of the most successful cultural channels. Their subscribers are in the millions, the followers are huge and it's nice to feel like we were part of that somehow.

Speaker 2: 8:39

It's always lovely to be at the beginning of something, I think because that legacy we can feel proud of.

Speaker 2: 8:42

I have a similar thing because, after the Royal Opera House, I went on to work at the beginning of something, I think because you know that legacy we can feel proud of.

Speaker 2: 8:45

I have a similar thing because, after the Royal Opera House, I went on to work at the National Theatre and I created the NT Live streaming into schools platform and that was something that, like, I created and I made it possible for schools to watch all those cinema relays not live, but like after the fact and have all this educational content around it. Now that's kind of like a standard thing. People just it's been around for so long now 10 years People are like, oh yeah, you know that's the thing the National does. Well, it didn't do it before me and so, no matter what goes on in the future, I can look back very fondly and proudly of certain digital projects that I know took those organisations which are very dear to my heart and that kind of you know, performative artwork is like at the core of my being. It's lovely to be able to look back, but I have to say I'm glad I'm not doing it anymore.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Something that really sticks with me and this is going to be interesting, as you remember this Well, I know you can remember part of it because we giggle about it all the time. So there was one afternoon where it was just me you, me and you in the office I think it was quite sunny. We're messing about, we were pissing around and we stole our boss's glasses, which Rachel knows about this, she knows about this, but actually that is a funny thing. But the one thing that I do remember we were chatting and you said to me do you know what? I'm going to write a book, I'm going to be an author and I'm going to control all the digital rights, I'm going to create the content. I'm going to do all these. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. Do you remember, actually, us having that conversation? I don't know whether you do or not.

Speaker 2: 10:17

Well, I do because, like so, I have quite big dreams and ideas, and so I love being in America, particularly in New York, because when you have big dreams and big ideas and you tell someone your ideas, they're like oh man, that sounds amazing, you should do that. And they're like have all the enthusiasm and all the energy, and it really helps push you forward and believe that you can do something. England is like the opposite. When you tell someone, oh, I've got this big idea. The opposite when you tell someone, oh, I've got this big idea, this big dream, and I think I know how to do it, people will give you all of the reasons in their hundreds why it won't work, why everyone else tries to do it and fails, why you're ridiculous, why you should stay in your lane.

Speaker 2: 10:55

And one of the things that I loved when I met you was we are kindred spirits and you would have these crazy ideas and even though people told you that they were impossible and you'd not be able to do it, you would just do it. You wouldn't even argue with them, you would just get on and do it. And so I remember that conversation, because one of the things I've always loved about you is. I think we've got a little bit of inner New Yorker in us. Like I knew that you wouldn't tell me that I couldn't do it.

Speaker 1: 11:18

You would help me think of ways to do it and those are the kind of things and I'm egging you on, I'm like, yeah, let's do it now, let's leave.

Speaker 2: 11:24

But I also remember stealing Rachel's glasses and doing lots of funny poses and you taking pictures.

Speaker 1: 11:29

I still have that picture and every year it comes up as a Facebook memory and I remember I don't think Rachel saw it ever, but I remember sharing it with her and she did actually spot it at some point and there were like these brown glasses sorry, rachel, but we're having fun when you told me that, I never doubted you once and I was probably like egging you on to quit your job and go for it. And today it's no surprise to me that you're a best-selling author. You've written some incredible books and every time you release it I am so proud of you it makes my like I'm tingling now and I remember the first one. I queued outside WH Smith you know Waterstones and I was like I'm gonna be first and seeing your name on those books and where you've come is just incredible.

Speaker 1: 12:16

And you've had quite a journey. You're clearly quite a woman, um, incredibly talented. But you've also not had a traditional kind of journey in the creative industries and this is why I was like I got to talk to Maya about this and I wondered to start with, before we get into all the details of being an amazing author and doing what you do, where did it all begin? How did you get into the creative industries back in the day.

Speaker 2: 12:46

Well, it began by. I had quite a tumultuous upbringing, let's put it that way, and I failed all of my A-levels. That was the beginning. Absolutely Everything went wrong for me. The bottom fell out of my world. I have always been in love with the arts and theatre. I wanted to be an actor when I was a teenager and I was predicted certain grades and I was meant to go to Hull University to study drama and then, due to family circumstances, my world got turned on its head and I failed all of my A-levels and I found myself in a situation where I had no future, no path, and I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 2: 13:23

Actually, and in those moments, in those kind of like long dark nights of the soul, you kind of cling on to the kernels, the core of who you are, which for me always was reading, storytelling, theatre, stages, drama. And I moved to London and I was trying to get involved with fringe theatre and just trying to find kindred spirits and I couldn't find anyone in theater. But a friend of mine was working as an intern at a tiny little independent record label and he was like they need someone to do their PR. They can't pay you but you get to go to gigs for free and you just have to chat nonsense to journalists and persuade them that the music's good. And I was like, well, I can do that. That sounds awesome. And so that was my in into the music industry. And because I am the way that I am, if you open a door to me I don't just tentatively step through it, I come through it, I prance around, I literally work my little socks off and before long I was the manager of a band called the Divine Comedy. I became the label manager of the record company because I could see that they were doing things inefficiently, I'm going to say, but they were wasting money on stuff and thinking very small. And I really loved the music of the Divine Comedy and when I love something I'm the best champion ever and so I championed the music of the Divine Comedy.

Speaker 2: 14:42

And then the Divine Comedy had a hit record and that was due to a whole team of people, not just me, but definitely I was a part of that movement and I worked in the music industry for five years and I learned some really incredible things, because the music industry back then in the 90s it was cutthroat. It was incredibly commercial. You could make a lot of money back then. You can't do that now, sadly. But also I learned the value of copyright. I watched Neil Hannan, who is If you couldn't make money out of music he'd probably be a bum, and he'd say that himself. He's not good at anything else, right, but the boy can tell a story with music and words in a way that most people can't. And I watched him tell those stories and make enough money to pay the salaries of about 20 people. And I looked at this and I was like, oh my God, I'm not musical, I can't write music, and I just thought I wish I had a talent like that that could actually pay the salaries of 20 people. That would be such an incredible thing to do and that's where the idea kind of got planted in my head.

Speaker 2: 15:41

But I was in the music industry for five years. I exhausted its possibilities to me and back then, and probably still now, the music industry was particularly brutal to women. It loved young women, young, pretty sexy women who were not many clothes, particularly in the early nineties, and I was one of those. But I didn't see any women over the age of 35 in the music industry, like none. I realized that I my.

Speaker 2: 16:07

My life in that industry was limited. So at like 25 I'd made some money. I'd bought. I bought a property, luckily in the early 90s when they were pennies, and uh, sold it just a couple of years later and made more than 100 on it and thought I was rich. Only I'd kept hold of it.

Speaker 2: 16:27

But then I was like, what do I want to be? So I did loads of courses. So I did a course in fashion design because I loved clothes. I did a course in journalism because I loved writing. I did a course in acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama and I did a course in painting. And I actually discovered that whilst some of those things were hobbies the acting I actually felt like I was good at the rest of it I hated the fashion thing. It turned something that I thought was fun into really hard work and the people that I was surrounded by were not my people. But when I went to the drama school, the people that I was surrounded by I was like these are my people. These are all madcap people that make stuff up, which is essentially what I am.

