I don’t have a middle name.
2. What is your nickname?
Beck
3. What is your greatest fear?
Huntsman spiders (Ugh! Those legs!), and bad things happening to the people I love.
4. Describe your writing style in 10 words.
Versatile, emotionally-rewarding, economically sprinkled with heart, humour, and fairy dust!
5. Tell us five positive words that describe you as a writer.
Passionate, curious, experimental, tenacious, dedicated.
6. What book character would you be, and why?
I always wanted to be Lucy Pevensie (hands down the bravest and coolest of the Pevensie siblings in the Narnia Chronicles). Lucy had courage in her convictions, wisdom beyond her years, and kindness and loyalty in buckets. She was compassionate and adventurous and wasn’t afraid to run toward danger while most others were running away from it. Long live Queen Lucy the Valiant!
7. If you could time travel, what year would you go to and why?
I’d head back to the Jurassic era. I would love to see dinosaurs (from a distance!) and discover the different species of early plant, mammal, marine and birdlife abundant at the time. A world untouched by humans would be a very interesting - and humbling - experience.
8. What would your 10-year-old self say to you now?
“I wish you’d gotten serious about your writing earlier. It was always your dream. (But I’m proud of you.)”
9. Who is your greatest influence?
So many! But when it comes to KidLit, I tip my quill to the likes of Neil Gaiman, May Gibbs, Marion St John Webb, John Masefield, Monica Dickens, Karen Foxlee, Bren McDibble, Tristan Bancks. Ursula Dubosarsky.
10. What/who made you start writing?
This one sounds like an easy question, but it’s actually quite hard to drill down on!
I feel I was born fascinated with words. I was a voracious reader from a very young age, and started writing fiction early – probably when I was about eight or nine years old. I tinkered with stories, composed endless poetry, and whenever it was a family member’s birthday, indubitably a poem from me would accompany their gift. From there, my writing turned to song lyrics, false novel starts, articles, and short stories that I didn’t know what to do with, and didn’t know how to connect to the greater writing community. It wasn’t until the mid to late 2000s, when my life was a lot more settled, that I finally started taking my writing seriously – honing my craft, researching markets, networking with other writers, learning industry standards, expectations, and pitfalls, and submitting, submitting, submitting.
11. What is your favourite word and why?
Malarkey. As in, “That’s enough of that malarkey!” It’s such a fun word.
12. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Only one? Gah! Not fair! I’m going to have to run with one of my all-time favourite books: Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon. It’s a gorgeous speculative genre-blending read – part coming-of-age, part murder mystery, part magic realism, featuring an 11-year-old protagonist navigating secrets and relationships in small town America in the early 1960s. It won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1992.
Rebecca Fraser is an award-winning, widely published author of genre-mashing fiction for children and adults. Her publications include three middle-grade novels, a collection of short fiction, and over 60 stories, poems, and articles in various anthologies, journals and magazines. Say G’day at www.rebeccafraser.com.