Mostly Books Meets...

This week, Jack is joined by children's book dream team Greg James and Chris Smith. In 2017, they launched onto shelves with the hilarious Kid Normal, which quickly went on to become a best-seller. Since then they have penned three more Kid Normal books, The Great Dream Robbery and their latest book, Super Ghost was released in September of this year.

Show Notes

This week, Jack is joined by children's book dream team Greg James and Chris Smith. In 2017, they launched onto shelves with the hilarious Kid Normal, which quickly went on to become a best-seller. Since then they have penned three more Kid Normal books, The Great Dream Robbery and their latest book, Super Ghost released in September of this year. When they're not writing, they both like to relax by dabbling in a bit of radio.

Purchase Super Ghost here

(1:38) Chris Smith's Childhood Writing Fame
(3:24) Greg James' Childhood Reading Habits
(5:07) The Children's Books that Affected Greg James and Chris Smith
(9:02) Chris and Greg's Recent Reads
(22:00) The Books that Changed Chris Smith and Greg James' Lives
(29:02) The Process of Writing Collaboratively
(34:32) Super Ghost

Welcome to Mostly Books Meets, a weekly podcast by the independent award-winning bookshop, Mostly Books. Nestled in the Oxfordshire town of Abingdon-on-Thames, Mostly Books has been spreading the joy of reading for fifteen years. Whether it’s a book, gift, or card you need the Mostly Books team is always on hand to help. Visit our website.

The podcast is produced and presented by Jack Wrighton and the team at Mostly Books. It is edited by Story Ninety-Four. Find us on Twitter @mostlyreading & Instagram @mostlybooks_shop.

Meet the host:
Jack Wrighton is a bookseller and social media manager at Mostly Books. His hobbies include photography and buying books at a quicker rate than he can read them.
Connect with Jack on Instagram

Super Ghost is published in the UK by Puffin Books

Books mentioned in this episode include:
The Secret Garden by Mariah Marsden - ISBN: 9781524858155
The Jolly Christmas Postman by Janet & Allan Ahlberg - ISBN: 9780141340111
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith - ISBN: 9780099460879
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - ISBN: 9780099740919
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkein - ISBN: 9780261103252
The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkein - ISBN: 9780007458424
Venice for Pleasure by J. G. Links - ISBN: 9780370306605


To find more titles, visit our website

Creators & Guests

Host
Mostly Books
Award-winning indie bookshop in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

What is Mostly Books Meets...?

Welcome to Mostly Books Meets, a podcast by the independent bookshop, Mostly Books. Booksellers from an award-winning indie bookshop chatting books and how they have shaped people's lives, with a whole bunch of people from the world of publishing - authors, poets, journalists and many more. Join us for the journey.

Sarah Dennis 0:24
Welcome to Mostly Books Meets. We the team at mostly books, an award-winning independent bookshop in Abingdon. In this podcast series, we'll be speaking to authors, journalists, poets, and a range of professionals from the world of publishing. We'll be asking about the books that are special to them, from childhood favourites to the book that changed their life and we hope you'll join us for the journey.

Jack Wrighton 1:09
It is a great pleasure to welcome onto the podcast this week, children's book dream team, Greg James and Chris Smith. In 2017, they launched onto shelves with the hilarious Kid Normal, which quickly went on to become a best seller. Since then they have penned three more Kid Normal books, The Great Dream Robbery and their latest book, Super Ghost. When they're not writing, they both like to relax by dabbling in a bit of radio. Greg, Chris, welcome to Mostly Books Meets.

Greg James 1:35
Thanks for having us!

Chris Smith 1:36
Jack, it's a pleasure yes, thank you very much.

Jack Wrighton 1:38
An absolute pleasure. Now usually on the podcast, we like to talk to people about you know, their experiences with reading, with books, what sort of got them into writing and what got them into reading. Now, Chris, am I right in saying from a young age, you were always quite into your writing and storytelling. Is that correct?

Chris Smith 2:00
Absolutely. I mean, it's a triumphant story. When I was eight years old. I come from Northamptonshire and of course, H.E. Bates is our is our kind of local hero who grew up around Higham Ferrers, which is just near where I grew up and there's an H.E. Bates short story competition, which is run, I think is still hopefully still a thing run by the local council and I triumphed. I think it's not too strong a word in the under-10 section of the competition with my tale about a dinosaur that loves stealing biscuits. I featured in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph and I really I feel like the rest is history. But my future was nailed on as an author from then.

Jack Wrighton 2:39
Absolutely. How did you deal with celebrity from such a young age?

Chris Smith 2:43
Well, my life changed overnight, really, because the headteacher read the story out in front of the school the next day and you know, as I say, you know, the picture of the newspaper and this was, by the way back in the early 1980s, when they would simply print your name and address and then newspaper, which I don't think happens anymore and really, it's just been it's been nonstop, you know, paparazzi, book signings, spats on Twitter.

