London Calling: Espionage, Adventure, and Middle Grade Renegades with Best-Selling Author James Ponti

London Calling: Your Episode Case File

Dive into the thrilling world of espionage and storytelling with author James Ponti as he unveils his latest thriller, London Calling, from the City Spies middle grade adventure series. Discover how real-world experiences, travel, and expert insights (he's interviewed a former CIA director!) enrich his narratives. Plus, there's a fun lightning fill-in-the-blank section based on listener questions.

Chapters and Clues:

1:29: All Things London Calling and City Spies

James Ponti introduces London Calling, the sixth book in the City Spies series, sharing how personal adventures in Rome and London fuel the story's rich setting and complex characters. Discover how his background as a History Channel producer adds depth to the narrative, and get a sneak peek into the upcoming storyline twists.

17:40 - Lightning Fill in the Blank

Enjoy a playful fill-in-the-blank segment and delve into the essence of mystery writing as James answers such questions as:

• a good spy needs...
• your secret spy skill would be...
• a good mystery has...
• next stop for the City Spies is...
• being a renegade of middle grade means...
• I make my hair silky smooth by...
• favorite City Spies memento..
• books are...
• you should have asked me... 

28:32- Navigating the Noise

We discuss the importance of the children's literature community in creating worlds for readers to explore -- and in supporting each other in times of struggle.

Links:

Order London Calling and the rest of the City Spies series

Join the book tour

Mission Manhattan interview

Sherlock Society interview

Transcript

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00:02 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Welcome back to the Adventures in Learning podcast. We have author James Ponti here, London Calling. The sixth installment of the City Spies book is coming out this next week and I got a chance to read it in advance. And I got to tell you it is fabulous. It may be my favorite of the whole series and the only reason I still have a copy behind me is because my 22-year-old is in New York. She has stolen every other book I've had, so I'm sure she'll get it soon. But, James, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the show. Let's talk City Spies. Tell us a little bit about this version. 

00:39 - James Ponti (Guest)
Okay, I always have to pause before I talk because the thing is you're writing usually I'm writing usually two books away from what's out now, so I want to make sure I don't spoil the next book's plot. So this one, the idea is it's the sixth book in the series and there are some readers who've been around for five years following these stories and there's some storylines that have been embedded and have a long arc throughout them and I feel like you know, as kids get older and people get impatient, I owe it to them to resolve some of these longer storylines. So I kind of came into this book with the idea of we were going to answer all the big questions and ask some new ones to kind of kickstart the next phase of the series. And so you know the three biggest questions that have been around. 

01:28
One is what's the deal with mother's wife clementine? What is the situation with their daughter annie? And will we ever find catch up to le fantome, the kind of evil genius behind umbra at the heart of a lot of the wrongdoing in these books? And so I decided we want to do all of those things in this book and the best way to kind of get it started was to put Annie in Jeopardy, because Annie being in Jeopardy affects all of those three, but more importantly, it affects our team, and it affects our team in different ways, especially with Cairo, because that's his sister, that's who he's been with his whole life. He is ready to lead the charge to save her. 

02:13 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And I thought you wrapped up all of that beautifully. I promise I'm not going to spoil anything. 

02:17 - James Ponti (Guest)
Yes. 

02:18 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
No spoilers, but you definitely you captured all of that and you did it by taking us to Rome and to London. Did you get to do on the ground research for those? I? 

02:30 - James Ponti (Guest)
went to Rome and London, so that was great. I did research in both. The story also goes to Istanbul at the beginning. There's a couple of chapters in Istanbul and I didn't get to go there. But I had a great friend who lives in Istanbul so she handled all the research for me and I just couldn't let anyone else handle the research in Rome and London. So I went there. 

02:50
I went to Rome before I wrote the book, so when I was going around there I was looking for inspiration. And then I went to London while I was writing the book. And so I went and I visited all the key sites from the book. I also I found a tour guide and arranged for a special, just for my wife and me, a tour of the espionage history of London. So we spent like four hours visiting all these locations around central London, westminster, all that area, and it was amazing how it felt like every other building was tied to spying and and like in some covert ways, some overt ways, and it was. It was really helped me a lot with ideas for this book and for the next book, the one I'm currently writing, which is Cities by Seven. 

