What is your earliest childhood memory?
It's not a good one! When I was about three, I fell through the kitchen window into the yard. I remember my mother wrapping me up in towels and then being in the hospital. I still have two scars on my legs!
What were your favourite books as a child?
I loved the myths and legends of classical Rome and Greece and Ireland and these old stories have a habit of finding their way into my own books: there’s a Phoenix in Flying Lessons, and the plot for Witch in Training: The Last Task in which Jessica must track down the lost shoes of Dame Walpurga is adopted from Hercules’quest for the golden apples.
Many of my childhood favourites were the same books that my book-loving heroine Tiger Lily reads: Treasure Island, Huckleberry Finn, Charlotte's Web, Pippi Longstocking and the exotic tales from 1001 Arabian Nights.
Were you read to much as a child?
Yes, particularly by my mother, and especially poetry. I used to know hundreds of poems by heart, ones like The Owl and the Pussycat, Macavity’s a Mystery Cat, or The Pied Piper.
If I were cast away on a desert island, I’d try to remember them all.
What was your first children’s book?
It’s called The Deerstone. It came about when I had a dream about a boy called Paud hiding behind a gravestone among the ruins of the monastic city in Glendalough. It was published in 1992 by Poolbeg Press and I’ve been writing for children since!
How did Jessica, the star of the Witch in Training series, come into being?
About ten years ago, I was living in Ludlow, a very pretty town in Shropshire in England. It had a famous old-fashioned hardware shop, Rickards, where you could buy anything from a watering-can to a wood-burning stove. One autumn, someone put a bunch of spiky broomsticks at the door with a cardboard sign " Birch Besoms £4.99. Flying Lessons Extra." That was the inspiration for the first witch-in-training book where Jessica is given a broom by the owner of a hardware shop, Miss Strega, who turns out to be a witch-trainer.
And what about Tiger Lily?
Tiger Lily is a contemporary young Don Quixote, someone whose head is so full of stories she wants to roam the world in search of adventure and become a heroine herself. Her best friend, Sammy, is her Sancho Panza. He is down to earth and full of common sense where she is crazy and full of Big Ideas. She loves to read: he never reads if he can help it. She is long and skinny; he is small and barrel-shaped. Even their dogs are opposites: hers, a three-legged greyhound called Rosie; Sammy’s a round fat spaniel. Together, they make a good team and have a good laugh, despite many setbacks.
There are lots of animals in the Tiger Lily books, Do you have lots of pets?
Not a single one. My cats have died and I have never owned a dog, let alone a peacock or a goat or even a wild boar. But, like Streaky Bacon Junior, I do like watching birds.
What do you like best/least about being a writer?
The best thing is being my own boss, working at home and deciding my own hours. The worst is spending so much time on my own.
Describe your typical writing day if you have such a thing.
I must confess that, some days, I will do anything but start to write.
Sometimes, a story will require a lot of research, which will involve visiting places, going to libraries or museums, reading old newspapers, studying old maps. One day I visited the Natural History Museum, Dublin to see if I could come up with some interesting brewing ingredients for my Witch-in-Training books. On one glass case, the label read “Biting lice, sucking lice, true bugs and beetles”. It was like a ready-made spell! So that went straight into Brewing Up when Jessica is casting an Out-of-Reach-Itch Spell.
For the second Tiger Lily book, I spent a morning at a dog training school because Tiger Lily attends one with her three-legged greyhound, Rosie. The one I went to was held in an almond orchard in the Jalón Valley in Spain but I substituted that for an apple orchard in the book.
Then there are lovely days when I do school visits, particularly around World Book Day or during the Children’s Book Festival in October. If you would like me to visit, see the contact me page.
How do you work with your illustrators?
I write the story and send it off to my publishers and the illustrator, book designer and editor take it from there. Different editors work in different ways – sometimes I have more input than others. I have worked with four different illustrators – Beccy Blake, Joelle Dreidemy, Sarah Horne and Nathan Reed (Click on "Nathan's Beans" )
Have any of your books been translated into other languages?
Yes, lots. It gives me a great thrill when the postman arrives with parcels of books in foreign editions. Different books have been translated into German, Dutch, Greek, Chinese, Catalan, Bulgarian, French, Polish, Turkish, Hebrew, Spanish, Finnish and Serbian.
What are you working on at the moment?
Lots of things! I am writing a novel for older readers and planning a new series about a pair of twins who don’t look like one another. There’s also going to be a new adventure for Felix the Cat. And I’m looking forward to a reissue of my historical novel The Lantern Moon by Little Island in 2010.
On World Book Day, children often dress up as their favourite fictional character. If you were to dress up as a character from one of your books, who would you choose?
I guess I am too old to be Jessica and too short to be Tiger Lily, so I shall have to be either Miss Strega, the witch trainer, with her wand stuck in her bun or Granny Rita click-clacking in high heels and wielding a dangerous soup ladle.
What do you do when you have writer’s block?
Funnily enough, I make soup. Or go for a walk.
Tell us a secret.
I used to eat the corners of books – even as a teenager. In fact, I sometimes still eat books.