Greg James 3:11
Puffin actually signed Chris up when he was 10 years old. So they've been sort of just keeping an eye on him ever see, he's been on a retainer since then.

Chris Smith 3:19
I just haven't had any ideas since then.

Jack Wrighton 3:24
It can take a while sometimes and what about you, Greg, were you much into reading when you were younger, or...?

Greg James 3:32
I was. Yeah, absolutely. I was very lucky, like Chris was to grow up in a house full of books, and full of people that could read really well. My mum and dad were both avid readers and there was always a story on, there was always a book being read by somebody and yeah, I was encouraged to read out loud and I really loved acting out things and coming up with my own little stories, but also, mainly it was a fun household. So it was doing little sketches or skits and things I remember writing just silly jokes down or just reciting bits of comedy to my mum or dad that they just showed me like a bit of Dad's Army or something that's like silly things. But it was quite a fun place to grow up my house back in the day, and yeah, and discovered reading for pleasure, I guess, when I was really young for sort of eight or nine, I guess like the kids that we write our books for. So we remember what it's like to have... to feel your first book in your hand and how exciting it is and you just go wow, this is so overwhelmingly beautiful. I remember there was a copy of The Secret Garden, which I think my sister had, and then passed to me because she's a bit older. But I remember having it and feeling like wow, this is someone made this beautiful thing. It's amazing. So yeah, we had books born around and we're very happy. I feel very lucky to say that and that's why we like to do what we do now as we want to make sure that kids still have lots of nice things around to read.

Jack Wrighton 5:07
Yes, those stories that, you know, grab their attention and, you know, keep them keep them reading and as well, as you've mentioned, The Secret Garden, but for both of you, were there any titles from that, you know, from your childhood that you sort of particularly remember engaging with and you know, really had an effect on you.

Chris Smith 5:26
I remember reading a copy of Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson and I've remained a big Moomin fan into adulthood as well. But this particular edition, which I didn't realise at the time, but obviously had been translated into English and at the beginning, there was a letter written as if from Moominmama, not quite sure what they're saying Moominmama or Moominmamah. But from Moominmama, sort of introducing the movements to their readers in the UK and she said, I hear that you have a queen who lives in a palace of gold and it was just amazing that these sorts of strange hippopotamus like creature from the forests of Finland had added I was my young brain thought written me a letter, at the beginning of a book, my family made a real massive impression on me.

Greg James 6:16
I think, weirdly, you just ignited a memory of mine and I remember the first time a book literally spoke to me, which was The Jolly Christmas Postman and it had lots of flaps and little letters and things in it and I really loved the idea and we still love the idea of a book talking to you. It's sweet, isn't it and the way we write our books tends to be very personal, we narrate to the readers, and we'll break the fourth wall, and we'll say, hope you're okay and check up on them and give them a boring dream guarantee from the last book and we address the readers personally and I think maybe it probably comes from that. It's a nice feeling to have a book, come to life and speak to you and say, hello, come and read us when it's not scary. This is a fun place to hang out.

Jack Wrighton 7:06
Absolutely and I don't think you can really put an age on that really, as well, because I feel I still read books now that maybe have a moment where it sort of addresses the reader and you sort of...

Chris Smith 7:16
Yeah, it works... what it is that works for Finn Family Moomintroll works equally well in the French Lieutenant's Woman, doesn't it?

Jack Wrighton 7:24
Yeah, absolutely!

Chris Smith 7:25
Although some may disagree.

Jack Wrighton 7:27
Well, I may get into trouble admitting this, but the owner of the shop, Sarah, dislikes Moomins quite strongly, which... Yes, I know, the faces that you're pulling there I completely agree with and there's been a few discussions had about the position of Moomins within our shop. Yes,

Chris Smith 7:48
I think some people in the United Kingdom were traumatised by the 1970s, I guess, fuzzy-felt style animation of the Moomins that was on the TV, which I think may have slightly freaked out some children and it's prejudiced people against Moomins to this day, but I urge you to if you are one of those people, I urge you to get past it and discover the wonderful books and try and get fuzzy-felts when stop-motion animation out of your head and your nightmares if you can.

Jack Wrighton 8:19
I feel it's the same with people who obviously, the book is pretty harrowing as well, but people who saw the animation of Watership Down as well. I feel that that stays with you. That's a memory that you carry with you.

Chris Smith 8:30
You've got to put a trigger warning Jack when you talk about the animation of Watership Down! That was deeply traumatising. I remember, I think my parents were having some sort of meeting to do with the church and loads of kids were there and they put us in the other room and said to I will put a nice film on for the Watership Down on there and everyone was just like, picking up their weeping children two hours later, like what happened to Fiver? He's got to join the black rabbits. It's one of the saddest things ever done.