03:38 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Because I really loved. I loved the tunnels, I loved the use of the underground and sort of pieces that I didn't realize about London. I've been several times. 

03:48 - James Ponti (Guest)
I was like now I got to go back and see if I can check this stuff out, but it definitely came across as somebody who deeply knew the city and sort of Well you know, I used to produce a show for the History Channel called Hands on History, and Hands on History was this following the evolution of things and how they're made, manufactured or how they came to be. And I did about 30 to 40 episodes of that show and we would do like talk about guitars and we would go to the oldest guitar factory in America and we would see how guitars were made. We'd go into a salt mine, we'd go into a coal mine and it was a really interesting show to work on. I I, because I was the producer and the writer and often the director I just picked things that I was interested in because I thought I'm like our viewer, so the more interested I am, the better the show will be, and and so like. 

04:40
For instance, once we went into subway tunnels and we saw the master room that you're never allowed to see, about how all the subways are controlled, and I realized this was a great primer for all the things that I was going to eventually write, even though I didn't know it at the time, because I did get to see the mechanical, how things work and behind the scenes, and that only created kind of a sensational desire in me to more and I have been amazed at how often as in this job, I can reach out to people and say hey, I'm writing this, I want kids to know about it. 

05:14
Right, I want to know about it. Right, you're an expert, can you share your expertise with me? You know, in two weeks I am having dinner at the home of the former deputy director of the CIA. We're talking spies all night. It is a great thing for me because, like with the TV show, I'm interested in all the stuff that I'm writing about. But you know, certainly it was great to go to London, it was great to go to Rome. My sister is a tour guide in Rome, so I had like a really headstart advantage because I knew she could tell me anything and I could ask her deeper questions, because I wasn't having to worry about someone saying who is this weirdo? 

05:54 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Right. 

05:55 - James Ponti (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. 

05:57 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You know I talk a lot about learning through play and that we learn best when we're curious, when we're having a playful attitude. And I think that comes through for me when I read your books, not just the City Spies, but all of your books. How do you keep sort of that playful spark that keeps you going, so that you're juggling all these projects? 

06:17 - James Ponti (Guest)
Well, I am really interested in these things. I and you know I don't mean to keep talking about television. I I had another show. I did a travel show for the golf channel and the problem being I don't golf. So it was actually great because I wanted to make the show interesting for someone like me who didn't call, and so we would go to, we'd have like a week in Northern Ireland or a week in Michigan or a week in the Bay area and we would hit some golf courses. That would be about of the 30 minute show, that would be maybe eight minutes and the rest was stuff like that. 

06:53
Well, what we want to do, stuff that's fun. I want to appeal to people, because the show is being watched by people who golf, but that's being watched maybe by a spouse who doesn't golf. And and I told the crew and I always use the same crew on the show we need to go and have fun in these cities and if we do that, our fun will come across and we won't just be giving people facts and information, we'll be giving people a sense of the joy and the fun of travel, which I'm a huge fan of travel. So I feel the same way about these books. I want them to be fun. 

07:26
I, you know, when I was in Paris, I was in Paris researching the next book at Thanksgiving and you know my wife is not one to want to go into the catacombs but I'm like you know, it really helped me to see better what they're like. 

07:39
And so we're down in the catacombs and it is exciting and thrilling and you know we we find interesting guides who tell us maybe, um, off the beaten track, parts of the stories you know, and that fun and playfulness is, for me, the greatest part of learning and living possible and I really hope to put that on the page. I, I want readers to feel like I kind of feel like I've been to this place, or you know, oh, you know, I, I how many times I've had people reach out to me, parents saying like, oh, my family just went to washington, or we went to one of the places in one of the book and I was amazed at how my kids started telling me about things and wanting to show me things that I had never heard of. And I asked well, what do you know this thing? Oh, I read about that in city spies, or I read about that in Sherlock Society or Frames, and that thrills me because that's what I wanted to do whenever I go on trips with people. 

