The Second One With Jenny Leggott

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:32]:

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another Episode. Thank you for joining us. Hope you, hope you enjoy this one. If you do enjoy, remember to give us a like, a comment, a share, and subscribe. Subscribe to us on your favorite, platform That helps us get seen by even more people. Of course, we’re available on all the major platforms.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:51]:

Now if you’re thinking, I recognize that person. Jenny looks familiar. That’s because, We had Jenny as a guest back in May 2021, and I’m thrilled to say that Jenny has agreed to come back two and a half years later To share how her journey has developed. So, yes, I am chatting with Jenny Leggett, the author of over 40 children’s books, written under her pen name, JT Scott. These books include Sammy Rambles, Molly Manila, and Bumper and Friends. Her stories are enjoyed by children around the world, and she’s inspired many people to go on go ahead and complete the novels that they’ve had in their heads for ages as well. As a self published indie author, she has done everything from scratch. The writing, the publishing, the promotion, and she still still found time For family, for friends, and for seaside visits where, of course, there’s inspiration for her next stories to be found.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:51]:

As I mentioned, we had the opportunity to, do an episode of the podcast with Jenny a couple of years ago. And, today, we’re talking about how it’s grown from just a book into a whole new adventure with Dragon Ball. That’s the game from the Sammy Ramble series. We’re gonna explore the exciting ways she’s getting her books into school into schools and in front of international audiences. Wanna explore the highs and lows of being an author, plus we’ll explore how it all came from a bad day at the office. That’s my guest today. Returning guest, the awesome, amazing, fantastic author, Jenny Leggett. Hey, Jenny.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:29]:

How are you doing?

Jenny Leggott [00:02:31]:

Very well. Thank you, and thank you again for having me back on the show.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:35]:

My pleasure. Thank you for coming back. It’s always nice to catch up with with guests couple years down the line. I can’t believe I’m saying that. A couple of years down the line, I guess this podcast is is, maybe it’ll have some longevity after But, I think For sure. We’ve we’ve, we’ve heard your bio, But as always, who is Jenny? Who is the lady behind all of that?

Jenny Leggott [00:03:01]:

Oh, thank you very much. Yeah. Actually, as you say, it’s been quite a journey. And as you mentioned, it all started with that bad day in the office. I think I’m glad to tell everyone has these bad days. And on this particular bad day, I think I was sort of recollecting that friends were getting married. They were having children. They were having cars.

Jenny Leggott [00:03:19]:

They were having holidays. And I just felt in such bad Right. I had all these sort of hopes and dreams and things that just seemed out of reach. And I suppose back then, I didn’t necessarily know How to get out of that? How to perhaps ask for help? I guess that’s a really good starting point. But I turned to what I did enjoy, And I I love writing. I love fantasy adventures. My imagination, even from school days, was way out there. It might have been a Saturday math lesson, Over the way, walking through the forest, chatting with the animals or something, which is probably where the inspiration for Bumper and Friends has sort of bubbled up over the years.

Jenny Leggott [00:03:55]:

So, yeah, I’ve I’ve tried to turn something bad into something good, and that’s literally where it all started with with Sammy Rambles followed by Bumper and Friends. And someone said to me, Where’s the girl hero? I can say to them, there’s plenty of strong female characters in Sammy Rambles But you’re right. I wrote Molly Manila and she’s the girl detective who talks to the animals to solve problems in her village. And that’s all been going well. And as you say, Bumper and Friends, it’s kind of exploded. That’s why I’ve got up to that impressive target, I guess, of books. I’d love to write a 100. I’d love to write a 100.

Jenny Leggott [00:04:32]:

No. Unfortunately, it’s

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:33]:

quite an achievement.

Jenny Leggott [00:04:35]:

That’s what I wanted. I wanted to have a big portfolio of books. I thought I don’t wanna be a a one hit wonder author. I don’t wanna have just 1 book because I’ve got thousands of books inside my head. Yeah. And I want to get them all written down 1 by 1.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:48]:

Nice. Yeah. I mean, we’re That’s supposed to

Jenny Leggott [00:04:50]:

be the hard part for me is actually Being disciplined on which idea.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:55]:

So how how do you how do you do that? I mean, as you say, you you always love to write. So you’ll have Thousands of ideas going on, especially with your seaside walks, your forest walks, and everything. I know once you start thinking about these things, I know Dozens of ideas will always you have 1 idea which then gives gives rise to dozens or hundreds of ideas. How do you have the discipline to go, write All of your ideas, I’ll get to you. This is the one we’re doing right now.