Speaker 2: 17:09

And so I thought I need to work in theatre. But I knew that theatre is quite an elitist world and it really does think that you have to be educated to a certain level to be anyone. And I had no education. I'd failed all my A-levels and I thought, god, I can't be anyone in theatre unless I've at least got a degree. So I did an open university degree whilst I worked part-time, completed that.

Speaker 2: 17:35

Then I went to King's College London. I did a master's in Shakespeare text and playhouse, which had a module with Shakespeare's Globe on the South Bank. And when I got there, because of my experience as an actor, because of my experience in the music industry, because I am not afraid of technology, I'm an early adopter of almost everything they were like there's this new thing called Facebook and we need a website. And I was like, well, I can build you one of those. I had never built one. I had no idea how you did it, but I just bought a book on how to code HTML and I just followed the instructions and they thought I was like a wizard. They were like someone who can do arts and code. Oh, you're a genius. And I really knew that. I just was following instructions from a book. But I built an educational microsite for them, which Rachel at the Royal Opera House saw that microsite won awards because it got young students into Shakespeare and then she headhunted me and that's like a very quick path as to how I ended up in the Royal Opera House.

Speaker 2: 18:38

I've always been an artsy person. I didn't know that I'd end up being a digital person, but I've never been afraid of learning something new like, ultimately, I think, the one thing that I if I was to describe who I am I'm someone who always wants to learn something and I will be until the day I die like. I love learning stuff, and the greatest thing about writing books the kinds of books that I write for children is I have to do so much research for every subject. I get to learn about what I'm writing about, and that is a great joy for me. So that's my kind of in a nutshell journey.

Speaker 1: 19:13

Which is pretty insane when you think about it. And the bit that I was going to touch on was around digital was not really a thing and we totally blagged it. Yeah, and that transition for you from music to digital, I wonder if there's any similarities in navigating those two worlds, particularly as you mentioned as being an older woman, or there's not much representation. It kind of was really commercial. Digital was a weird thing. Actually. There was money to be made. I wondered if there's any similarities there's.

Speaker 2: 19:43

There's definitely. So one of the things when I left the music industry, um, I left it because I was like I don't want to do this anymore, but I I'd been very successful like a I think a different person would have stayed. There was no reason to leave. I didn't go to a big job in a big label or anything like that, which is what the natural progression would have been. I thought I've done this for five years. I've had so much fun, like I've traveled the world, I've met incredible people, seen incredible things.

Speaker 2: 20:07

But the internet happened in that period of time. Like I had a Palm Pilot you remember those flip up things and I had a mobile phone that was the size of a brick, whilst I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're coming to New York, et cetera, with the band, no problem, and I thought I was all fancy with all this electric kit, which nowadays we would laugh at. But there was this fear in the music industry about the damage that the internet was going to do. And so when I left the music industry, napster and streaming and torrents and ripping music and giving it away for free was just beginning and I could see there was trouble coming and I obviously, as someone who ran a record label at the time, I was on top of all of those digital progressions and developments in the commercial music industry. So by the time I a few years later worked at the Globe, obviously that had reached the progression where we all had little MP3 players and half of our playlists were stolen from the internet and we didn't pay artists.

Speaker 2: 21:08

But at the same time MySpace existed and people like Lily Allen were setting up MySpace pages and breaking through in a way that and I could see that actually for a small arts organisation like the Globe has no money, no Arts Council funding or at least it didn't when I worked there and they really needed to reach out to young people but they had no budget and the Wild West, the internet was actually a brilliant opportunity to try and coax those people who were doing Shakespeare at secondary school into an educational environment where we could get them involved.

Speaker 2: 21:43

With the arts organization that Wild Westerners, I definitely understood in a way that, like most people in theater really, I mean no one had smartphones. This is before smartphones. Nobody back then really understood. They knew they had to have a website, but tickets were still mostly sold over the telephone. There wasn't even a box office front. So this is really early stages, but because of my experience in the music industry I could see what digital might be able to provide to really small arts organisations that didn't have the brand recognition of something like the Opera House.

Speaker 1: 22:18

And you've already mentioned about just our style and what you had to do about essentially just getting on with it. But the one thing which still is bizarre is that there is still kind of this feeling around digital isn't everything, and I know that's very backwards for most organizations and we can talk about that. But back then you say, like they didn't really have much money, people were very skeptical, most people weren't really interested in what we were doing, apart from our bosses, no, and it clearly wasn't a phase and I wondered what were some of the tactics that you may have used that others that are in that space now could learn from, apart from being a little bit renegade, like us?

Speaker 2: 22:59

Well, nowadays, you know, arts Council want digital projects and they're not. You know, and you don't need to be renegade. I was good in that role because that was required. Our little digital team, all four of us when we first started I know huge we were in a little annex. We had a corridor where they put a surface that was our desks. Literally, our office was a corridor, a surface that was our desks. We, literally our office, was a corridor. And when we came to work, everyone else comes in. You know, beautiful, opera, et cetera, floaty, traditional. We were like the punk rockers coming in with Mohicans. We were the equivalent of the troublemakers and people thought that the organisation was doing something weird by letting us have an office in a corridor.

Speaker 1: 23:43

It literally was a corridor as well.

Speaker 2: 23:44

Yeah, it really was, and it's the worst desk I've ever had, but anyway.

Speaker 1: 23:48

Well, may have described it, but she didn't do it justice, right? It was a shit kitchen worktop was the desk. That's what it was, wasn't it?

Speaker 2: 23:57

That's correct yes, they basically got some bloke a handyman to put up some battens, put a kitchen surface, and some bloke a hardy a handyman to like put up some battens, put a kitchen surface and they put three workstations. You were luckily around the corner.

Speaker 2: 24:07

You actually got a real desk because you needed a nail-shaped desk because you were building the website, which made you. At least the organization knew it needed a website, right, so you got a desk. But people like me, little scumbags that like were just, like you know, a rabble. But the thing that I think is interesting is one of the things that I did is I went outside the organization. All the jewels, the gems, the talent, the history is inside the organization, but all of the innovation, all of the people who were doing interesting things with the internet, were outside the organization and they weren't in the arts.

Speaker 2: 24:45

I used to go to really boring tech fairs and I used to go to incredible conferences where people from America who were doing incredibly radical things would talk about where they thought technology was going. They were talking about AI 15 years ago. They were talking about what might be possible. I went to lectures about how human beings are going to stop dying at some point. We're just going to live forever.