Jack Wrighton 9:02
Oh, it's it's a deeply tragic book. But that's the joy of reading for you, the variety that's out there. Now, obviously, you're both very busy people. But in terms of reading today, sort of bringing us to the present, are there any books that you've read recently, by your own, of course, that have stood out to you that you've really enjoyed that you would recommend to other people out there?

Chris Smith 9:28
I love how you felt the need to say by your own, as if we were just going to be well, the best book I've read recently is our own book. Well, I mean, the pandemic was obviously horrific for lots of things. But on the flip side, there was lots of time to read books wasn't there, which was kind of nice and I read a couple of couple of books. I'm a great re-reader. I know I've really enjoyed a book if I read it and I go straight back to the beginning and read it again and I did that during the pandemic with two things, one of which was, I Capture the Castle by Debbie Smith, which I thought was just absolutely brilliant and just so meticulously crafted, and I've since, you know, read a little bit about how, how meticulously she did craft every single sentence in that book, but I just thought it was absolutely wonderful. I got a bit obsessed with Topaz, her very cool stepmother who goes and dances naked around a castle at night, which we've all done before, especially during the pandemic and the other thing, the other thing, I really enjoyed it, and I'm now rereading the entire series, which is a series that I've meant to get to and have never quite managed to kind of get through the slightly wordy language at the beginning, which is the Master and Commander series by Patrick O'Brien. Which I do not understand why it is not a Netflix series yet. Although there was a great film with Russell Crowe.

Greg James 10:50
You should write it!

Chris Smith 10:51
But there's so much in there. There's so much in the Master and Commander series, and it's just so brilliantly done and there's kind of Bridgerton-style rompy bits, and there's international spying, and there's obviously you know, you've got the Master and Commander, like ship battles and stuff, and the relationship between the two characters Jack and Steven the Sea Captain and the and the doctor who's also a secret agent, going on, so brilliantly through several books. I just, I love it. I've become a little bit obsessive about this.

Greg James 11:23
I think you need to commit that to paper. It sounds like you're having a great time with it.

Chris Smith 11:26
Yeah. Love it.

Greg James 11:27
Come on. Write it. You should write it for Netflix.

Chris Smith 11:31
Okay, well if Netflix are listening, I'm happy to do so.

Greg James 11:34
Maybe don't want to ruin all our favourite books by making sort of bad TV versions of them.

Chris Smith 11:38
Yeah, but I'd make a brilliant TV version of it.

Greg James 11:40
Yeah, but you'd have so much pressure.

Chris Smith 11:42
Yeah, true.

Greg James 11:42
And don't ruin it for yourself.

Chris Smith 11:44
Okay.

Greg James 11:45
What have I read recently? I read. I really enjoyed Hamnet recently. I read that, that's been one of the smashes in the last couple of years, hasn't it? I thought that was incredibly beautifully done and the way she writes is sort of extraordinary. You are... it's a cliche to say that you're transported to that time, but you really are, you are really in those narrow, slightly dirty, crowded streets, aren't you, in Stratford and I love that I thought it was wonderful and also just great to see a different perspective, albeit a made up perspective of the other side of William Shakespeare's life. Also, it's not a classic summer holiday read, but I did sort of bleak myself out a bit by reading The Handmaid's Tale. I've never actually never read it before and there were, I saw a list of penguin 100 books to read before you die or whatever, and I thought I'm gonna do a little bit of a Chris Smith and reread some that I read at school or when I was younger, but also, there's a load of books on there that I hadn't even touched just some proper classics. So I'm going to try and do that. That's my aim to do it before I'm 40 which is three and a bit years away. So I'm going to try and get through... it's quite a tough ask maybe, some of them quite long. I think War and Peace is on there. But I read The Handmaid's Tale and I'd actually never seen the series I'd never read the book before, knew roughly what it was about. And I thought it was just beyond incredible. I loved it and I was obviously saddened by it all, but I loved how intimate it felt. Like you're just really, I mean, you are literally reading a diary entry but it felt, it's just very visceral descriptions of the world that they're living in and you really, this amazing picture is painted in your mind. There's my Feel Good Book of the Week.

Jack Wrighton 13:41
Yes, yeah, I always love the fact that yes, as you say, it's very intimate. You know, you're following this one person, but then there's that last chapter that kind of blows it open. Yeah, it's a completely different perspective and I'd never come across that before until I've read that book and...

Greg James 13:59
Yeah, the horrible sort of hypocrisy of how people tell historical tales and how they tend to favour the male figures and how they tend to flower up really sort of disgusting despicable moments and they go well it was all part of history, that's why it's fine to talk about now but then you go I was living that a minute ago you don't care about her!

Jack Wrighton 14:24
Books have that wonderful ability of yeah, just kind of putting you in a completely different perspective and you know, really changing how you view things and I think that can stay with you for a long time.