Jenny Leggott [00:05:24]:

I’ll be totally upfront. It is it is hard. It’s like turning on a tap. People say writer’s block. I think I have writer’s overload, so I have a notebook and I have a pen because I prefer handwriting my stories. I think it helps me slow down my ideas. It gives me that connection between the brain, the pen, and the paper. And to be able to write down the ideas 1 by 1, Even when I got a flood of ideas.

Jenny Leggott [00:05:49]:

So my my latest book was Bertie the Bear, and he’s part of the Bumper and Friends series. And I knew that I wanted to write about the spare. And I knew that he was gonna have some sort of injury, which would then guide his friends to come and visit. And when his friends came to visit, they would bring a gift. And the gift that they brought would then help him get better. And then the messaging behind it was that even when you’re having a bad day, most problems that There’s still good things to be found that you can still enjoy enjoy life even though there is, you know, there’s a lot of hardship going on, especially at the moment. So that was the Essence of Bertie. But whilst I’m thinking of Bertie’s story, in the books, he’s got his friends Fizzy Fizz the frog, he’s got Dolce and Darcy the deer and they’re all gonna have their own stories.

Jenny Leggott [00:06:33]:

So I was jotting down fast and furious with my pen ideas for their stories and in the meantime, there’s a little goblin that’s come into my head and he’s got A journey with a goblin stone and then there’s a pirate story that I want to be writing and then there’s Sammy Ramble’s book 6 that people have asked for and It it is hard, but I think if I can be disciplined to put those ideas in a notebook for later, then I can write down And really concentrate on a project. So the book is a project, and it’s got a start. It’s got a middle. It’s got an end. And as she said, I’m an indie author, so I’m doing my information, my own tabletop sales, I guess. And the whole whole thing, it has to be sort of mapped out. I really do have to work hard to push things away because there are other interruptions. I’ve got a 3 year old.

Jenny Leggott [00:07:21]:

I’ve got dogs. We’ve got Holidays, we’re hoping to go on. And all of those things will take up energy and brainpower. But I know that I want to keep writing the stories because that What’s turned from a hobby is is my job. It’s my my career. It’s my hopes and dreams, I guess, to have those books extended on their journey.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:42]:

Right. So the so this is this is your job. As you say, this is this is your job. This is your career. This is this is what you do full time for for for a living. Oh, Brilliant. Brilliant. I I know many people have, aspirations of being an author.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:57]:

I know Sometimes people think, alright. I’ll write a book and then just sit back and the royalties pour in and it’s we know life isn’t like that. But you Here here you are an example of somebody who had that bad day at the office, enough was enough. They took their passion, something they always love to do, and Actually turned it into a paying career. And I imagine that takes a huge amount of hard work. How did you How did you I mean, 1 kind of once the wheels are going and once so, okay, now you’ve got 40 books. It’s Presue correct me if I’m wrong. It’s presumably gonna be easier to sell the 41st book when you’ve already got 40 books that are that are selling them and the name is is out there.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:39]:

I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy, but it’s It’s easier. How do you how do you kinda kick start this all off for for from the first one? How do you get that, that momentum?

Jenny Leggott [00:08:51]:

First step. Uh-huh. Getting back to Sammy Rambles because that was my 1st book, and that was that was hard work because it took a long time to write it. You’re about a 100,000 words in Sally Rambles, and that all needed to be handwritten, typed up, proofread, edited, Revised. I actually added up, but I think each word in the book has probably taken me about 2 or 3 minutes to sort of write and think about and process and publish. And then it is that journey. How do you get the book from your head onto the screen onto the into the actual book that people can read, whether it’s a Online version, whether it’s paperback version, hardback, audiobook, it’s all a journey and it all starts with those single steps. So Once I’d got the books, and as she alluded to earlier, it was a bad day in the office.

Jenny Leggott [00:09:37]:

And when I was on the publishing journey, There were many bad days because I I sent off my manuscript, and I got my rejection letters. And I felt like I’d failed. I felt like I’d let myself down, let Sammy Rambles down. I It’s it’s for other people. That success is for other people. I don’t know how they’ve got there, but I don’t know if I can do it. And so Said life happened, and I changed my job, changed my partner, changed county, changed absolutely everything you can possibly change. But there was also a voice saying, try again.