Speaker 2: 25:08

All of these things were sometimes, I have to admit, hokey and I thought what? But also some of these things made me think, oh well, actually I can take what they're talking about and I can connect it to this, and one of the things that's interesting about technology is technology has kind of, I think, two roles when it's bringing something new to the marketplace, and I think we can see it now with AI. One of them is a bulldozer, bullying role, right when they ignore everything that everyone says. They know they're going to get resistance. They're not going to advance if they don't just steamroller that resistance. So they've stolen all my books Meta have stolen all my books to program their AI. They steamroller everyone. They don't ask permission, they wait until they get sued and they just do it anyway, and then, in the wake of that carnage. They do the PR, kind of like oh we'll bring you on board, we'll show you why this is good, and if they believe in something, that is what they do, and you know I'm someone who is obviously suffering at the hands of that at the minute.

Speaker 2: 26:15

However, that is also what we had to do at the Opera House. There were a lot of people that were resistant to what we were trying to do, did not see the point of it, thought it was a waste of money, what was wrong with the traditional roots of everything, and so we had to steamroller and not ask permission, only retrogressively apologize and bring people on board. And that happened repeatedly, even like. I remember there being a ballet historian who did a lecture and we'd recorded it, which always happened anyway for the archive. Anyone could come into the opera house and go to the archive and listen to a lecture. I had taken that audio and I had made it publicly available for free on iTunes U for anyone studying ballet, and that lecturer sent me an email saying I make my living out of giving that lecture and I've given the same lecture for I mean, I don't want to say how many years, but obviously a long time.

Speaker 2: 27:13

And they were like if you give it away for free, no one will pay me to come and do this job. You are killing my. And I was like I'll take it down absolutely now, right now. And I took it down because I don't want to damage his ability to earn. Interestingly, a little while later he was like oh, I got bookings because of that. Can you please put it back up? Because people had heard of this lecturer who'd never heard of him before.

Speaker 2: 27:40

So what's interesting is that people's fear of what digital might do often is not founded in experience or fact. It's just an anxiety about how it might cannibalize your living, your life. And at the moment it's the same with AI. They've taken all my books, they've put it through the AI thingy, built their AI on it. They've not paid me a penny for it or even asked my permission. And I've gone into AI and asked who MG Leonard is and I've got an essay back on who I am and I have to say 50% of it's very flattering. 20% of it is wholly inaccurate and completely wrong. Like it said, I did a degree in creative writing at Bath University.

Speaker 2: 28:25

I've never been to Bath University, so I can see what's going on. It's literally not going to affect me so much because I write for children and children really do need to read words on paper. That much we've learned over the last 20 years Reading words on a screen. Actually, the brain doesn't retain the information and if you're developing a child's brain, reading on paper is the most effective way to do it.

Speaker 2: 28:49

And I write for children but for adults, I can imagine if I was writing nonfiction in the adult space and all of my research and my living was being dragged into AI and then spat out and other people were making money out of my research. I would be livid. So I think there needs to be protocols and things set in place, but I also think those protocols and the copyright laws will be set in place. I think this is what happens with digital innovation Whether or not it's good, the right thing, I would argue. If you're an elderly person who loves ballet and you can watch a ballet streamed into your living room or your old people's home when you're in your 90s, I think it's a wonderful thing. So there's pluses and minuses, but on the whole, I think that digital is proving to be a blessing for the art and for the audiences.

Speaker 1: 29:43

I agree and I think you know it's paid itself back tenfold right. You know, even the idea of digital ticketing, the volume that you can shift and the add-on donations and the purchase pack. It's so different to what it is and this resistance is always there but in the end it will always win and I I wholly agree with you that the safety bill will happen to protect people. It will happen. It's just slow. It's just government. I think there will be great protocols around AI. Copyright ingesting books will be addressed.

Speaker 1: 30:17

You know, and I think you mentioned it a couple of minutes ago when you mentioned also ripping music, the industry was in meltdown and it's turned it on its head and you know we can have an argument, stroke, debate about whether royalties to artists are good enough, but ultimately they did kind of manage to get it into a space where it was manageable and controllable and it's pretty impressive that we've been through some of that change. And I don't you know, of course there's going to be future change. But actually we were in quite a rich period of blagging it, pushing forward new technology, and I wonder sometimes whether that will continue. You've worked on so much in the digital space and we're talking quite a lot about Opera House, but you've worked NT, you've worked everywhere. I wondered in that phase of being a badass digital producer if there's one thing like a project or something that stands out for you and why.

Speaker 2: 31:16

Not because of how great it was, but for me on a personal level. So I'm going to tell you a little story about young Maya. When I was a little girl, I was so in love with the ballet. I really wanted to be a ballet dancer. Dancing was everything to me when I was a little girl and my favourite ballet dancer was Rudolf Nureyev. And my favourite ballet is Giselle. And I had a VHS tape of this recording of Giselle and Lynn Seymour, who's recently just passed, god bless, her soul was dancing Giselle, and I watched this tape until it literally broke. I wore it out, I watched it over and over again, I danced along with it. I lived and loved every note, every movement of that story. It literally was my soul as a child.

Speaker 2: 32:05

Now the two leads were Rudolf Nureyev and Lynn Seymour, but the third biggest part in that ballet is the Queen of the Willies. She's the evil ghost, that is, a spurned woman who was spurned before her wedding day and when Giselle spoiler alert commits suicide, she raises Giselle's ghost to be a vengeance spirit. And all of these spirits in the wood. They basically dance men to death. They are out to get the boys, they are not happy with men's behavior and she's the queen of this and she is utterly terrifying. In this ballet and on that VHS that I watched, the dancer who played that role was called Monica Mason and when she came on on point as Queen of the Willies, I oh my God, it's happening now.

Speaker 2: 32:50

All the goosebumps on the back of my neck because her eyes were bold and bright blue even through a gauze. And she came on a point she's such a strong dancer and she was terrifying. And as a child when I had nightmares, it was her in my nightmares that was like the evil queen. And even in my book I have a villainous Lucretia Cutter. There is something of Monica Mason in my female villains, right, all because of that, and I watched that tape so much. And then Rachel Caldicott, our boss at the Opera House, offered me the job to be the digital content producer for the Opera House and I have to be honest, I'd never seen an opera when I got that job because I thought they were just for posh rich people and I was not, Neither did I yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 33:36

But I loved ballet, but I hadn't seen a ballet for years and I got the job because of what I'd done for Shakespeare's Globe, not because I was an expert in opera, so I didn't even. This is crazy, but I didn't even look to see who was the head of the ballet or the opera or anything. And in my first week at the opera house, rachel was like well, I've organized meetings for you to meet, like Papano, who is the conductor of the orchestra, and Monica Mason, who was the director of the Royal Ballet. And I was like, oh, that name really rings a bell. But obviously when you're a kid you don't really remember the names of the dancers. You just remember the dancer. In my head she was called the Queen of the Willies. But when she said Monica Mason, there's something at the back of my head that was like, oh, why do I know that name? And I was thinking, oh, maybe she's famous for something. But I didn't put two and two together.

Speaker 2: 34:30

Anyway, a week later I'm in Monica Mason's office. She's not there because she's at another meeting and Rachel and I are sat there waiting and then she enters and I went from being a 34-year-old woman to being an eight-year-old child. She came in and the thing if you've ever seen Monica Mason, you know she walks like she dances. She came in like the Queen of the Willies the big blue eyes. She's now got silver hair. She was fabulous and terrifying and I couldn't speak. I couldn't say, I was like an idiot during that meeting.

