Meet the Team

Hi Rattler-teers! Our team at Merchiston Publishing have been working incredibly hard over the past few months putting together the new edition of The Adventures of Martin Rattler. We thought it would be fun to do a quick round up of all our departments and ask our crack team “what was your favourite part of the project?”

Project Heads

Name: Mairi McKay

Nationality: Scottish

Secondary Role: Marketing

Favourite Part of Martin Rattler: “Being given the opportunity to engage with the local community, through bookshops, publishers, organisations and schools that have helped us with our market research and have participated in our competition. It’s great to be a part of such a wide reaching project.”

Name: Lu Hogan

Nationality: Welsh

Secondary Role: Finance

Favourite part of Martin Rattler: “Looking through the kids’ illustrations. There’s some really great little artists out there.”

Editorial Department

Head of Editorial

Name: Jules King

Nationality: Scottish

Secondary Role: Production

Favourite Part of Martin Rattler: “Finding out how much I love wielding a red pen!“

Name: Claire Cunningham

Nationality: Irish

Secondary Role: Production

Favourite Part of Martin Rattler: “Working with everyone involved, we pulled something great off. I also loved going into the schools and seeing the kids enthusiasm for the product.”

Name: Donna Kean

Nationality: Scottish

Secondary Role: Production

Favourite Part of Martin Rattler:” I’ve loved watching the book come to life in a way I never imagined. From the abridged text to the wonderful illustrations to the huge competition, I’m proud of what we’ve achieved and can’t wait to see the final product!”

Name: Imogen McBean

Nationality: Irish

Secondary Role: Production

Favourite Part of Martin Rattler: “Seeing how far we’ve come as a team. It was wonderful to see the project develop from the very start to what it is now. I think we should be proud as a team of the amazing things we’ve achieved!”

Name: Megan Reid

Nationality: Scottish

Secondary Role: Marketing

Favourite part of Martin Rattler: “My favourite part of Martin Rattler is editorial driven. I’ve loved getting close to the material and applying edits to modernise the text. Seeing it transform into a book has been a real highlight.”

Production Department

Head of Department

Name: Barbara Arrighi

Nationality: French

Secondary Role: Editorial

Favourite part of Martin Rattler: “My favourite part is working on the layouts and seeing the book evolve from just words to an actual physical object!”

Name: Rhiannon Tate

Nationality: English

Secondary Roles: Illustrator and Rights Management

Favourite part of Martin Rattler: “Judging the amazing competition entries.”

Rights Department

Head of Department

Name: Kirsty Wood

Nationality: Scottish

Secondary Role: Production

Favourite part of Martin Rattler: “Getting to chat to lots of interesting people… even if we didn’t end up working with them!”

Marketing Department

Head of Department

Name: Shelly Neal

Nationality: Canadian

Secondary Role: Finance

Favourite part of Martin Rattler: “Organising a citywide art competition was an entirely new and rewarding experience. Having the ability to engage with the teachers and librarians was wonderful.”

Name: Rachel Cree

Nationality: Scottish

Secondary Role: Rights Management

Favourite part of Martin Rattler: “My favourite part was having the opportunity to travel to the schools and meet the young readers and see their reactions to our title. Hearing first hand feedback from the people that we were producing the title for was such a great experience. The hilarious comments and observations were truly things that only young children would be honest and creative enough to notice. It was fantastic to meet our readers and involve them in the process.”

Name: Franzi Heydrich

Nationality: German

Secondary Role: Editorial

Favourite part of Martin Rattler: “My favourite part of working on Rattler is seeing it all coming together now. We’ve had so many different ideas at the start and I like how everyone has had a chance to contribute a bit to the project.”