Where can you take a squiz at her stuff? www.jackiefrench.com
What is this talented author’s story? I live in a deep valley, surrounded by wilderness on three sides. I’ve worked as a cook, farmer and echidna milker (I’m not joking).
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What inspired her to write for children? When I was 15, my English teacher asked us to write a children's story. I wrote one about a wombat poet, Wagram Woad, his human secretary Manta and the arrival of Uncle Albert, retired post office official, and his niece who preferred to be called ‘James the Brave' instead of Amelia. When I'd finished I thought “This is fun!” I'm still having fun decades later.
How did she get her first book published? I was broke, living in a shed with a wombat, wallaby, red bellied black snake and my baby son Edward. I sent my first book off to try to get money to register the car.
Three weeks later they sent me what I regarded as a large cheque to publish it, and I've been a full time writer ever since.
But I was lucky. My manuscript was pulled out of the pile because it was the messiest they'd ever seen - badly spelled (I'm dyslexic) and with all the 'e's written in biro. My wombat had been leaving his droppings on the keyboard and the letter 'e' no longer worked.
If it hadn't been for the wombat, I might not be a writer now.
What other genres has she written in? Everything except Westerns.
What interests her? Friends, family, the bush, wombats, history, books, chocolate… did I add wombats?
What does she do when she’s not writing? Cook, feed the wombat, find the family’s odd socks. The usual. But everything gets turned into books eventually. (But doubt that the taxation department would classify good food or laughing with friends as tax deducatble professional expenses.)
What books did she read as a child? Everything from the phone book to the Great Dialogues of Socrates and the magic Pudding.
Why does she write? I don’t know. I write if I’m bored, I write if I’m happy, I write if I’m sad. Stories can be more vivid that real life. They can also teach you how to cope with real life, too.
As for writing stories ... anyone who can daydream can create a story - because that is what you are doing every time you daydream. The hard part, of course, is learning how to put them down on paper - or getting the confidence to know that something you have dreamed up yourself is good.
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