Speaker 2: 35:08

I was just staring at her reliving my eight-year-old and I could not believe that I was going to be working with this woman. And the first project that I got to work on with her was I filmed a series of eight or nine minute in rehearsal videos for iTunes but are now on YouTube which was about how the great masters of a role teach the younger dancers how to perform that role. And I got to film Monica Mason teaching a young dancer in the core how to do the Queen of the Willies. And I think, oh, I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. I think I spent most of the day trying not to cry.

Speaker 2: 35:45

It was one of the most astonishing full circle moments of my entire life and I mean I probably watched that video a couple of times a year because I still can't believe I made it, that I produced that, that I got the cameras in, that I got to experience that. That I got effectively. You know, I had meetings with her about what we were going to shoot, which shots we were going to do, which bits could be close up, which bits could be wide and mid, and it was, for me, probably one of the most incredible experiences of my digital life. But it's completely emotional and it's not grand, but I love it, so yeah, and Dame Monica Mason is an icon.

Speaker 1: 36:24

What a ledge, yeah, Icon. So, moving on from that moment, which is beautiful, you've also gone into a beautiful new chapter as MG Leonard, this incredible children's author, best-selling you're everywhere. You've gone beyond one book. It's insane. I just wondered, though, when you made that actual commitment to do it, because I can't remember it being an obvious moment. I've always felt it's been a gradual thing from when we spoke about it, but there must have been that commitment to your heart and your soul and your mind going. I'm doing it.

Speaker 2: 37:03

Yeah, because a lot of the times we don't do the things we really want to do because we're frightened. And I had spent oh, I don't know 20 odd years facilitating other people's creativity, whether it was digitally or in the music industry. As a manager, I worked with creative people and I helped those creative people broadcast their product, their creativity, their story, their whatever it was their music to the world. I was the amplifier. But of course, deep in my heart, I had my own little creative dream, but I was so terrified that it might be rubbish. And if I did it, what if it failed?

Speaker 2: 37:41

And then when I met you in my personal life, I was a single mum. I'd gone through a terrible divorce. It was very emotional and difficult. I had my little boy that I was primary carer of, arthur, who was about three years old at the time, and when you go through something like that, you really have to work out who you are and what you want. And I realized the divorce was so horrific. Emotionally I felt like such a failure because I'd made these promises that I was going to be with this guy and it was my choice not to be. And I realized nothing was worse than that. No failure could feel as bad as that felt. I felt like I'd failed my son. I felt like I'd failed myself. I felt like I'd failed everyone who'd been at my wedding. I was a hot mess and then I was like it almost gave me. Am I allowed to swear?

Speaker 1: 38:27

Yeah, go ahead, brilliant.

Speaker 2: 38:30

It gave me a fuck it mentality because I was like, fuck it, I'll fail, who cares? And actually I started writing the beginning of Beetle Boy, my first book, whilst I was at the opera house. But I was a single mum doing a full-time job and I had a three-year-old kid and I was juggling childcare and I was exhausted most of the time. And then, as I said, I met my current husband, sam Sparling, at the Royal Opera House. He worked in the education department. Early on in the days of our relationship I admitted to him that I wrote and he was like oh, can you please share some of it with me? And I was like, oh God, no, no one's ever read it. So I gave him just a couple of pages of something that actually was in the book and he was so enthusiastic, was like, oh my god, this is brilliant. This is amazing. His enthusiasm shocked me because I thought he might be like some of it's good, some of it's bad. He was like you have to write more. I want to read more, write more. And because somebody else was suddenly invested in it, I started to write more. And I did start to write more whilst I was at the opera house, but as, as I said, it was a really difficult time, so being able to write more was very, very difficult. I didn't really get any kind of momentum going. I just wrote scraps that didn't fit together and I really wasn't sure about the project. And that's probably when I admitted to you I think I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to write a book, and it was somebody else's enthusiasm that gave me the confidence to give it a go.

Speaker 2: 40:04

But it wasn't until about a year and a half into our relationship, sam moved in to my flat. We were helping each other out in a variety of ways, but one of the things that he wanted to do because by this point he was best friends with my son and absolutely adored him, and my son was going to school. He was like in the morning, I'll get up with your son at six in the morning, I'll give him breakfast, get him dressed and I will take him to school. You will write. And just giving me an hour before I had to go to work every day meant because somebody else was doing something to enable me to write. I had to do it. I couldn't go. Somebody else was doing something to enable me to write, I had to do it. I couldn't go. I've got writer's block. I had to do it.

Speaker 2: 40:43

So suddenly, five days a week, I had this hour before work. So I had full of energy, my brain was alight, and then, whilst I was at work, it felt amazing because I'd be thinking about what I was going to write tomorrow. It was like having an affair on my job and it took me six months to write a first draft. And, oh man, that first draft was terrible. It was bulky and awful and everything. But I'd got to the end, I'd written a book.

Speaker 2: 41:04

And once you've created a book, fixing a book is a totally different thing.

Speaker 2: 41:08

And so that kind of happened just as I was leaving the opera house and starting work at the National Theatre, where I was surrounded by people who worked with words and playwrights and things, and suddenly I was surrounded by people who did this for a job and that kind of gave me the second wind, to give me the confidence to really do it. But it did take me a good few years to get that first book into. I mean, I don't know if you remember. I know I gave it to you and about 10 million other people going is this rubbish. I mean, I don't know if you remember. I know I gave it to you and about 10 million other people going. Is this rubbish Like? Could you read it? You don't have to read it. It's probably terrible, but I solicited the help of every person who would read it because I was so insecure about it. But you know, it went on to be an international bestseller, translated into 30 languages and is being developed into a TV series.

Speaker 1: 41:59

Right, you list those. That's just one book, by the way, one series, and I think that's a really, really beautiful way of describing your journey and that's the real truth about how much effort has to go into this kind of approach and writing books. You know, and creativity Some things can be quick wins and some things, like writing, is very difficult. And you know, back then was the period where I felt not that I'm an expert. The obvious book deals were huge. Advances had fallen away, trying to get a publisher or anyone, editing was so difficult and rejection. And I remember I can't remember the name of the person that looked at your book but worked in publishing and you were bouncing off the wall for days. I know you've written so many other books since then, but do you remember that feeling of that first one?

Speaker 2: 42:50

yeah, because, like I sent out my book to a bunch of agents to begin with and all of them rejected it and one came back with a breakdown of why they didn't like it and it was brutal.

Speaker 1: 43:03

Oh my.

Speaker 2: 43:03

God, like I'm not a crier, but dear Lord, I was very upset and I shouted at my husband quite a lot for a few days just to get it out, and it was, it was, and I just it's very difficult to to not listen right To those things and then I think it was the third round of sending out to agents and I was becoming really despairing and being like, oh my God, I don't know what they want. What is it Like? What am I doing wrong? This is impossible because you're trying to second guess what somebody else is looking for and you have no idea. And I was so desperate I mean desperate is the word and then an agent came back to me and they said look, I really like the idea and the first two thirds of the book are great, but you have a massive problem, like after the first two thirds it kind of goes awry. And they were like I can't.