Greg James 14:36
Yeah, but I was on holiday with Bella and she said, So you finished that then did you enjoy it? I wouldn't say enjoy it. But I do hate men.

Jack Wrighton 14:48
Very good, and you say you've got three-something years to finish that. How many books do you still have on that list?

Greg James 14:55
Oh, well, I mean, I've... 97 books remaining.

Chris Smith 15:00
How many of those are books that you haven't read, though, oh, yes, it feels like you see those books you must read before you're, you know, whatever age or you know, these are the classics. You know, when we're talking to kids about reading encouraging the reader. It's really important not to be too prescriptive. If you don't enjoy a book, even if it's like, hailed as a classic, it's okay and if you haven't read War and Peace, it's all right.

Greg James 15:27
Well also we do a lot of... and that's a great point from Chris is that we do a lot of work with kids at schools, we do assemblies, or we do shows at book festivals, or wherever and whatever you're reading is good. It's a good thing, getting new words into your brain is excellent. So I remember feeling overwhelmed with the amount of things that I had to read for school and then at the same time going oh, this is sort of ruining reading because I am going home, I don't want to read that now, because I'm still annotating To Kill a Mockingbird. Great book, by the way, but and I'll re-read it now with some distance and enjoy it and a whole different way and remember my English teacher doing Atticus Finch's voice, and that would be my head forever, but that we just say, whatever you're enjoying, reading is great. Whether it is an autobiography, or whether it is a kid's book, and you're an adult, you can pick up anything and read it. As long as you're enjoying it. There's no one's examining you as you go through life.

Jack Wrighton 16:26
Yeah, I was talking to once to someone who works for World Book Day and yeah, they were saying that, you know, the studies have shown that the best way to keep kids reading is to let them choose what they want to read and to not be, you know, say, Oh, well, that book, you know, maybe, you know, maybe it's a bit too old for you or that too young for you. You know, it doesn't matter. The point is the enjoyment there's no kind of age on that or, you know, yeah...

Greg James 16:54
I love travel books. I love travel guides. There's an amazing one, an old one that I found of Venice, went to Venice recently and I'll find the title because it's a great read, it's a good recommendation for your listeners, because it's a beautiful old account of Venice from the 50s. But similarly, as a kid, one of my absolute teenage obsessions was Bill Bryson, I loved it. I used to, when on family holidays, I would sit with a Bill Bryson and sort of wish I was in small town America, wherever we were sat in Alicante Airport. But it was I love all those sorts of books that just they literally take you somewhere else to a very specific location as well.

Chris Smith 17:34
Here's another great idea to go with the Netflix series of Master and Commander, I was talking to a friend of mine who works for Lonely Planets, other travel books are available. Because in their archives, there are obviously all these old travel guides from places that you can't really visit anymore. You know, there's conflict going on or whatever. So, you know, when you used to be able to go as a tourist to Syria, you know, and I said, Well, how interesting to read what people would have done, you know, what the recommendation would have been if you were able to visit and hopefully, people will again, but you know, to visit Syria, you should have an archive of like the places people used to go with their Lonely Planets, like back in the day when you no longer can do that.

Greg James 18:14
There's an amazing bookshop towards... what's the road in London, near Green Park station, near the Ritz was that road called Piccadilly, just round there, there's absolutely mad old bookshop, which basically specialises in maps and old travel guides and they have lots of printed maps and framed things, but they've also got really dusty old travel guides of 19th century Paris, or, you know, 18th century Venice or whatever and there's just some completely ridiculous gems that you can find. I picked one of these books up, because we were going to Paris for the weekend and I thought it'd be nice present for my wife because we're going for Christmas and I said to the guy, Oh, this looks amazing. How much is this? And he went Hmm... this is £450. There were two companies who used to make these back in the day and I went, Okay, put that down. But being in a bookshop, as you know, is obviously a wonderful place to be.

Chris Smith 19:11
You should get a discount because it's out of date.

Greg James 19:16
This doesn't have the Metro on it! This is ridiculous!

Chris Smith 19:18
This has got times for hot air balloon, it's no use to me!

Jack Wrighton 19:23
I can't go to this restaurant anymore. What's the point? Yes, well we do, I'd like to say to our listeners, we do have maps at our bookshop as well although they are OS maps, so it's not quite the same, but they are available. So you enjoy your sort of travel reading. Are there any other sort of genres Chris, for you? Are there any other sort of genres that you particularly go towards when you're looking for a read or are you quite an open reader?