Jenny Leggott [00:10:06]:

Have another go. And so I did, and that’s when I got picked up by a publisher. But it’s one of the vanity publishers, the ones that say £5,000, please, and we’ll do your book.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:17]:

Yeah. I was like,

Jenny Leggott [00:10:18]:

I don’t think I’ve got I haven’t got that money. I don’t know if I can put it towards that. And so I just felt like I failed. I’d give up. Let’s stop. But if you wind the clock forward a little bit longer, there are tools available To do it all for free or for low cost Yeah. To get yourself up and running. And so off I did.

Jenny Leggott [00:10:37]:

I’ve I’ve printed out, I think, 10 copies of my My first Sammy Rambles book, and I took them into our local pub quiz. And I suppose everyone’s quite merry. They’ve had a good time at the quiz. I was like, here’s my box of books. I’ve the book. Hey. Does anybody want 1? And they did. And I actually sold out that box of books, and that inspired me to buy some more.

Jenny Leggott [00:10:56]:

They gave me the money to buy some more.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:58]:

And

Jenny Leggott [00:10:58]:

then somebody at the the quiz said, oh, have you tried the local craft fair? That’s when I went along all very inspired, paid £5 for my table, laid everything out, got 1 book so I made it look as big and as bright as possible. I think I sold about 6 copies that day, but they were all to traders rather than to people walking through the doors. On one hand, it felt like an achievement On the other hand, I felt, well, there’s something missing. So I I sort of went back again the following week, and I had my table. And I saw that the the ladies selling the knitted robins and the jam jars, they were selling out and I was observing how they were doing it. That’s perhaps when I picked up some sort of Customer service techniques, I guess. Sales techniques, if you like. How do I get my book from my table into somebody’s hand? And encourage them that they will enjoy reading the book, give them a few seconds to have a look and people started buying them And that then encouraged me to go bigger and bigger and bigger and someone said, how about a school? Because you’re looking for all these opportunities Where the books might sell, who might be interested in buying them.

Jenny Leggott [00:12:06]:

And so it sort of grew from there. And the last events that I did were the big Comic Cons. So I’ve made some lovely friends with cosplayers, and they’ve sort of encouraged me not just to do it in Cornwall, But to go further afield and I suppose the irony is before I had my daughter, I didn’t have the confidence to go further afield.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:28]:

And now

Jenny Leggott [00:12:29]:

that I’ve had her, she inspired me to go further afield. I’ve had road trips this year going to Bolton, to Sheffield, to Maidstone, And then I’d like to take it abroad if possible, but that’s gonna be another step. That’s when she’s a little bit older. Yeah. Because I want to sort of be a good role model for her to inspire her. Like I said before, hopefully, I’ve inspired other people to write the book that they were hoping to write.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:51]:

Mhmm.

Jenny Leggott [00:12:51]:

So that that to me is as much of an achievement as me selling my own books.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:56]:

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And what what what I’m kind of picking up from there is it it’s it’s little steps, lots of little steps, just each building upon the previous one. It’s slightly bigger, slightly more each time, and over gradually, the momentum builds up until it until it takes off I was on record.

Jenny Leggott [00:13:16]:

It seems to. So don’t worry if you’ve got 1 book or if you’ve got 3 books. Even if you’ve got no books, you can still go along and absorb the ideas and see how are the people doing it and cherry pick perhaps the best bits of what they’re doing. Maybe there’ll be some things that I’m doing that hopefully will inspire people as well. I know Tabletop sales. People said, oh, I like the the bright colored dragons that you’ve got for sale. They go with the books. They weren’t there back in day 1.

Jenny Leggott [00:13:41]:

They have come along this journey. Basically, it’s all steps. And I try and do something every day, whether it’s a Facebook post, an interview, a few paragraphs. Each day, it’s all moving towards I guess the ultimate goal was always to have a movie on the big screen. That’s kind of Why I started writing? I wanted to have that sort of big idea, and I suppose that’s given me the momentum to carry on even when there’s been bad days where I haven’t been able to turn on the computer. Well, I’ve had to be called away to other things.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:12]:

Yeah. Yeah. Any any, any news so far that you could share with us on the On the whole movie plan, or is that still still a work in progress? It’s still out there, but will happen at some point? It’s

Jenny Leggott [00:14:28]:

