In 2018 I opened an email with the header Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession and was intrigued by the title. I read the first sentence – ‘Leonard was raised by his mother alone with cheerfully concealed difficulty his father having died tragically during childbirth.’ I think this is one of the finest opening lines in contemporary fiction, you may disagree and that’s fine but the rest is publishing history. Rónán found out about Bluemoose after reading Harriet Paige’s The Man With A Seagull on His Head and decided to send us his debut novel. Within the week we’d sent Rónán a contract and we published in March 2020. It has traveled the globe, been translated into 9 languages and now has been adapted into a 6 part TV series by BBC and RTÉ starring Jamie Lee O’Donnell, Alex Lather and Laurie Kynaton, narrated by Julia Roberts, yes that Julia Roberts and more about her trying to contact me in a pub in Hebden Bridge and the flying roast potato later. That is a blog post all of itself. I love that as a family of readers and writers our author’s words and stories are travelling the bookish world and it is on BBC 2 for the next 5 weeks on Monday nights at 10pm and you can download the whole series on iPlayer too. From Hebden to Hollywood and back again, marvelous!