08:42
I said, oh, that's really neat, but did you know this? You know, like, like you, you live near DC, right, yeah, either, dc is filled with fun stuff, like why does the Washington Monument change color about a third of the way up? You know, and it's like, okay, let's talk about that, and and and. When you do that, you have a deeper appreciation and understanding other than just, oh, that's pretty, oh, that's interesting, check, check. 

09:06 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Check and the real answer to the Washington Monument question is much better than what we used to tell the tourists. When I was in college, we used to tell them that was the flood marker, but the history behind what actually happened is really interesting. You know to understand that there was a delay in time, and you know that they had to quarry from a different place, and so you've got different stones that are marking it. I mean, what a cool way to understand history marking it. 

09:37 - James Ponti (Guest)
I mean, what a cool way to understand history. I have heard a story and it's probably apocryphal but gosh, I love it about when they went to restart because it was so narrow inside the way they constructed the scaffolding inside. Have you ever heard a story about that with a bird? 

09:51 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
No, Tell this one. 

09:54 - James Ponti (Guest)
It was like too high to shoot an arrow up, like they needed to get rope on both sides and it was too high to shoot an arrow up and have it come out on the other side. And so they tied like a string to a bird's foot and the bird flew out and they shot the bird and when the bird died on the other side they now have the rope on both sides and then they went back and forth bigger ropes, and so I don't know if that's true, but it's like you know, some of that stuff you hear is true. Now I I usually won't pass along something I can't verify, but when I can, it's you know there is. There's just amazing stuff like that, you know, and there's amazing stuff everywhere. 

10:29
One of my favorites too is at the on the, the flat iron building in new york. It's very famous building and I was doing research about it. And the elevator doesn't go to the top floor. It goes up to the second, to the top floor, and then you have to get out and go down the hall and get in the elevator to go one more floor up. And it's because they changed the height of the building after they started building it, but they couldn't change the elevator shaft and I thought, you know, if I didn't, I would never have made that up. No, but now finding it is like, oh, what a great little twist for a story. You know, absolutely those things are scattered everywhere and it's just really fun for me to find. But it's important also for it not to be a travel log or a list of facts. It's like you have to find ways for those things to service the plot and the characters, and that's when it becomes kind of fun. 

11:21 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Absolutely. Now I heard there's a movie version in the works for the City Spies series. Is that true? 

11:28 - James Ponti (Guest)
You know, the MGM bought the rights and now Amazon bought MGM and now so it's amazon mgm and they hired a producer and the producers hired a writer and they're working on scripts and I will believe it when I see it. I don't mean that I have any doubt in them, because they all are wonderful people and I've actually met with all of them in. The executive from mj is wonderful. But um, I just I, that's not me. I write the book. So I'm going to keep writing the books and I tell them anything I can do to help. Let me know, I won't stay in your way. 

12:03
Anything exciting happens, you let me know. And so the different stages they've come along, so maybe that will happen. That would be fantastic if it did. But you know, so fingers crossed, that producer Aaron Ryder can, can pull this thing off. He's done some amazing movies in the past, so it's certainly not out of the realm of his abilities well, it would be super exciting for all the fans of city spies if it happens well, I'll tell you a great story about it, though, and this, this, this is my favorite part about this, and it would be so exciting if it happened. 

12:41
Normally, what happens is a producer or a writer will see a script, they'll like a book, they'll like it, they'll try to get the rights, and then, when they secure the rights, they will try to get a studio involved, and this happened in reverse the studio purchased it and then producers kind of pitched them on who should be the one, and then writers pitched those producers. So it really an interesting way, and the reason that is is there are these twin boys who, at the time, lived outside of boston, but now, um, live in miami. I finally met them and they at the time, I think, were about 13 years old. They had a sister who's a good bit older she's in her late 20s, I think and she was back visiting at christmas and were reading the first City Spice book, and they would one would read a chapter and then hand it to the other, and the other would read that chapter and then hand it back to the first, and they would go chapter by chapter through the book this way, and so the sister sees this and goes oh, what's that? And they go it's this new book, it's called City Spice, we love it. 