Speaker 2: 43:54

Normally I'd work with an author and edit and help them, but I can't do that because she was actually she'd just been diagnosed with lymphoma, so she was going into a load of chemo and she was not in a position to help anyone. But she was like I'll try and find someone who'll work with you on this manuscript. It's not ready yet. However, I like it. And she was the first person to say that I even had an idea that was worthy of anything. And even though she wasn't offering to represent me and she couldn't help me edit it or anything, just that one person who saw the possibility of this story, that there might be an audience for this story. Yeah, I was high as a kite for weeks. I was so excited and happy, just because, you know, after so many rejections and people going now, people don't like insects, no one's gonna buy this. I don't like your hero, I don't like your writing, I don't like, and you're just like, oh my god, and they, you know they either just you get a uh like a automatic response saying not looking at manuscripts at this moment in time, which is like, like you know, stonewall, or you get a detailed breakdown of why you're shit.

Speaker 2: 45:00

Oh yeah, it's a brutal time and I always feel for anyone who is pitching, and particularly now, actually, because I think one of the things I do think that's about to happen is AI is going to make new writers. It's going to make it impossible for new writers to get deals because agents are going to be inundated with thousands of manuscripts that are 90% written by AI. No one's going to want to buy a manuscript, by the way, people. No one wants a book written by AI no one. And certainly agents already are inundated with manuscripts written by people. If they can't tell the difference between an AI manuscript and something that's written by a person, they're just going to reject it out of hand. So you're going to have to be uber creative, uber weird and most un-AI to get representation.

Speaker 2: 45:48

I'm very lucky that I got the deal when I did 10 years ago because I'm established name. I've written 20 books all by myself. You know what I sound like when it's me. They're weird as hell. I've written 20 books all by myself. You know what I sound like when it's me. They're weird as hell. And you know I am not AI. But I think going forward, ai is going to make it actually harder to get a publishing deal. I definitely think that's going to be one of the first thing that happens. Until we can like, scan a manuscript and know that it's not been written by a computer, then I think that's going to be very difficult ironically, it will be AI that will allow us to do that and detect how it's structured.

Speaker 1: 46:21

AI that detects AI, I know so your career in digital content, producing all those skills as acting and then being this epic author, and you, just I was going to ask you how many books you in 20, about 20 books.

Speaker 2: 46:33

Yeah, I've written 20. 19 are published. The 20th comes out in September.

Speaker 1: 46:37

So 20 books in 10 years and so, apart from writing, are you involved in every other element of creating the book and the world? You know, because you clearly know how to create. I know I know Moses is probably trying to pick your brain about how renegade you're being or how you were within the industry a different industry and going. No, I'm involved and I'm going to talk to everybody. I just wondered if you could describe how all of that experience works now.

Speaker 2: 47:08

One of the things that people find really shocking when they become authors this is more so for children's authors and adult authors, but still adult authors. Authors this is more so for children's authors and adult authors, but still adult authors is that in the olden days, like 90 years ago, you would write a book, you'd give it to your publisher and they would leave you alone. It was their job to market it and sell it and find the audience, et cetera. You just had to write. That is not the job of an author. Now I literally have got off the back of All. Throughout February.

Speaker 2: 47:36

I did about I think I did about 50 school events in February. Sometimes I was visiting three schools a day doing what is effectively a performance. Right, I do like a 45-minute show about the book that I've just written, about how you write, about storytelling, about the importance of reading. I am a trained actor so I find it A fun and not difficult. But if you're an introverted writer, that's your idea of hell having to do that. If you're a grown-up writer, quite often they'll have someone interviewing you on a panel, but ultimately you need to be a performer. The best, most successful authors are able to present themselves at festivals doing live events, and I am very good at them. I almost script them. I can perform readings from my book like a professional actor. I record most of my own audio books, because why would I let an actor do a job that I can do, and I'd like my stories to be in my voice as much as possible. The only ones I don't do are the ones that require accents.

Speaker 2: 48:39

That I am not capable of doing without sounding really dodgy because I'm not an accent person, so you have to be a performer and I am. But also in January, before the book came out in February, I made 36 different videos. Now I had to make videos for my international publishers, speaking all the different languages to cameras saying hello, it's MG Leonard here, which is hilarious when I try and do it in Swedish because I cannot speak Swedish. You have to be able to sell your book in a video. You have to do a pre-order video for all of the different chains, like WH Smiths, like Waterstones. Then you have to do it's out now and then you have to be like buy it at Waterstones. So you're making videos like that. You're also engaging educational videos. You also have to perform readings to video. I made over 30 videos, which is a lot in a month.

Speaker 2: 49:29

I know how to use video editing software. I have a decent camera that I use. I have a microphone that I use. I make videos that look and feel professional. My publishers are so happy with that because most authors can't make a decent video and just like a self film on a phone is usually going to be terrible. I have a teleprompter app that gives me my script.

Speaker 2: 49:55

I script my videos. I can do them fast, I can schedule them so I can be like all right, I'm going to do a day of filming. Here are all the scripts. Day one write the scripts for my videos. Day two film all the videos in all the different locations. Day three I'm going to start uploading them into Final Cut on my computer and start editing them. I will export the right files, whether it's in portrait or landscape. I can do all of that because I am trained. I do not know one author who can do that. That makes me to a publisher, a very valuable author, because I can do an awful lot of the promotion and most publishers are really struggling on tiny budgets, on small teams, and the people who are doing the digital are usually in their early twenties, just out of university, and I know more than they do. So quite often I'm like do you know what I'm going to do? This, I'm going to put it in these places. You can amplify, you can share. This is going to be educational, this is going to be promotional.

Speaker 2: 50:51

I make a content plan for my books because I want my books to be as successful as possible. I also have to write, by the way, about 20 odd articles about how I wrote the book, who I am, et cetera, for publications and I don't get paid for that because they see it as promotion. So I remember with Beetle Boy, a book of 55,000 words. I added up after I'd finished them all, all the blog articles and the articles for magazines and everything that I wrote. I wrote 30,000 words of articles about the book that was only 55,000 words long, to promote it. So you have to write articles and this is why the training at the Opera House and the National Theatre as a content producer was incredibly useful to me.

Speaker 2: 51:36

I also made a podcast series of how to write your first debut book. When my first debut book came out, that was serialized in the Guardian Because at the time podcasts were new, no one was doing them, and they were like, oh, you can do a podcast and I was like, yeah, I've got a setup in my little studio where I've got a decent mic and so I did a series of six 10 minute short how to write your first book podcasts. So absolutely yes, I can do all of those things. Most authors can't. Most authors. They are now being asked to, which is very distressing for a lot of authors. I'm constantly when I meet people and they're groaning and grumbling about having to do all these things as well as writing a book.

