anchored nearby, did look for a while like it was floating away...
2. What is your nickname?
Sarah the Dark (because one of my best friends is also called Sarah, but she is blonde – she is, rather fittingly, Sarah the Fair).
3. What is your greatest fear?
Losing my writing notebooks, where I keep all my ideas simmering away until they are ready to be cooked into stories.
4. Describe your writing style in 10 words.
Fast-paced, funny, heartfelt, dramatic, full of deliberate echoes and caricatures.
5. Tell us five positive words that describe you as a writer.
This is a hard question! Fixated. Well-hydrated. Productive. Relentless. Attentive.
6. What book character would you be, and why? ~
Sara Crewe from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, because she uses her imagination to transport herself out of unfair situations.
7. If you could time travel, what year would you go to and why?
I would go back to Sydney in the 1880s, to have afternoon tea at one of Quong Tart’s cafes. (I would definitely have the famous scones and the house brew!) I would then go and find all the real people I research for my books and introduce myself. It would be wonderfully weird! I would probably be arrested.
8. What would your 10-year-old self say to you now?
‘What do you mean you can’t get Allen’s green frogs at the supermarket anymore!?’
9. Who is your greatest influence?
The real, ordinary people from the past who I like to stalk through the archives. Researching their lives helps me live mine.
10. What/who made you start writing?
I grew up anticipating the release of each new Harry Potter book, and a family friend said one day: 'If JK Rowling can do it, why not give it a go?’. So I did. I finished my first complete novel when I was
about 15, and I have been writing and experimenting ever since.
11. What is your favourite word and why?
Repetition. Because it contains a repetition.
12. If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?
A picture book by David Lucas, called The Lying Carpet. It is about a girl called Faith who has been turned into a statue and the only person who can help her work out why, and save her, is a tiger carpet – and he is a liar.
Sarah Luke is a teacher and historian. She likes researching in archives, finding information about people from the past and writing non-fiction books about them. At other times she is inspired to write historical fiction stories, so that people who merely ghost through archives also have a chance to be remembered. Sarah likes exploring old places in Sydney — particularly sandstone palaces and mossy, dark graveyards. Marion and the Forty Thieves is her first children’s book. For more information, see sarah-luke.com.
