I had a belly button ring until I was four months pregnant with my first child. You won’t tell anyone about that will you?
2. What is your nickname?
I don’t really have one, but my friends call me ‘Lu’.
3. What is your greatest fear?
That Suri’s Wall will be my only published book. What if I never again manage to write anything that my publisher thinks is worth releasing? That would confirm my fears that I am, in fact, just a fraud who got lucky with one manuscript.
4. Describe your writing style in ten words.
Littered in abundance with spelling mistakes and extensive grammatical errors.
5. Tell us five positive words that describe you as a writer.
Visual. Optimistic. Fluid. Precise. Fast.
6. What book character would you be, and why?
Granny Weatherwax from The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. She’s intelligent and deceptively caring with an absolute belief in herself and her abilities. She also knows what is Right which reminds me a lot of my dad as one of his main reasons for his doing just about anything was, “Because Lu, it’s the right thing to do”, and that ideology still commands a lot of respect from me today.
7. If you could time travel, what year would you go to and why?
2500 - I am desperately curious about the future. Look how far we have come in just the last one hundred years. The technological advances, space exploration and medical breakthroughs have been astounding and our inclination towards self destruction and the mutilation of our planet is, on the whole, trending in our favour. I’m very positive about our future and would love to see our way of life in five hundred years time.
8. What would your ten-year-old self say to you now?
You became a writer, programmer and a mother of three? Well I didn’t see that coming. I thought you were going to become a mechanic like Charlene Robinson on Neighbours. I mean, writing is fun and all, but you can’t do that for a job can you? That’s what proper clever people do. You don’t even know what computer programing is, and I know you don’t want to have any kids. Are you sure you’re me all grown up?
9. Who is your greatest influence?
In terms of writing? I would have to say my husband. I can become overly descriptive when I become enthusiastic about a topic and my husband is very good at telling me in no uncertain terms that I need to cut out at least half of my words. He makes me refine, refine and refine until I strip it all back to the core essentials and discard all the hullabaloo. And my greatest influence in terms of life? My husband.
10. What/who made you start writing?
I don’t think anything made me start writing. It is just something that has always been part of my character from the earliest days that I can remember. There was never a conscious though that I would go and write now, it just happened continually. I would spend my summers creating newspapers about the events of the school holidays and force them upon my family. I wrote painfully boring stories with elaborate illustrations which were bound into books. I still have one or two of them, they are dreadful.
11. What is your favourite word and why?
Plethora. I love the sound of it as it rolls off the tongue and I like the boundless possibilities that it implies.
12. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?
The Thurber Carnival.
Lucy Estela is an Australian author and educational app programmer living in Sydney, NSW. Her picture book Suri's Wall, illustrated by Matt Ottley, is her debut book with Penguin. Visit Lucy's website and Facebook page for more information about her writing and other creative projects.
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