13:33
And she said, well, let me look at it. And they said, no, she goes. What do you mean? No, it's this new book, it's called City Spies, we love it. And she said, well, let me look at it. And they said no, and she goes. What do you mean? No, it's like because I have to wait for him. I'm not going to then wait for you, but one of them was reading it. And then she said, ok, tell me about the story. And she said you, right there, I've got to read this book. And she was the director of development for MGM. It just so happened to be. So the book, if it does become a movie, it will become a movie only because of twin 12-year-old boys who loved reading, and that's, to me, is so much better than any other way that a book could become a movie. 

14:13 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh, that is fabulous. That makes me really happy. 

14:16 - James Ponti (Guest)
Yeah so, but again, I will believe it when I see it, you know, but I wish them the best and I have the best positive feelings, but I am not counting on anything. 

14:26 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So, since you're not working on the scripts for that, what are you working on right now? 

14:31 - James Ponti (Guest)
So I thought somewhere I so in four or five years ago I left television to completely focus on writing books and since I had been writing books on the side, I thought, okay, well, I could I have this full-time career in tv plus I would write a book a year without the tv. I'll now write two books a year. That can't be hard. It is so much harder than I thought it would be. So every February I have a new City Spice book and every September I have a new Sherlock Society book and I just bounce back and forth and with promotions and tours and other stuff. 

15:08
It is so, for instance, in the last couple weeks I have been doing the final rewrites of Sherlock Society 2. I've been doing the bulk of the manuscript writing on City Spice 7. I went to Miami for a couple of days to look for ideas for Sherlock Society 3, and I have done all the promotions and the interviews and the getting ready and the presentation stuff for the release of City Spice 6, london Calling. So I've got four books bouncing in my head and I don't know why. I thought this would be easier. This is incredibly hard but it is incredibly fun, and so I'm doing all those things right now and trying to watch TV with my wife. Watch British Mysteries at night, so that's my days. 

15:50 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love it. Well, we're going to give you a moment to rest your head from all the City Spice stuff. We're going to make a turn and I'm going to fill in the blank things. 

16:00 - James Ponti (Guest)
OK, fill in the blank. This is terrifying. 

16:02 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
All right, a good spy needs... 

16:06 - James Ponti (Guest)
Confidence. I think that and this is true of life what a good spy needs is what most of us need. I think, you know, a good spy needs confidence to go through life without people questioning, because it's when they question that his story or her story falls apart. So a good spy needs confidence and we need confidence. 

16:35
I think, you know, as we go through our lives and we do our things, you know, every now and then I have this friend, karina Blazer, who writes the Vanderbeekers books and other great books. And you know I wrote her yesterday and I think how is it that I can read something I write and really like it and 10 minutes later I can think it's the worst thing ever written? And I just don't know. And we both were boosting each other's confidence, her more than mine, she was in a good spot at the time, but it's like, even 13, 14 books in, I still find myself like, oh, can I do this? And so, yeah, that would be my first step. This was supposed to be a short answer I just gave you a long answer. 

17:03 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's okay, fill them in. 

17:04 - James Ponti (Guest)
Next time I'll do shorter. I'll do shorter. 

17:06 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
If you could be a city spy, your secret skill would be. 

17:18 - James Ponti (Guest)
Coming up with backstories. I am terrible in the field. I cannot handle the pressure, I could not handle the danger. I think I can come up with good storylines and backstories and hopefully because that's what I do and I would like to think I would learn how to be a code breaker, but I am terrible at it. I'm good with crossword puzzles, I'm good with those kinds of word puzzles, but when I see actual code stuff, I don't, but I would like to train and get better at that. 

17:43 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
A good mystery has....

17:44 - James Ponti (Guest)
A good mystery has surprise. A good mystery lets you know the elements. 

18:05
A good mystery lets you know the elements presents them fairly, but still manages to catch you off guard a little bit and surprise you with how they come together. 

18:10 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Next stop for the city spies is...

18:13 - James Ponti (Guest)
Okay, so that I do know, because I am writing that one in the next book. You could just, if you follow my Facebook and social and all like that, and see where I travel. That's usually a good hint. So in the last year I was in London, amsterdam, paris and Rome and all of those will play key roles for the City Spies. 

18:32 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Excellent To be a renegade of middle grade means....

