I used to milk echidnas.
2. What is your nickname?
The one I write under, which isn't the one my family call me, but one accidentally acquired.
3. What is your greatest fear?
Ah, now that hurts too much to put it down.
4. Describe your writing style in ten words.
Eclectic.
5. Tell us five positive words that describe you as a writer.
Eclectic. Accurate. Focused and flying.
6. What book character would you be, and why?
Have been all of them: how else can you read or write a book?
7. If you could time travel, what year would you go to and why?
100,000 years ago, to study diprotrodontids; or 3 million years time . . . it is frustrating to know the start of the human race, and much of its history, but not what happens next.
8. What would your ten-year-old self say to you now?
Where are the chocolate biscuits?
9. Who is your greatest influence?
No one influence, but to my joy and gratitude a hard fast stream of at least a thousand currents of those who shape or shaped my mind.
But perhaps the answer should be a 'what' not 'who' . . . the land around me.
10. What/who made you start writing?
An as yet unmapped portion of my genome, and a childhood that was 65% boredom, 15% terror, and the rest books or the worlds I created for myself and other children.
11. What is your favourite word and why?
Zugszwang, and not just because it is useful in scrabble. It is where there is no other choice to be made in a game of chess, and the result inevitable. Or 'estoppal' which I have probably misspelled, as the fairy godmothers failed to give me the gene for spelling. It too means that you can do no other. I write about those who choose to do what is right, because for them there is no other choice. Zugswang and Estoppal.
12. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?
The books are there, read and in my head, and when I need them I can relive them again. (An eidetic memory helps, though it can be a drawback when you begin to give the dinner party a three hour lecture on ancient Mycean politics, or recite the conclusions into the Cochrane Collaborations study into some aspect of medicine. The definition of close friends for me: one who will laugh and say 'that' enough').
Jackie's latest book is the sixth in her Animal Stars series.
Enter to win a copy on KBR! and read our review here.
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OR if there is an author or illustrator you would like to hear from, LET US KNOW!
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