I think the more I’m doing, the more people are following it, the bigger the journey is getting, the bigger the adventure is getting. So I I do treat it like a an adventure in a journey. And I suppose even if there was a movie to be made, which I’m hoping, I said you never know who’s watching. So I do try and Present the best of the books, every opportunity I get. There’s probably people that ask, Who’s Jenny? Who are these books? Who’s Sammy Rambles? What’s Dragon Ball all about? And I suppose having the game Dragon Ball has opened up another avenue into schools. So it’s not just Jenny the author coming to do a talk, It’s Jenny of yours, and she’s bringing a game as well.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:07]:

Yeah. Which actually leads us on to to the other bit I wanted to talk about, drag, Dragon Ball. I mean, that is is a game which which features features nicely in the in the Sammy Ramble books. And you’ve taken that game from something in the books turned it into, something so much more, a a game that people can actually play in real life, and a game with a a game with a purpose and a message behind it. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jenny Leggott [00:15:34]:

Yeah. Of course. So as you say, Sammy Rambles, they’re all playing dragon ball in their sports lessons in their magical school, Riding on the dragons and someone said to me, this is amazing. It would make a wonderful game. How about we try and make it happen? I’m in a school. All of them see what the children want to play. And so I think we started off with that sort of footballs or or volleyballs to to play with. And then People liked it.

Jenny Leggott [00:15:59]:

They enjoyed the the concept of it. It’s it’s very simple. It’s 2 teams, 2 goals, and 7 balls They all start in the middle. The teams start on the goal line. The whistle goes 3, 2, 1. Everyone can go and get a dragon ball. Work in their teams. It’s encouraging that teamwork, communication, collaboration, all the skills that children are sort of Picking up at school that will benefit later on in life.

Jenny Leggott [00:16:25]:

You score a goal, there’s an objective, but it’s inclusive. So we’ve got children With SEND playing, children in wheelchairs can play. Children who perhaps haven’t got used to their legs, they can still play sitting dragon ball. They can play Walking dragon ball, they can play it at top speed as fast as possible. You can play it at the time, you play it at points, you play indoors, outdoors. We played it on the beach, played it on the grass, and it can be played in somewhere as small as a classroom or as big as a rugby pitch. It’s it’s truly it’s it’s an adaptable game. It’s inclusive, and It’s a lot of fun.

Jenny Leggott [00:17:01]:

It’s all come out of the Sammy Rambles books and someone just said, oh, that would make a great game. And here we are. We’ve got sponsorship from, like, Sheffield United Football Club, Plymouth Golf Football Club, we’ve got some really big names that are jumping on board because it’s not enough just to have Yeah. Sort of on sport that people can play, they like the sort of the diversity, the adaptability of it. So, yes, you’re still gonna play football, and that will be their sort of career if you like. But as a warm up game, they can play Dragon Ball. As a fun sport, they can play Dragon Ball something in the lunch break. But obviously, with I’ve had great plans for the books to be made into a movie.

Jenny Leggott [00:17:37]:

It’d be wonderful if Dragon Ball got played in more schools. And over the last 12 months, It’s been played in hundreds of schools. And possibly in couple of years’ time, if we do another podcast, it’ll be played in thousands of schools or We’ve been a bit cheeky with some of the advertising for it because we’ve got into lots of Facebook groups. And it’s like, have you seen Dragon Ball? Have you Play Dragon Ball. We love playing Dragon Ball. Do you want to try Dragon Ball? And people are picking up, so we’ve had inquiries from America, from France, from New Zealand, from Australia. And through networking, that’s all grown again. So it’s not just me saying, well, let’s play Dragon Ball.

Jenny Leggott [00:18:14]:

There are other people now Shouting about it and and sort of saying, let’s let’s get this into our school. We must play Dragon Boys. Mhmm. Relatively cheap to set up. Yep. You can get going straight away, It’s easy to learn, but everyone can take part.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:30]:

I think that’s one of one of the things I really like about the concept of gothamol is that Everyone can play whatever your your ability, whatever whatever your situation, everyone is able to play because, I was Never into sports when I was, when I was a kid. I wasn’t was it wasn’t built for sport, shall we say. So I kind of used to hate PE and all that sort of stuff. But with something like Dragon Ball, whatever level you’re at, whatever your situation, You can play and enjoy it.

Jenny Leggott [00:19:00]:

That’s right.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:01]:

And you say it scales from class

Jenny Leggott [00:19:02]:

to full pitch. Yeah. I love that. We wanted to get crossed the anti bullying message as well because at

school, I remember people saying, we don’t like you. You’re not good enough. You can’t be on a team. You’re no good. And Dragon Ball sort of cuts through all of that. There is no opportunity for people to say you’re not good enough because there are 7 balls in play. You might have one that’s being played at top speed At one end of the pitch, but, hey, that dragon ball that that’s got left behind, it’s not got left behind because there’s another group of children. Maybe the non sporty ones.

