I mean, that would be great if Luke got hung up in TSA.

Yeah, everyone's still carrying their swords.

Yeah, right.

Sir?

Uh...

Uh... What's good. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the Neust Olympian. My name is Mike Schubert. I'm the titular Newst Olympian. I'm a 30-year-old man who never read the Percy Jackson books as a kid, but I'm reading them now as an adult on a quest to determine if this is a book series that we've all been sleeping on. And I'm not on this quest alone, though. I am joined by someone that I've wanted on the show for a while. We had some hiccups, but we're making it work. It is Ashley Latimer who ran the social media for the Lightning Thief musical. And now she goes on to run the social media for Rick Ryordan. And she's also an author of Francis Discovers Possible. Ashley, how's it going? It's going well. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for being on the show. I'm very glad to have you here. Clearly, Twitter was very happy about this happening when you eyeball

emoji hyped it up a couple of days ago. So it's the crossover event we've all been looking

forward to. By we, I mean the Percy Jackson fandom that I am just now becoming a baby part of.

This is our multiverse. Yes, gosh, of course. Now, obviously, you are very ingrained in the Percy Jackson

universe, but before we get to that, how did you first come across reading the books? So actually,

through my first job on the musical, I had just started working at a theatrical marketing agency

in New York and had never read the books and found out that the

musical was going to be one of my clients. I also am 30 and so I had just missed the boat

because I was already reading a lot of YA and back then I don't feel like we were encouraged to

read, continue reading middle grade as much as people are

now. So I just missed the books. And when I started working on the show, I was like, oh,

these fans are dedicated. And that was basically the only thing I knew. Because when the movies

came out, I was going to maybe go see them with my younger brother. And then I heard that they were not good and not faithful to the books.

And so we didn't go.

And I was like, I cannot work on this show unless I read these books.

And so I cleared my entire calendar at work that day and sat down and started on the

Lightning Thief right then.

...