Chris Smith 19:58
I mean, I do love fantasy, that's probably the area that in which Greg and I differ the most I think in that I'm a big fantasy firm. So you know, if there was a if there was sort of a book that I would consider to be kind of transformative in my life, it's probably the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which I counted one book, even though it's technically for books, and it's sort of one, it's one big spilling out of one very extraordinary man's head, you happened to have an entire universe just rattling around in there. So yeah, fantasy is a genre that I kind of go to I've done, I've done a bit of rereading of, you know, the Earthsea quartet, which was amazing and there was a, there was a fun fantasy series called The Belgariad, by David Eddings, which is kind of... I guess it was aimed at teenagers. I read it when I was a teen and I've reread that quite recently. So yeah, I think, you know, as we were sort of saying earlier on, reading is such a valuable escape, and we're going to escape to them somewhere completely imaginary. So yeah, that's my, if I'm looking for a real, you know, get away from the world, then, yeah, I like to get away from the world and go into a different one.

Jack Wrighton 21:09
Just two different types of travel, then we've got historical travel by the sounds of it, and then travel to other imaginary lands. It's, you know, there's a theme there.

Greg James 21:18
It's funny, I've just, I've just sort of clicked, how we've come up with our next book. It's very much a kind of mixture of both those interests, really, it's gonna be fantastical, a fantasy book, but we're going to route some of it, actually, we're going to try to route some of it in your specific moments from history and move the book around the world a little bit.

Chris Smith 21:43
Well as someone once said, the past is a foreign country.

Jack Wrighton 21:49
Very wise.

I think it was L. P. Hartly and The Go Between.

Greg James 21:51
We'll have to come up with a better title than that.

Jack Wrighton 21:55
Well we've heard it hear first, we're we're getting the insight into the next book already. Well, before we move on, we will in a moment, start talking about Super Ghost and your collaboration on books. But the next question I have is a big question and a question I always feel slightly guilty for asking people because I would struggle to answer it myself. But is a book that changed your life, which I appreciate, is a big thing to ask of a book, I've spoken to authors before who say that, you know, they feel every book in some way has, you know, in ways that they can't measure or know about has in some way probably changed the way they think or do or whatever. But I'm interested to know what your response to that question is, even if it is to push back and say, How dare you ask that question?

Greg James 22:42
First of all, how dare you ask that question.

Chris Smith 22:44
How dare you! Yeah, I mean, I think I suppose I sort of partly answered it with Lord of the Rings, because it did kind of, it's very inspiring, just to think you can make up absolutely anything, you know, within the fact that, you know, Tolkien was a was a kind of scholar of ancient Norse and all sorts of ancient legends and had everything kind of, you know, all these old words and old myths kind of rattling around that just thought I can just do whatever I like with these and, you know, make up a map of your own imaginary place and make up the languages and all this kind of stuff and just go, I can just write this I once saw from the great Sir Quentin Blake doing a live illustration and he said very much the same thing about illustrators. You know, the great thing about drawing is you can have whatever you like, I just love that about writing as well. You can have whatever you like and I suppose it was Tolkien that, that opened my eyes to that possibility. So I think that's relatively life-changing.

Greg James 23:39
I'm gonna give a slightly strange answer, I think and I think it's a surprising book, because it's not necessarily the book that changed my life, because it's good, but it's not... It's Hemingway's Chair by Michael Palin and the reason I've chosen this is that, well Chris and I are both completely obsessed, and in love with Michael Palin.

Chris Smith 24:03
True, we actually thanked him in the acknowledgments. One of the novels just said thanks to Michael Palin for being Michael Palin.

Greg James 24:10
Yeah, so we've, you know, grown up watching him be funny. Then we'd seen him acting and then we maybe read some of the diaries, and I'd say the diaries were quite inspirational for both of us for different reasons. But when I read his novel, I thought, this is a man that really can do lots of different things and it's absolutely okay that you can do lots of different things as long as you mean them, and that you work hard at them and I just found that very inspiring that he'd somehow just gone Oh, yeah, I'm not the Michael Palin you might think I am, not just the kindly travel man, or I'm the silly man who did Monty Python, I can also write a really, really great novel. So that was, I guess, just inspiring in that way and I read it and thought, Wow, and it gave me the confidence to think, Oh, I could write a book then if I really mean it, and we work at it. So yeah, there you go.

Jack Wrighton 25:12
He sort of reinvented himself several times, like Madonna or Lady Gaga.

Greg James 25:17
Yeah, that's true, but I think he's always had that in him. But he has just had the courage of his conviction to go Yeah, well, I know I can do this and I've got a great story in my head and I'm gonna go and write a book about a ship now.

Chris Smith 25:31
He's a man who wears many hats, isn't he? Including the Spanish Inquisition!

Greg James 25:36
And he did it really well.

Jack Wrighton 25:38
So jumping off that then is you talk about that inspiration of someone who says, you know, you can do all these things. You don't have to just sort of focus on one thing and Michael Palin's writing, is that where the first ideas came from then of this collaboration of you two writing books together?