Speaker 2: 52:17

I'm like teleprompter app. Do this. You can edit on TikTok like on the app. If you can't use editing software, create it in TikTok. Remove the logo, export it into your photos. There are cheats. I make sure I know I'm on everything. I'm on Blue Sky. I'm on TikTok. I'm on everything Because at the moment we're in a struggle, a battle of social media. Brands like to see which rises to the top and becomes dominant, or maybe we'll end up with a landscape where nothing is dominant and everywhere's in the middle. I'm on Facebook, even though, you know, most people aren't, because international audiences are on.

Speaker 2: 52:52

Facebook that I get messages from Romania and Bulgaria on Facebook. So I handle my social media professionally. I have a social media policy. I create a lot of digital content. I have a website, which is really good, where all of my information is, and over the last decade, obviously it's built out. It's a really substantial site now with many links out. It's something that Google has crawled many times. You can find information about me across the internet and, interestingly, here's a fun story.

Speaker 2: 53:25

When Beetle Boy came out, I tried to create a Wikipedia page and you're not allowed to create your own Wikipedia page, which I did not know at the time and so a block went on a page for MG Leonard and over the last decade I've assumed at some point someone else will create a Wikipedia page. No one created it because there was a block on it Every time anyone tried to create it. It couldn't happen. I had people who were Wikipedia creators being like I don't seem to be able to create your page and I'm like, yeah, that's a mistake that I made 10 years ago because you're not allowed to create your own. And then, when AI started to really become a thing about a year and a half ago, I was like I really need a Wikipedia page, because AI, of course, regularly crawls Wikipedia. If I want it to be accurate about who I am and what I am when people ask it questions, I need a Wikipedia page.

Speaker 2: 54:13

It's now become a growing business concern of mine, particularly for international audiences like America, so I paid an American agency a sum of money that's quite considerable to do that, because they work with Wikipedia. And now, literally two weeks ago, I have a Wikipedia page and it was my fault that it didn't exist for 10 years and I didn't worry about it 10 years ago. But now, going forward, I'm so aware of the changes that are coming. I am trying to make sure that what I'm offering the internet informational wise about me is the information that A is accurate and B I want it to know, and that cost me money. No one else paid for that, Not my publisher. I paid for that because I think that's a good investment. So, yes, all of my digital knowledge work experience plays into my success as an author and I am trying to build a global name, a brand, effectively. That's what MG Leonard is, as you and I both know it's not my real name.

Speaker 1: 55:15

But I love it. I love it. That whole story there is really fascinating about you having to take ownership and create, and you've basically done over the last 10 years what is being demanded of music artists before they'll even get a sniff of being signed yeah that.

Speaker 1: 55:33

I know lots of people that are trying to break into the music industry. I know lots of successful writers writing for the big name but actually people aren't getting signed because you need 150,000 followers, you need to be able to create all this stuff and I think, if anything, what you've just said is give it a go, give it a play. It doesn't have to be perfect to start with yeah but you.

Speaker 1: 55:52

That's how you reach your audience. I'm not trying to test you here, but do you know how many copies of your entire books you've sold?

Speaker 2: 55:59

do you know what? Uh, about six months ago I was doing a funding application so I had to find out how much I'd sold in the UK. So six months ago I was 800 and something thousand and now I'm so close to having sold a million books that I'm like by the end of this year I will have sold a million books in the UK Globally. I have absolutely no idea, because every publisher only tells you like a year later and you'd have to do.

Speaker 2: 56:30

I'm not a spreadsheet girl. You'd have to be on top of your spreadsheet, but I have. I'm so close to having sold a million books in the UK, which is something that I will be celebrating when it happens, because a million is a sweet number, but I know that more than a million kids have read my books, because that's how many I've sold. But what we're not talking about is the number of kids that get my books out of libraries. Last year my books were borrowed 180,000 times in one year.

Speaker 1: 56:57

Insane numbers.

Speaker 2: 56:59

So I know that, and that's not including the number of kids who read it as a class book in school or take it out of a school library. That's just public libraries. So I know that more than probably we're talking. A couple of million, maybe 3 million children have read my books, one of my books, if not more. So yeah, but I want to have sold a million. I'll feel like when I hit that which will be this year, like it is going to happen.

Speaker 1: 57:24

It will happen. And, on that note, how does it feel you connecting with your audience on this side of your creative world? Before we never really got the feedback. Now you're getting to sitting. I've seen you at festivals. You've already mentioned you beam into classrooms all over the place. You hear stories. I've seen people write to you, like their parents or their children, about how inspired what does that feel like? Getting that real feedback Not Google Analytics, because that's a different thing and it's a different change in your career from us looking at dashboards to humans are responding to what you're doing. What's that like?

Speaker 2: 58:03

It's really interesting. So on Tuesday I was at a school and they had asked one of the children to introduce me before I did my big assembly event, and this boy was in year eight. So for those of you who don't know, year eight is kind of 13,. Awkward age for boys. They're very self-conscious, they do not like talking in front of audiences. And this year eight boy, who very shyly introduced himself to me before he introduced me to the school, had prepared, he'd written his own speech and I'm quite used to with these things. Someone just takes the biog off my website and reads it out. That happens a lot, right? But this boy had written his own speech and he was like, I've been reading MG Leonard's books since I was eight.

Speaker 2: 58:48

In lockdown I read the Adventures on Trains books and I was almost crying. Before I went and stood in front of like 500 kids and tried to be like hey, I was so overwhelmed. And he it was the most heartfelt, beautiful introduction that this boy had written himself. And he I could see his hands shaking as he was reading it and it feels incredible. But also like I, I love writing books for children. Like children are the most genuine critics, like if they love something. They read it again and again and again. They quote you lines. They tell you why they love it. They are just the most honest, beautiful humans. Adults will tell you they like something when really secretly, they think it's a piece of shit, and they put it down better. And I don't trust adults. So even when my publishers are saying, oh, I love your new book, I think it doesn't count until a child has come up to me and said to me I love this book. And when that happens, that is all the accolade I need. I don't need reviews in newspapers, I need a child to look me in the eyes and to say this took me somewhere marvelous and wonderful and thank you. And that for me is it's the most incredible experience, david.

Speaker 2: 1:00:07

Like I often have to just when I get a bit grumpy about the amount of work I have to do and all the books I have to write and I'm like, oh, I've worked so hard. And then I just check my privilege and I'm like there is an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old, a 10-year-old somewhere who is like come on, maya, when's your next book coming? I need your next book. I want to do this until I die. This is a dream job for me, and the children are everything. I'd like to pretend I would do this, even if I didn't get paid. I need to obviously feed my own children, so I need to get paid. Didn't get paid, I need to obviously feed my own children, so I need to get paid, but it, the reward, is extraordinary. Um, and I, I think kids are brilliant. Like I love working with kids, I always have, so you know, yeah, it feels amazing, like there's nothing like it, and it does. I think maybe the older I get, the more emotional I get, but it does literally and don't forget.

Speaker 1: 1:01:00

I know you're not writing specifically for adults, but adults are reacting.

Speaker 2: 1:01:04

The same as well oh, do you know what my favorite thing? Is adventures on train stories which, you know, I did write specifically for dads to read with their sons, because I know that dads love trains, right, and there's loads of train stuff in there for dads and granddads the messages I get.