Jenny Leggott [00:19:34]:

Maybe the ones that don’t wanna mess up their hair. You know, it’s it’s for everyone to take part in their own place. And we’ve got it now in So festival format so that it’s available so you can have a team taking part from your school playing other schools in the area. So it’s encouraging that into School and into county, you know, in some cases, and it’s just growing step by step, but it is growing, which is wonderful to see.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:00]:

And again, it’s it’s an approach. You should say it step by step, 1 one little bit at a time. It gradually grows, gets a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger. Before you know it, you’ve got Football teams sponsoring you. You’ve got you’ve got people saying, hey. Let’s play it here. And it’s just that consistency, I guess, it’s always showing up just a little bit every day whether it’s Dragon Ball or whether it’s marketing your books or whether it’s writing a book. Even even if you can only do one little thing each day, just keep doing it, and it Builds up that momentum and and and progress.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:30]:

The consistency really pays off. I love that. Really briefly, really quickly, what’s what’s what’s next? What’s next for, for for Jenny? What’s next for for Sammy, for Molly, and for Bumper?

Jenny Leggott [00:20:47]:

Okay. So I’m trying to leave an order. So for I’ve forgotten what order you sent them right now. So Sammy Rambles, the the next thing It’s to sort of keep going with that movie dream. So keep turning up, as you say, at the events at the Comic Cons, meeting some sort of Directors and producers and trying to be noticed, be that one that’s, oh, what’s going on there? And then with Dragon Ball, the 2 should go hand in hand. So, I’m doing literacy We’re doing the Dragon Ball Sports and Literacy Festival and getting more schools involved so that more children can benefit from playing Dragon Ball And the the Sammy Ramble story of not giving up as well. For Molly, that’s all trickling away in the background. There’s 3 books.

Jenny Leggott [00:21:28]:

It was always gonna be a trilogy. People have asked for book 4, but I kind of feel Molly is is ready. She’s got her 3 stories, and It feels like there is potential to go further, but at the moment my mission is to get the Bumper and Friends series. There’s gonna be 21 because I don’t know if you remember before I was saying There’s gonna be 7 in each sort of series. We’ve got 7 seaside, 7 woodlands, and 7 garden books. And each one of them will make a a rainbow. I’m halfway through the woodland rainbow, so there’s 4 more books which will take me through till next Christmas. That’s the plan to

have all of those finished by then. Obviously, the bumper does lend itself nicely to an animation. And having my daughter has meant that we’ve watched a lot of cartoons and animation recently. And so I’m just thinking maybe there’s an opportunity there to put that in front of somebody. Maybe there’s somebody who’ll watch the the podcast today or Read an article on Facebook tomorrow or something like that. And

then for me, personally, I guess you’re right. I’m still writing. I’ve got all these ideas about all the things that I want to do, but at the same time making sure there is time for family because I don’t wanna be remembered for sort of being distant or disappearing. I want to be sort of very present in things that I’m doing.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:22:45]:

Yeah. So as as as you mentioned earlier on, a lot of what you do is so that you can be an inspiration for your daughter and and, and you can be there for Yeah. Hello. Jenny, as always, time is has has, Flown by. You’ve you very kindly give me several links where people can find out more, and all of those links are gonna be in the show notes. You’ll find a usual place, keithblakewonderable.com/show. Look for the 2nd one with Jenny Leggett. But if people wanna find out more, what’s the best way best place for them to go, Jenny?

Jenny Leggott [00:23:22]:

It’d be wonderful if everyone could go to dragonball.uk.com. That’d be a good starting place to see The store, the books, the whole adventure, it’s all on the dragonball.uk.com.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:23:34]:

Brilliant. Dragonball.uk .com. Go check it out, find out more, and see how you can get involved. Jenny, thank you so much for taking taking time out of your Increasingly busy life to to share with us a little update. And, yeah, let’s let’s, let’s have you on again in another two and a half years’ time and and see where it’s Hopefully, by that point, well, yes, we’ll see where that goes. Thank you so much, Jenny, and thank you dear viewer and dear listener. Hope you enjoyed it. Do remember to subscribe on your favorite platform.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:24:06]:

Give us a comment, like, or share, recommend it to your friends, and, we’ll catch you in another episode Very soon. Bye for now.