Chris Smith 25:57
Well we were working on the radio together and Greg was the presenter, obviously and I was the newsreader because I'm by far the most serious and levelheaded and we did a podcast together, in which we kind of came up with lots of crazy characters and mad scenarios, and we sort of realised that we, you know, enjoyed doing that. At least as much as the, certainly more than the news. But, you know, as much as the other stuff on the radio, and it didn't have a home, really, because you can't just go on radio and do crazy, madcap characters, like, you know, the butter monster, because everyone would wonder What on earth was going on. So we decided we would like to try and write it down in a story, we decided we will write a story for children, because, well, for two reasons, really, mostly because our sense of humour is aged about 10. So we just wrote a book for ourselves, and it turned into a joke. But also, it's the age that we remembered really being obsessed with reading and the age that reading is such a really, really important lifeline for you and we love that kind of, you know, underneath the duvet with a torch you get really obsessed with a book when you're that age, you know, it is the age when to not coined a phrase books really do change your life, you know, they're such a great piece of company for you and they're a way of finding out about the world and an escape from, you know, a world that, you know, perhaps now more than ever can seem a little bit scary and a little bit intimidating and that's what we decided to do and we chucked around a few ideas, and chucked many of them in the bin, and suddenly came up with Kid Normal, and knew that we had a nice idea because we thought, Well, surely it's been done. So we googled it immediately and just kind of with lots of websites that said, Is my kid normal? But it hadn't been done and really, we found that, you know, we chatted it through in the park and discover that we have, you know, pretty much the whole plot of the first book just kind of spilled out of us that first evening, really, so we wrote it down as quickly as possible, before it fluttered off and yeah, just went from there, I guess.

Greg James 28:08
I think we love the challenge of trying something new because we've done so much fun stuff together on the radio, and that had worked, that particular dream of ours of being on the radio and doing fun stuff. You go, oh, my god, wow, it happened because we gave it a go loved it and worked at it and then there there is a challenge in trying something that's really frightening and we were frightened about writing a book because it does feel daunting when you're at the foot of the mountain. You think, how is that going to be there? But it was something that was really enjoyable and it really helped that we were doing it together I think as well because if one of us got panicked about an idea being rubbish, or a character not quite being right, you could go oh, yeah, well, that's what that through a little bit and we've always collaborated and I love working collaboratively with everyone really, I love the idea of come up coming up with an idea together. It's rewarding and really enjoyable. The process of writing these books is the whole reason why we do them, really because it's it's great fun and just going right, well, today, we're not children's authors, but in a year, I reckon we can be actually because at some point, every author wasn't an author. So there is always that moment for everybody. So we thought let's let's give it a go.

Jack Wrighton 29:25
I'm interested in how it works out because as you pointed out, you know, it was nice that you had each other for support during that because yeah, it must be a scary thing, you know, writing something down and thinking oh, eventually, people are actually going to read this beyond, you know, a sort of small circle.

Chris Smith 29:40
It's like having your homework marked isn't it?

Jack Wrighton 29:43
Yeah, exactly. You know, I think most people picture someone on their own writing, what was actually in terms of you know, writing the words down, what was the process between you two, you know, I've heard of people throwing back you know, sections to each other and one looks over it, what was the actual process like for the both of you?

Chris Smith 30:02
Well, I mean, pretty collaborative really, I mean, back in those heady pre-pandemic days, we were able to go and sit in a meeting room or sit in the pub, and literally pass the laptop between us. So you know, we would take it in turns to do a bit of writing, and we would pace it out the room and act out the characters together. Since these rather less heady post-pandemic days, more of it's done on Zoom now. We've written in the acknowledgements to Super Ghost thanks to Zoom. We couldn't have written this book without you, but we never want to see you again. You know, but it's the same thing because we work on an online platform where you can write, you know, either one of you can be typing at any one time. You know, it works surprisingly well and, as you say, you know, quite rightly writing is often perceived as quite a solitary occupation. You know, there's this sort of trope of the lonely writer in a Parisian galette, possibly wearing a scarf and certainly we were hungry. We kind of felt that...

Greg James 31:07
All those things are true, but we just both do those things.

Chris Smith 31:08
We just, neither of us has any tea.

Greg James 31:10
A scarf each, a Croque Monsieur each.

Chris Smith 31:14
But we just thought, you know like, I mean, going back to, to the comedy that we both love, you know, Fawlty Towers, is written collaboratively. You know, many songs and films, everything and plays are written collaboratively. So we saw no reason why not.

