Hello and welcome back to all the small things with me, Vinicia. This is an interview

episode with Rachel Mills, who is the director and founder of Rachel Mills Literary, a London

based literary agency representing a roster of prize winning and internationally bestselling

authors. In the 20 years she has worked in the industry, Rachel has secured major publishing

and screen deals for a range of authors including Elizabeth Day and Professor David Nutt,

to previous all the small things guests like Pandora Sykes, Ujua Seeker and Hassan Akad.

She also worked with my husband Max on his new book You Can Cook This, which is how I

got to know her over the past few years. I asked Rachel to come on the show so we could

speak about the publishing industry, to hear about her best advice for aspiring authors,

and how the industry needs to take better care, specifically of memoir writers. And of

course, I couldn't let her come on the show without sharing her summertime book recommendations

because she always has such good book wrecks. I really hope you enjoyed this conversation.

Here is Rachel Mills on all the small things.

Rachel Mills, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

I'm very happy to have you here. It feels like we have been talking about this for a

little while, so yeah, very excited to chat with you today, but let us start as we always

do. I would love to know if you have any rituals that you like to practice in the morning

to help you feel grounded and set you up for your day.

I do have something that I do pretty much every morning. Basically my cat starts to jump

on my head from about 6 a.m. onwards. She usually licks my eyelids to wake me up because

she knows that that's where I wake up, which is very cute. And then over the next half hour,

my partner and I basically have a sort of silent competition on who's going to get up

...