Congratulations! The Branford Boase shortlist has featured many popular authors as they started out.  What does it mean to make this shortlist?

It means the world to be on the shortlist for such an esteemed award alongside six incredible authors. I wrote Gloam when I was nineteen, and if you’d have told that nervous second-year student that his rough, recently finished manuscript about a brave girl and her babysitter would end up being recognised by a body as admired as the Branford Boase Award, he’d never have believed you. I’m very, very grateful for the honour.

Lots of librarians use this list to host book clubs in their schools, what would you love young readers to take from your book?

I wrote Gloam because I wanted to write something that trusted its readers enough to scare them. If my younger siblings are any indication, I think a lot of young people feel surrounded by media that doesn’t take them seriously. As adults, we have a natural, well-meaning impulse to protect kids from negativity, which sometimes leads us to only give them art that’s unremittingly nice and friendly and kind. Horror doesn’t usually make the cut. But I think it can be fun – even healthy – to engage with stories that scare you, and horror can be just as exciting and life-affirming as any other genre. If there’s one lesson to take from Gloam, I’d like it to be that it’s okay to trust your own tastes as a reader. If you like scary things, the stories for you are out there somewhere.

(PS: If there are book clubs happening, let me know! I’d love to drop by and say hello.)

The Branford Boase celebrates debut fiction, where did the idea for your book come from, how long did it take from idea to holding your book, and did your book turn out how you thought it might when you started?

Gloam emerged from a few converging threads in my life. I’d accidentally ignited a burning love of horror stories in my then 12-year-old sister and when I started coming up short on recommendations in her age range, I decided to write my own. Meanwhile, my grandparents had just announced that they were planning to sell their lovely house in the Midlands where I grew up. The idea of a stranger in that family space was so existentially horrifying to me that it morphed and mutated into the monster named Esme Laverne.

Timelines in publishing are very strange. I finished Gloam in January 2023 after about three months of intensive writing. By June I had an agent and by the end of October I had a publisher. By all accounts, my experience as a debut was uncommonly rapid. But after at least seven edits and re-edits, the book didn’t come out until August 2025, so it took nearly three years in total from idea to finished book. And what a gorgeous-looking book it is!

My grandad had always warned me that if I wanted to be a writer, at some point I’d have to kill my darlings. Luckily for me, no darlings were harmed in the making of Gloam. If anything, I felt like collaborating with my agent and my editor Katie Jennings helped bring the book closer to what I wanted it to be in the first place, which is why I’m so glad the BB recognises editors as well as authors. Mine has such a love of horror and a respect for the minds of young readers, and she helped nudge Gloam into a better and better version of itself.

We’d love to know: the Worst Bit, the Best Bit and a Random Rest bit about writing a book for young people.

Worst Bit: Perfectionism leads to procrastination. I often worry too much about how polished my prose is before I’ve finished anything, which leads me to put off writing in case it comes out rubbish and everyone will hate it. This, of course, contravenes the golden rule of writing, which is just write the thing. You can tidy it up later.

Best Bit: Meeting the young readers who have read and enjoyed Gloam. Their passion and creativity is off the charts. I love hearing about the stories they’re writing and the worlds they are creating. Never let yourself be told that “kids don’t care about reading/writing stories these days.” All the passion and ideas are there – everything is possible. We just need to give them (and ourselves) an outlet.

Random Rest Bit: I have discovered that writing for young people is easier when you have young siblings who you can hold captive and test your book out on before they go to bed. Note: reading scary stories to your ten-year-old brother before bed can get you in trouble with Mum.

Congratulations! The Branford Boase shortlist has featured many popular authors as debuts and their editors. What does it mean to make this shortlist?

Thank you! This means a huge amount to me and I imagine to Jack as well! Some of my all-time favourite books are past shortlistees. The Branford Boase is both a celebration of the collaborative process of creating a book and a brilliant launchpad for a career as a children’s author. I can see great things ahead for Jack. He cares deeply about the craft of writing and is completely in tune with what young people really want to read – the scarier the better! Like me, Jack is a passionate advocate for horror in all its forms and Gloam genuinely was my dream (or should that be nightmare?) book to work on.

How has being an editor changed in the last 2 years with the increasing access to AI tools?

If you look at the copyright page of the book, you’ll see we included a line to say, ‘No part of this book was written by AI.’ This is something that Jack and I discussed at some length. The same is essentially true of the editing of Gloam. (Bar using spelling and grammar checks at the final stages, of course, but I keep this function switched off the rest of the time as I find it distracting!) If anything, the rise of AI has made me focus all the more on authenticity – what it is that makes an author the perfect person to tell a particular story.

For students reading wondering how a book comes together, what top three skills do you think are necessary for being an editor in 2026?

Where it comes to commissioning, I think being true to your own tastes. As an editor, you’re reading a manuscript multiple times and are also pitching it repeatedly. So, if you don’t have real conviction in the author, their voice and their story then it’s going to show! Second, being able to juggle. You’re overseeing a book right from the very start, from championing it in house at an acquisitions meeting, through to working with the marketing, publicity and sales teams to take it out into the world. Alongside everything else, you need to carve out time to edit. Lastly, I’d say attention to detail is still hugely important (even in the age of AI tools!). I do get a fair bit of satisfaction from spotting that phrase or word an author uses multiple times, that plot hole or loose end, and suggesting solutions.

Many readers of Gloam will be students between 8 – 13 years old (some are slightly older ahem). What book do you remember reading at that time that has stuck with you into adulthood?

Anything and everything by Diana Wynne Jones, but I’m going to go for Howl’s Moving Castle – mainly because of the snarky talking fire, Calcifer! (Although the Ghibli film is brilliant, personally I think the book is better.) The worlds and characters Wynne Jones creates are so strange and wonderful, and I love her unique blend of immersive fantasy and whip-sharp humour.

We’d love to know: the Worst Bit, the Best Bit and a Random Rest bit about editing a book for young people.

While it’s great to oversee all elements of a project, the challenging part is trying set aside enough time to get stuck into an edit. That said, the Best Bit is the constant variety! Every book, author and day is different and the role of editor is always evolving, especially in the world of children’s and YA when the readership is constantly changing. As for the Random Rest bit – from the authors themselves to all those who champion their writing, people who work with children’s books are the best!

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Many thanks to Jack and Katie for answering our questions about Jack’s debut novel Gloam.  You can find out more about this book below and catch up with all the Branford Boase shortlist books on our Book Awards page here.