Speaker 2: 1:01:21

I got a lovely letter from a gentleman in his 60s who wrote me a fan letter and he said I'm sure you don't get many fan letters for grownups, but I have read all six of those train books and I don't even have grandchildren and I just wanted to say I love them. My favorite are grownup men who love the stories. Because, I don't know, it takes something. Grown-up women will admit that they love children's books without any shame at all, and they should, because all the differences in the children's book is that the hero is a child. Right, the adventure, the writing is just as sophisticated as adult books. It's just that the hero is a kid. But when a grown ass man writes me a handwritten letter telling me that he's enjoyed, I like that just makes me feel just chef's kiss and it just makes me think he must be a lovely man you've mentioned your kids.

Speaker 1: 1:02:10

You're two beautiful, beautiful boys. I know I share a birthday with one of them. Um, what do they think of all this madness? Now you're doing this.

Speaker 2: 1:02:21

It depends what age they are right. So when it all started, arthur, who shares your birth date he was 10. And the big kind of like ooh, beetle Boy bestseller Waterstones Book of the Month it's in every shop window. He was very excited by that. And then two years later he's going to secondary school. And you know, in secondary school if anyone has got anything they can tease you about, they go in for it. Everyone called him beetle boy.

Speaker 2: 1:02:49

He was embarrassed by it, hated it used to. Wouldn't let me pick him up from school because he was just embarrassed because his friends knew who I was right. So he was like oh, you're just a nightmare, mom. And this went on for quite a few years, so much so that when he was like 15 or something, we let him have a party in the house and we went away for the weekend and came back. And when I came back he tidied the whole house but all of my pictures of Beatles and anything to do with my books had been removed from the walls, right, Because he didn't want anyone to know who came to the party, who he or I was right. So he took them all down, put them in a box and hid them under my bed but forgot to put them back up again. He was so ashamed.

Speaker 2: 1:03:24

Now he's 19, about to be 20. Now he's proud again, and to a point where in his teenage years he refused to read any of my books. My youngest, who is in year seven and 11 years old, has read my most recent book, hunt for the Golden Scarab. But I know deep in my heart it will be the last of my books that he reads until he gets to 20.

Speaker 2: 1:03:49

I know I'm about to enter into the phase where I become embarrassing again, but the only good thing about my youngest is and he has read every one of my books and been very proud and loved the whole experience is he's got a friend whose mum is also an author. That is a friend of mine, because in Brighton there are loads of authors and illustrators Nigel Shireen, who writes these brilliant Grimwood books. She's a good friend of mine and lives around the corner and our sons are the same age, so they both have embarrassing mums. So at least my youngest has got someone that they can chat to about how awful it is to have a mum who jumps around telling everyone how amazing insects are.

Speaker 1: 1:04:26

I love it and we're all so proud of you, your children, your family, we all your friends. You've done such an amazing job at sticking to your passion and going for it and never looking back, and that inspires me, me all the time. So, and I have that New York thing, and no one's ever described it like that. So now I'm buzzing.

Speaker 2: 1:04:46

That's what it is yeah, inside you've got a New York spirit. That's what I think it is, because if you went to America and, by the way, congratulations on the new job I think that sounds very exciting. Wales are lucky to have you. But yeah, it's that thing of like. Yeah, I can do that. It's not very British, but if you have any kind of spark of that inside you, anyone who's listening to this fan those flames, be brave. It's not as frightening as you think, but you will. I mean, I've been rejected loads. It's very easy to make it sound like I'm just an easy success, but there was a couple of years of crying and throwing things at the wall and getting exasperated.

Speaker 1: 1:05:21

Hundreds of rejections, of people just not emailing you back, and all that crazy stuff. So, for those people that are interested in getting into the creative industries maybe as an author, maybe in digital content or something else what advice would you have for them if they're starting out in that journey?

Speaker 2: 1:05:38

I think what's really interesting now and I think it's because it's not that dissimilar to like 15 years ago the people who run the big institutions in these creative industries. They're very focused on the art form. Like they need young people, they need fresh blood who are au fait with all the like, modern ways to communicate, like TikTok and Snapchat and all those kinds of things they are not able to come up with like the kind of fleet-footed, inexpensive ways of engaging audiences, and I think that that's such a great route in Like. I still think that you know you can have limited experience, but a lot of space in the digital realm that will encourage an organization to want to work with you. I watch TikTok videos all the time.

Speaker 2: 1:06:32

There's a really lovely guy that I watch who just goes and sees plays because he loves plays in preview week and he just says what he thinks of the production and he is hilarious and brutally honest. Even when he's seeing like Sigourney Weaver, he's like that was just terrible and please don't pay 400 quid for a ticket. Like you know he is. I don't know who he is. I don't know where in the country he is. I guess he must be on the outskirts of London but he's actually got a really big following and he's seen a lot of theatre.

Speaker 2: 1:07:04

And if I was looking for someone new to join a team that could create and communicate about the art form like, if you love an art form and you're trying to make it, you have to be brilliant at explaining why and talking to people about it. One of the reasons why I was successful in my early career wasn't because I was making art. It's because I was successful in my early career wasn't because I was making art. It's because I was so in love with the art forms that I was working for, so passionate about them that I would literally put myself in front of an oncoming truck to go. Ballet is brilliant.

Speaker 1: 1:07:31

And if it hit me it hit me.

Speaker 2: 1:07:33

Yeah, and that's the thing. You have to really be passionate, because that passion is really obvious to anyone in the arts. They can smell it because anyone working in the arts has it right. So we spot kindred spirits. But also it's going to mean that you will ride roughshod over hierarchy. You will go the extra length that it takes to try and get that piece, that message, that piece of dance or that piece of theatre an audience.

Speaker 2: 1:08:00

And that's the thing is that you and I have both worked on projects where we so believe in the thing that's being made, but we know that the normal audience is not going to buy a ticket and we have to find people to come and put their bums on those seats and experience that art form. If you believe in that, then you are going to work your way into the industry and you definitely have to be a bit punk rock about it, because by doing something new that people in organizations aren't doing, you will draw attention to yourself. I definitely think that's still the case. I don't think organizations know how to use AI yet. I think everyone's terrified of AI.

Speaker 1: 1:08:40

No, they've just about turned it on on email.

Speaker 2: 1:08:42

If that, if that yeah, and, like you know, when I started working in the music industry, email didn't even exist.

Speaker 1: 1:08:50

That's how old I am right type in calls. You're not that old and you are we had fax machines oh my god makes me feel weird. We feel weird. Um, we're coming to the end of the conversation, but we could totally go on for another 12 hours. Maybe I'll invite you back for season three, but this is your chance to get some stuff off your chest. So I always ask guests if there are any myths, misconceptions or pet peeves that you want to basically address now oh, are there any perceptions or pet peeves?

Speaker 2: 1:09:24

I have got a pet peeve and it's not a myth.

Speaker 1: 1:09:26

Come on then, give it to us.

