Singing to animals
2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Captain Hook. He’s purely evil… but I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for him. Especially about his hand.
3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (alive or dead)
Jane Austen, Rosemary Sutcliff, Jules Verne, William Shakespeare; Ursula le Guin
(I also have a much longer list of living author friends but I’m not going to hurt anyone’s feelings but leaving them out!)
4. Which literary invention do you wish was real?
Time travel
5. What are five words that describe your writing process?
Slow, tortured, obsessive, all-consuming, satisfying
6. Which are the five words you would like to be remembered by as a writer?
Honest, uplifting, page-turning, inspiring, entertaining
7. Picture your favourite writing space. What are five objects you would find there?
A new notebook with an unusual cover & thick white paper; a good blue pen; my computer; a cup of coffee, a piece of dark chocolate
8. Grab the nearest book, open it to page 22 and look for the second word in the first sentence. Now, write a line that starts with that word. (Please include the name of the book!)
kilikaturik. That’s from Nimenuhartea, one of the Basque translations of Nim’s Island, so I’ll use the second-nearest book with a word I understand: turn, from The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by AS Byatt
‘Turn around!’ she screamed. ‘There’s something behind you and I don’t know what it is!’
9. If you could ask one author one question, what would the question be and who would you ask?
‘William Shakespeare, do you ever feel like coming back to haunt the people who think you didn’t write your own plays?’
10. Which would you rather do: 'Never write another story or never read another book'?
Never read another book. (Though it would be terrible!) I hope that I could remember many of the books and poems I’ve read and go on thinking about them, but the most fun of all is finding out what happens in a story I’m writing.