18:39 - James Ponti (Guest)
Means that not only do you love kid lit and what that community means to the readers, but you love the other people who do it and value more than anything being a member of the kid lit community um. 

19:04 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
This one came from a very special, um special person.  I make my hair silky smooth.... 

19:15 - James Ponti (Guest)
So I saw online you asked what's a good question for james ponti and I wrote. No one ever asked me that because I don't have any, you know, um, but I I used to tell that joke. Actually I used to use in high school and college. I would, I would say, and my rule has always been I never, ever ever let a hairdryer near my hair. So my hair has air dried for 58 years. I figured that you know like my wife sometimes will joke like she's in the world or somewhere and I get behind her and she'll shoot me with it and it's like the Wicked Witch of the West and water. I'm like like no, not there. So my, my rule is no hair dryers. But the other rule would maybe if I used a hair dryer I would still have hair. 

19:59 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Favorite memento from a city spies book...

20:01 - James Ponti (Guest)
 like a physical thing that I actually have

20:04
. 

20:05
Yeah, um, okay, well, we'll go with one on the wall there. Um, it's, it's not just a city spies book, the, the I don't know how to like that picture right there, so it is, um, it is a picture of, and and I can, I can send you a, a link to great it's a picture of the characters from city spies, sherlock society and the frame books. 

20:30
Um frame has new covers coming out this year and all of the covers of those books were done by an artist named yaya malvines malvines. And I asked, I wrote to yaya and I said you know, I would like to hire you, um, to do a picture of all the characters on a bookshelf. And she did an amazing job and I just like the idea of them coming out of the pages or going on an adventure into the pages. But seeing these characters from different books together just makes me smile. 

21:04 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that, and I could imagine a world where they all were together. All right, two more. 

21:09 - James Ponti (Guest)
Yeah. 

21:10 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Books are... 

21:13 - James Ponti (Guest)
Books are really amazing technology. So think about this I started in television and for years I worked in that and everything in video and film and all these things. The technology is so great and people was like, oh, books are gone and oh, and here we come along. And you know, now all people would rather read books on their tablet or on their device of some sort, and that's fine and that's all great. But you know, the book's been around for hundreds and hundreds of years and it doesn't change much because it's really kind of perfect. 

21:53
In here is adventure, is information, is love, is hate, is thrills and chills, and I think we really learned that during covid. That the funny thing was television stopped, movies stopped, all the technology was relying on stuff. Books just kept on working and books just we kept writing them. They kept coming out and people kept reading them. And you know it is. They are amazing bridges. I like bridges. My name is Italian for the word bridges. Books connect us one at a time. You know, I get to write a book here in this office in Orlando, florida, in my house. Some kid somewhere in Alberta or Idaho or California or Ohio is going to read that and I'm never going to meet that kid, but we're going to be connected with these ideas of these things that I will have shared my deepest secrets with that kid. So books are just amazing. 

22:55 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that. All right, you should have asked me.... 

22:59 - James Ponti (Guest)
You should have. Well, my go-to. You asked me about my silky soft hair. You, okay, you should have asked me what's upside down about writing books, and this is what I think it is. 

23:20
I go to a school and I get treated like, oh, wow, this, he's the writer. Or I go to a library conference and I get treated like you know, oh, thank you so much for what you do, and it's like it's the opposite. You know, no, thank you, it's the, the, you're the amazing ones, right, you know, you, you read the books and you bring them to life and you think about them and librarians spend so much time on them. You do a podcast about all these people. 

23:52
You know, it is just amazing how reversed it is that I get the appreciation of people who I truly appreciate and and I remind myself that in those instances when I am somewhere and you know kids are excited, maybe, you know, and they, a group of them, will have read my book, we'll have a book club and they'll be talking about it and they'll really be into it, and I appreciate that. And they'll talk about, oh, your books are so great because of this, and I truly appreciate that. But I know it's not about my books. It's just that I'm there as the representative of all books that what they are really saying is not you're great, it's that books are great, and I just want to say back to them you are absolutely right, they are amazing, and I just am honored to be part of the equation. 