Speaker 2: 1:09:28

And I think you probably feel the same way about this. Everyone talks about diversity in arts organisations and I think diversity is crucial, but people very rarely talk about class diversity. Right? I can put on a nice posh voice that helps me fit in, because I'm an actor. I come from nothing and I get so angry when I see privilege and the education that privileged people are blessed with. It's not their fault, but they have pathways into arts organizations which are generic. It's not their fault, but they have pathways into arts organizations which are generic. They don't produce anything new, right, because those pathways are so well-trodden. They're just producing the same stuff that privileged people from the upper classes produce.

Speaker 2: 1:10:16

I get so angry about jobs for the friends and the boys and the the roots in from those organizations, like my. You know I didn't go to a posh university. I did an open university degree and I had to work at the same time as doing it because I couldn't go to university. I didn't have parents that were going to pay for that. I've watched people who are less savvy than me, with less like artistic kind of gumption, less passion, get promotions above my head because of who they are, not what they are, and I think the culture of this country is brilliant, but it's not a surprise to me that the best pieces of art I'm just going to name drop adolescence on Netflix at the moment come from people from working class backgrounds who experience reality, and not from privileged people whose idea of suffering is frankly laughable.

Speaker 2: 1:11:22

That, to me, is it should be included in the diversity quota. Stop hiring posh people from Cambridge who don't need a salary because mummy's paying for them to work in the opera. Please give those working class people a livable salary on those low rank jobs and make sure you're hiring people who actually come from the real world. My God, every organization I've ever worked for has definitely like. I've felt like an oink at most of them. And I can pass as posh. I've done years of training to pass as posh but, dear God, it makes me spit blood. It's the thing that really makes me mad, and every time I ever hired anyone in any of those roles when I was managerial if you were posh, I'm sorry, you'd get kicked out of the interview pretty quickly. I wasn't interested. I'm much more interested in trying to, particularly with the large cultural organisations. They should represent the whole country, not just a tiny niche group.

Speaker 2: 1:12:30

So that is my pet peeve really, and it's a big one and the representation from working class people.

Speaker 1: 1:12:38

You know it needs to be in every single corner of our country. Politicians, you know it blows my mind that it's not there, you know, and everything that connects us as human beings. There's very few things, but storytelling is one of them. Yeah, so you need the stories to come from a diverse range of people, so I absolutely share that pet peeve with you yeah, and you know what I'm talking about, right?

Speaker 2: 1:13:01

I'm not bitching about nothing that don't exist.

Speaker 1: 1:13:04

No, no, no, and everybody knows about it. So I hope you did read my little briefing sheet, because everyone starts panicking when I ask this final question. But at the end of every episode, with every guest, I ask them to make a cultural confession, a little secret. It could be a gaultier pleasure, an unexpected revelation. Obviously nothing to get you into trouble, perhaps. What would you, what would you want to confess? To Come on, you must have loads.

Speaker 2: 1:13:32

Oh, so many, and some of them are criminals, so I'm not going to mention those, because you know, I'm a children's author. But do you know, one of the things that I really struggle with and this is it's kind of weird. Okay, when I first worked at the opera house, I have to be honest, I didn't really get opera. I was like, yeah, whatever, it's a lot of people on the stage singing and I get that, it's hundreds of people and the music is, but it's in a different language and I have to read it and I didn't get it. And then I saw Die Flieder Hollinger.

Speaker 1: 1:14:10

Is that how you?

Speaker 2: 1:14:11

say it, die Flieder Hollinger, I think that's how you say it the Flying Dutchman, which is a Wagner opera and I have done quite a few rants about Wagner being an absolute Nazi scumbag and it broke me apart and left me sobbing. It was the most beautiful. Like I came out in the interval and I had to walk out into the street, go round the corner, put my hands on the wall and just let myself cry it out before I went in for the second half. I have never been affected by, I think, anything as much as I was affected by that opera. Bryn Terfel was singing Like it was.

Speaker 2: 1:14:54

The Royal Opera House's production of that is just extraordinary and it made me realise because I'm often quite politically if the artist is a Nazi, we don't want the art. Thank you very much. And I realized I love Wagner and I don't know what to do with that information, just like I loved reading all the books of Neil Gaiman and now I think Neil Gaiman is an absolute abhorrent human being, but I loved those books. And so I struggle with that because I don't want to support, obviously, wagner's dead and he's not making money out of the Royal Opera House. I don't really want to support bad people, but it's the first thing that made me realize that I do think you have to separate the art from the artist and and I love wagner and I'm quite ashamed, like I don't ever want to say I do, you know what I mean but that that opera is extraordinary.

Speaker 2: 1:16:00

Yeah, uh, and I you know we're talking about something I saw 15 years ago. I still feel bad about it. I've never seen anything that surpassed it. I understand opera. Because of that opera I've seen a lot of bad Wagner. Let me just say Don't go and see Lohengrin. It's five hours long and they have really, really fat men talking about and singing about the fact that they're knights and they can fight anyone and it's's, to be honest, funny for all the wrong reasons. So not all Wagner, but I really want to see the whole ring, so, like I oh my god, no, that's too long, haven't you got to commit to days.

Speaker 2: 1:16:33

I know yeah that's, I think.

Speaker 1: 1:16:35

When I joined the opera house bear in mind again I literally hadn't seen an opera ever in real life completely was just like yeah, I'll learn about it, which is kind of my attitude, everything I remember I was allowed to go into like a general rehearsal and it was for the ring cycle and I didn't realize I had to commit for that number of days to get the whole. Oh my, it's a lot. It's a lot. I love opera. I. It's extraordinary. We together know some amazing opera stars. It's mind, the hairs on your arms stand up and the stories are, you know, of course, exaggerated and they drag on a bit like ballet, like how many times can you get married and killed and be in mourning. But they also hit some really challenging subjects and the world of opera is pretty extraordinary, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 1:17:22

Yeah, it really is. And you know, I'm still like I don't know, like my books on Wagner are not on public display on my bookshelves, like it's like a dirty secret because I, because he was you know.

Speaker 1: 1:17:39

you just revealed that on a podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:17:41

Oh I know, but you asked me and it's true, and I've never actually, I've never actually talked to anyone about it.

Speaker 1: 1:17:46

Well, now we know.

Speaker 2: 1:17:48

Yeah, it's an exclusive, but I am ashamed of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:17:53

Maya MG Leonard, you extraordinary thing. Thank you so much for doing this episode. We'll have to do it again. I'm planning to do like a live tour as well. You're gonna have to come and do one of them.

Speaker 1: 1:18:04

I know it's that thing big ideas. People don't believe I'm gonna do it, but you know I will, oh, count me in. But thank you, so so much. Um, I really appreciate it and I hope that when you listen back and you reflect, you also get something out of this, maybe reflecting on what you've achieved it. It's extraordinary, so thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:18:24

Oh no, thank you. It's always a delight to talk to you, David, You're wonderful.

Speaker 1: 1:18:31

Thanks for listening to this episode of Before the Applause. Please do tell everyone about this podcast and stay connected with us across all the usual social media platforms by searching at Before Applause. If you've got any burning questions, want to share your own insights, want to recommend a guest or be one yourself, then we'd love to hear from you. You can direct message us on any of our social accounts or email studio at beforetheapplauspodcom.