Greg James 31:30
Yeah. I think this because we do talk about this quite a bit, that the question actually should be, why the hell are you writing a book on your own, that's mad, it's a madness and I get it, obviously, I am being silly. But there should be more books written by more than one person, it's the generation of ideas for to make anything creative is so exciting and having someone there with you, not just an editor, who ultimately will, you know, fiddle around with it, but someone at the point of creating your main character, or the world that you're writing about, is really exciting and we get so much pleasure out of one of us going, right, so who is our main guy? Who is this? Well, they look like, what they sound like, and then we'll do the voice and then we'll say some dialogue, and then we'll scribble that down. So yeah, we have always loved comedy and we have always loved drama, and theatre and all the rest of it. So the idea of lots of people's brains on an idea is really great.

Jack Wrighton 32:38
I will say most of the sort of solo authors I've spoken to, I think would agree with you, because almost all of them say that the hardest part is, you know, sitting alone for hours on end and sort of going a little bit crazy, I think, you know, some of them say.

Chris Smith 32:56
Yeah, it's just the confidence, you know, the confidence of having a co-author to be able to say, no, you know, can we can make that a bit, make that idea a bit bigger, make that battle a bit bigger, make that villain a little bit sillier, make that hero a little bit more heroic, make that plot a little bit more dramatic, make that catastrophe, a little bit more catastrophic and you just have that confidence to kind of, you know, push each other a little bit further.

Greg James 33:20
Yeah and you'll bring your own personalities to it and Chris, and I have lots of similarities in what we like and what how we work, but they're, we're very different as well. So having those two approaches on a piece of work, we think can only be a good thing.

Jack Wrighton 33:37
Yes and it sounds like you know, I think something people would say, you know about your books, and what's been so wonderful about them, why they've been so well received is there's a great sort of energy and liveliness to them and it's just interesting, you hear you talk about you to sort of you'll do a voice and then you'll write it down and it being very centred in sort of performance, that it kind of starts with the performance and then gets kind of put on the page. It's interesting, because again, you don't come across that, you know, again, it's you know, when people think of that solo writer, they think of someone kind of doing it all in their head, probably with a very stern expression on their face. Very seriously write down, it's a great image you to put off, you know, just bouncing off each other while you're doing this.

Greg James 34:21
It's very important to us that we're there with our readers. It's very, very important that we're there with them. Just to say this is an exciting but this is a sad bit and we like being there in the books.

Jack Wrighton 34:32
Absolutely and talking off the books. Your latest one Super Ghost comes out on September 15th. For those listening who would be interested in reading it or giving it to someone, what is Super Ghost?

Chris Smith 34:50
Well, as you were kind enough to say earlier on, we had some success with the Kid Normal series in the world of superheroes and we've returned to the world of superheroes for this book. But there was definitely a twist to this story and you often get a twist at the at the end of the story. This one has a twist at the beginning and the title may suggest to you what happens but very sadly the hero Dr. Extraordinary, this superhero, is blown up inside a giant robot in chapter one. We got to start off with a bit of a jaw dropper, possibly although you know handled in our normal, very, very silly way. But then we hone in on our actual hero of the story who was a kid called Sonny, who was Doctor Extraordinary's number one fan. But he can't believe that his hero is no longer around but is then even more surprised to find that he can see the ghost of his hero and he's the only person who can see the ghost of his hero. So it gave us lots of really interesting things to play with because we, you know, we like the idea of this sort of like, choose who your heroes are and you know, Sonny learns a lot in the book about which of the smart heroes to choose, I guess, as him and Dr. Extraordinary work out whether they can save the city one last time from an invasion of terrifying robot pandas.

Greg James 36:10
For example, Sonny idolises Dr. Extraordinary, and discounts his dad as a potential hero and that was a really interesting relationship for us to plan out and write and explore and go why is it that kids at some point, they love their parent, and think their parents are brilliant until a certain age and then they go, Oh, boring, boring job, but his dad is a police officer, he works for Paragon City Police Department. But Dr Extroadinary is way better, way more exciting, he's got super strength, he can you know, do all these things. So we that's a really nice relationship that we explore in the story and also we love messing around with the tropes of superhero story and we did that a lot with Kid Normal, and making those very dramatic grand moments where the superheroes on the edge of the cliff delivering a speech to everybody and he does a ridiculous malapropism is exactly what we love to do. So messing with... we've literally got it on the back when Chris said, how about this tagline? Don't worry, the hero doesn't die at the end of the story. He dies, right at the beginning. I went, YES, THAT'S IT!

Jack Wrighton 37:24
But my a very important question is what do you have against pandas? Why robot pandas?

Chris Smith 37:37
Well, we thought that the Panda was possibly the loveliest and least threatening of all the animals. So we wanted to... we have this rather unhinged deputy supervillain who was originally called Anna Podium, but now has began to call herself Pandemonium and she has now taken over the evil empire that's left vacant by Doctor Extraordinairy's nemesis, who was also inside the robot when it blew up and we just thought, very similar to sort of Nectar in Kid Normal, who was half-human, half-wasp. We like the fun of, you know, messing around with it with a villain who is who was obsessed with animals and we thought the panda is sort of the most, you know, the fluffiest the nicest of all the bears really, isn't it, and the most monochrome.

