Harriet Swatman Manasa is a public relations professional specialising in architecture. She works for a consultancy in London’s West End.

In the summer of 2007, Harriet visited me in my shed, just as I was embarking upon the hardest thing I’d ever done. At the end of 2007, she wrote a four-page report on the book plan on which the subsequent months of work would be based. In the spring of 2009, she reviewed my first attempt at practical sales documents for approaching the publishing industry. I’d previously bounced them off eight people. The copy itself was polished, but Harriet ripped the sales pitch apart and then gave me a two-hour lecture on how to sell the book. In December 2009, we met again to discuss what I’d drawn up based on her advice. On that occasion she judged my work to be good.

Harriet lives in Walthamstow with her husband, Tatuga.