Linda Newbery spent most of her childhood in Epping, Essex, where her parents still live, and went to a girls' grammar school in Loughton. Long after leaving the school, she discovered that Ruth Rendell had been a pupil there too - and, more recently, another crime writer, Mo Hayder.
Armadillo: You say you always wanted to be a writer, even when you were very little. Does the reality live up to your early daydreams?
Linda Newbery: In some ways, no - I used to imagine authors as young, famous, glamorous people, like film stars! In some ways, yes. I know how lucky I am to spend my time doing something I love, and to have the limitless possibilities of writing for young readers.
A: Your first novel was published twenty years ago and you have just published your first picturebook, Posy (reviewed in this edition of Armadillo). Do you think you'll write more picturebooks?
LN: I'd love to, especially if I could be teamed again with Catherine Rayner, who has illustrated POSY so delightfully. It's so different from writing novels - more like writing a drama script. I enjoy the collaborativeness of it, by which I mean that there's actually very little collaboration, but the illustrator brings things to the book which I didn't plan or even imagine. For instance, I'd expected that people would be shown in the illustrations, perhaps the special child who looks after Posy the kitten. Catherine went instead for a kitten-centric world, with no humans shown at all, only objects like washing on a line, a mirror, sandwich on a plate. Because I write mainly novels, it's a novelty simply to hand over my few words and wait to see what the illustrator does with them.
A: Tell us about how you write and where. I believe you are one of the Garden Shed Brigade?
LN: Yes, I write in my garden hut, for some of the time at least. It's tiny, only the size of the garden shed we had there before, but it's got everything I need - small desk, heater, radio/CD player, cork noticeboard, shelves. From my window I can keep a close check on the garden bird-life, though that can be a major distraction.
I do sort of have a writing discipline, though often it seems that I do nothing but drink coffee, answer e-mails and wander round the garden. My main rule is to write first thing in the morning: 6.30 a.m., earlier in summer. That's my best time of day and I mustn't waste it, so I have my notebook by my bed, and write by hand for about an hour and a half as soon as I wake up. When I'm up and dressed, I move out to the hut to type up what I've written, editing as I go, and usually do two or three more bursts of writing. It tends to add up to 1,200 - 1,500 words, though I don't bother about how much. The important thing is to have the story going on in my head at odd times. I swim regularly, and that time is often productive - a problem solves itself, or a good sentence comes to me.
A: Set in Stone won the Costa Award (formerly Whitbread) for Children's Novel in 2006. Did that change your career significantly?
LN: I don't know yet!
A: I know you originally intended to call it Stoneheart but Charlie Fletcher's Stonyheart came out before your book, forcing you to change. But I believe you actually now prefer the title Set in Stone - titles are funny things, aren't they? How do you choose yours?
LN: Either I have a title straight away, before I have the story (CATCALL, NEVERMORE, LOB) or I puzzle over it for ages and never get it quite right. It's very hard to settle properly into writing a book until it has a good title. But I'm grateful to Charlie Fletcher for getting there first: SET IN STONE is a far better title for my book than STONEHEART.
A: And do you think Set in Stone is really a children's novel? To me it seemed like an adult book, with shades of The Woman in White. And the paperback has appeared in an adult edition as well as a teenage one.
LN: No, I've never thought of it as a children's novel. It could be called a young adult novel, even though the two narrators are in their early twenties, because it's about the trauma of adolescence and about being let down by parents, in one way or another. I'm pleased that the two editions mean that the book has a chance of reaching both teenage and adult readers.
The distinction between young adult and adult fiction has always been blurred, but perhaps in the UK we should be clearer that young adult fiction occupies important territory and, though the books are almost always published on children's lists, they're not books for children. We all know that, but sometimes - particularly when a book is up for a prize - there are cries of outrage, and suddenly it seems to be expected that a children's book should be suitable for all children from about seven or eight up. That's impossible, of course.
A: Your junior novel, Catcall has been a great success, winning the Nestlé Silver medal and so on. I remember our once being told by a publicist "I don't want to know if you have cats - unless you've written the definitive cat book!" Well, there's Catcall and Posy so I think it's OK to ask you about your cats, who feature on your website. It says there that your Posy is "the most beautiful cat in the world" How do you square that with Hamish and Holly Blue?
LN: OK, I'll indulge myself in one cat answer. It's a sad story about the real Posy. She disappeared two and a half years ago, and we've never found out what happened to her. We now have four cats, which is probably one more than the optimum number.
A: What is your next book going to be?
LN: I have two novels scheduled for spring 2009: THE SANDFATHER, from Orion, and LOB, from David Fickling Books. THE SANDFATHER is a young teenage novel, i.e. the main character is a boy of 13. LOB is very different from the young adult novels I've published so far with DFB: it's a fable-like story set in the real world, and will I hope be one of those books impossible to categorise in terms of age suitability, as I'd like it to be read by anyone from about 6 to 106. See next answer...
A: Is it true that you are thinking of writing an adult novel?
LN: Yes, and it's time I did more than think about it! In fact I've written a version, but that was a long while ago and it's not good enough. It needs changing drastically, but I know that the central premise is a good one and I shall hang on to it.
A: Where do you stand on the issue of age-ranging?
LN: In a way, I'm one of the authors who stands to benefit from it, because I write for various different age-groups, and things often get confused - my books are placed on the wrong shelves in shops or libraries; my young novels are reviewed by teenagers who find them too childish; or my teenage novels are given to children who are too young to engage with them. But I still oppose the idea, and have signed the petition.
I know from my work as English teacher, when I ran the school library, how widely notions of books and reader-ages can vary, and I think publishers would sometimes be amazed if they knew who was reading which books. For instance, no publisher would think of labelling the Banana-type "first readers" as suitable for readers of 11+, but I know from my school work that a lot of secondary-age children who struggle with reading will choose those books, because they're short and manageable.
With my own books, NEVERMORE, for instance, would carry a label of 9+, but in my recent visits it's been bought by children of 12 and 13, and I'd hate it if those readers were put off. I agree with David Fickling that books find their own readers. I don't worry about THE SHELL HOUSE or SET IN STONE being read by 10-year-olds (at least, I only worried when they were shortlisted for prizes). Children of that age wouldn't pick the book up - or, if they did, would lose interest after the first page or so. I hope the Publishers' Association will reconsider, given the scale of the protest.