24:45 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's wonderful and I was thinking as you were talking about when you were launching Sherlock Society and you were in Virginia. There were a couple of kids who were dressed up like Sherlock Holmes and I was just thinking about how powerful that experience was, because they had drug all of their other friends to Barnes and Noble to be able to see you and share in that experience, and that's powerful. 

25:11 - James Ponti (Guest)
It is and I'm touched and I love it and I'm grateful. But it isn't about me and it isn't about Sherlock Holmes. It's about this was the chance to connect. You know, I'm a big baseball fan and I'm a fan of the Red Sox and I love the players on the Red Sox but whoever they were, I would love them. You know, some of them that transcends and like the team will trade them, I'm like no, I'm still forever, all my life, a Mookie Betts fan. But it's the, it's the institutions that we love and people who embody that. We love them too. But it's the institutions that really kind of matter. And I feel like you know I have a, you know you mentioned the writing kids in middle grade. I have all these friends in writing and I feel like you know, we're the diplomats of, of the representatives of what books are all about and it's up to us to represent that well and not do things we're embarrassed about or not, do silly things or not, do look at me things, but always the look at books thing. 

26:11 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
How do we make it through the noise right now of the people who are afraid of books and don't want us to share sort of the beauty that we're creating, especially in middle grade? 

26:22 - James Ponti (Guest)
You know it is. There's not a commissioner of books to lead the charge. There's not a general. There are amazing authors like a Jason Riddles or someone who really is a leader and we can look at him. Jason will say stuff and we'll get on board and he's a good ultimate representative. If I'm among the ambassadors, jason's like a president or a prime minister or something like that. And there are others Katie Camillo, I mean, we could list. I don't want to make favorites even, but we know who these amazing people are and you know. So there's stuff, but ultimately, with all of us on our side, and I talk about this, I talk about this with my agent, with my editor, with other writers. 

27:11
It's like, you know, the thing that I do is write books and so I will just write harder, write better and be open. You know, I'm always amazed at how much of the mail I get comes from both sides of the political spectrum, and the mail isn't political, but there are coded words in them. You can tell okay, but this person is connecting with this in this way. You know, music is that way. Music is that way in a more universal thing. You can have a Bruce Springsteen concert and there are Republican leaders and Democrat leaders in the front row screaming right. The music touches them in ways that connects them, and I feel like that's what we can do. 

27:59
Bridges, books are bridges. So you know, there are ways to aggressively fight book banning, exclusionary stuff, and that's important and it's important to speak up and say no. This, I think, is important. But ultimately, the thing that is going to be the best thing for me and my friends to do is I'm going to keep writing books. I'm going to keep trying to help other authors. That includes authors who I know and authors who I don't know, but certainly authors who maybe someone is trying to keep from being heard and say no, you know, this book is great. The whole idea of Renegades was, and we haven't done much with it lately and actually we're talking about okay, we need to reinvigorate. This is like you know, if you like my book, you'll like their book. 

28:45 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Right. 

28:46 - James Ponti (Guest)
If you like their book, you'll like my book, and books have more to, because getting people to read is the first step to getting past many of our problems agreed reading creates, gives you information, it gives you empathy, it gives you enjoyment and it yeah, it has so many wonderful things to it that are inherent within it. 

29:11
So I think the thing is part of it is to keep doing what we're doing and on our side, we need to look out for each other and we need to make sure hey, have you heard of this person? And oh, you know, or even more. It's like, wait, you heard someone say this about this person. I can tell you that's not true. So why don't we talk about this book for a moment? And I have some platforms where I get to talk about books and then others where social media you can try to share stuff, but you know, a lot of that becomes echo chamber. You know the most important thing about you know the the most important thing about you know kids reading is good for the future, so we need to keep giving them things to read absolutely awesome. 

30:00 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So city spies comes out, uh, in the next week or so. Um, you're going to be traveling and I'm going to post the tour dates, so if people would like to connect with you, they'll'll be able to, and I can't wait to talk to you when the next Sherlock Society comes out. 

30:13 - James Ponti (Guest)
I can't, and that one's written, so I'm glad. So I'm in good shape with that one. It's what I can't wait for us to talk when the next City Spice comes out, because then I will finish the one that I'm struggling with at the moment. So that'll be excellent. 

30:25 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, we will definitely be.