Greg James 38:24
Yeah, there's something really fun about writing those supervillains that are idiotic, or are they just get in their own way. I mean, pandemonium just gets in her own way, by limiting herself to being bad, just through pandas just through the medium of panda. So that just makes us laugh and we think, oh, well, look, there's so many funny panda puns, you can do, bamboo jokes, ridiculous things that will hopefully make kids and adults laugh when they're reading it and they go, yeah, this really came out of somewhere very silly in their heads. That's sort of what we want people to say about these books.

Jack Wrighton 39:06
And of course, you know, as for children, you know, reading I think villains in store is, I don't know they can be quite cathartic for children to read villains, because, you know, when you're a kid and you're frustrated at someone or whatever, you know, it's an intense emotion, like imagine, you know, reading about these villains kind of, it's very cathartic for them.

Chris Smith 39:29
It is. I mean, that's a great point. I think a lot of villains are quite childlike. Really. Like Captain Chaos and indeed Pandemonium in this book, you know, they're like overgrown toddlers really, they just like causing chaos. Exactly what like kind of, you know, really pumped up, high on sugar toddler would do if given the power, Yes, I will invade Paragon City with tiny robot Pandas.

Greg James 39:56
And really relatable in that in that way because we did a session the other day and a kid on the front row, asked a question about one of our villains from the Kid Normal series. Magpie. Yeah. And this kid loved Magpie. He was really related to Magpie because he was the supervillain that wanted to steal like my post to all the other powers from org and CBS. Have them for himself. And that is, as you're saying, Chris, childlike behaviour. No, I want all the toys because if I have all the toys, I win, because I got all the power. But of course, Magpie doesn't win because that's not how it works. He was outsmarted by a small boy, a legend called Merv Cooper, who we love with all our heart.

Jack Wrighton 40:39
We all have the superhero villain within us. We all have those, you know, childish instincts and I suppose that's one of the great lessons of you know, reading is that...

Greg James 40:48
Well, you're broadcasting from your supervillain's lair.

Jack Wrighton 40:52
I am yeah.

Greg James 40:53
You've got yourself a supervillain shed.

Jack Wrighton 40:55
The horrible plots that have been made in this shed are shocking. Absolutely shocking. Well, I think that's brought us to a close Super Ghost is available at Mostly Books and on our website, and of course, at your local bookshop across the country and the world. But one final question is, I thought, I'm sure a typical question you've probably got many times before is what superpower you would choose for yourself. It feels quite a common one. I'm wondering what superpower you would give to the other. So Chris, which superpower would you give to Greg and vice versa?

Chris Smith 41:32
That's a very good question. I know that my dear friend, Greg likes cheese very, very much. So I think the superpower that I would choose for him is that there is a small but very well-stocked cheese shop on wheels, which simply follows him around and so wherever he is, he only needs to turn his head and there is the door to a cheesemonger.

Greg James 42:00
The superpower I will bestow on my good friend Chris Smith is the power to dive into any fantasy novel he wants, and pick whatever character he'd like to be and he is that character for a day. You get a day as your favourite character in your favourite book.

Chris Smith 42:20
Lovely. I will be Samwise Gamgee and I will go and have some ales at the Green Dragon and I will dance with Rosie Cotton.

Jack Wrighton 42:30
Wow. So the gift of being able to go into any fantasy book and the gift of constantly being followed around by a small cheese shop.

Chris Smith 42:41
You've made it sound creepy there.

Jack Wrighton 42:44
I didn't mean to, I'm sure that that's a lovely power.

Greg James 42:49
Jack, can I say two things before for you wrap us up. Thank you to you and all the amazing independent booksellers that sell our books and all the books in the world in an increasingly online, weird world where mega-corporations take the lion's share of things you are legends to us and thank you so much. We always love walking around the lovely independent bookshops wherever we go. So thank you for that and also Venice for Pleasure is the name of the book. It's by J. G Lynx and is really fun all and sweet.

Jack Wrighton 43:23
Well, on that note, I feel I should mention Super Ghost one more time just so Venice for Pleasure isn't the last thing mentioned.

Chris Smith 43:33
We'll release an omnibus edition of both.

Jack Wrighton 43:36
We'll put both together. Chris Smith, Greg James, thank you so much for joining us on Mostly Books Meets.

Chris Smith 43:41
Thank you so much.

Greg James 43:42
Thanks.

Jack Wrighton 43:42
Thank you.

Sarah Dennis 43:45
All of the books mentioned during the podcast are available to buy from the Mostly Books website. This podcast has been presented and produced by members of the team mostly boots in Abingdon. If you enjoyed what you heard, please rate review and subscribe because apparently helps people find us.