Name: Sue Devereux
Date of birth: 19 August 1946
Place of birth: Bristol, England
Now living in: Howick, Auckland
- What is your favourite food?
- Roast chicken, roast potatoes, just about anything roast. Cherries, ice-cream, chocolate, anything with custard the list goes on.
- Do you have a nickname and if so what is it?
- Soodles
- What was your most embarrassing moment?
- When I was 9 and all dressed up in my new tutu dancing a solo at the end of year ballet recital, I whirled and twirled and pirouetted my way clean off the front of the stage and plunged down into the audience.
- How do you relax?
- Dancing (in spite of the above) and singing and swimming and laughing like a hyena with all my mates.
- Who inspired you when you were little?
- My mum, my dad and my big sister.
- What were you like at school?
- I was like two different people. I could be a goody 2-shoes, teacher-pleaser swotty girl sometimes but at other times I was a right wicked little rebel mixing it up with the fun crowd.
- What was your favourite/most hated subject at school?
- Latin was my favourite I know! I just loved the precision vocabulary and the perfect structure of those sentences. Absolutely loathed embroidery though. I kept stabbing my own finger and the teacher had me unpicking kilometres of bloodstained needlework every lesson.
- What was the book you most loved as a child?
- Milly Molly Mandy, by Joyce Lankester Brisley; Little Grey Rabbit, by Alison Uttley; The Wishing Chair, by Enid Blyton; Little Women, by Louise May Alcott; I capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith; Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome; A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. The list goes on and on. I read everything because I was just fascinated that I could be transported into a completely different world while at the same time sitting quietly in our house.
- Which person from the past would you most like to meet?
- William Shakespeare and Jane Austen
- Who is your favourite author/children's author?
- As with my favourite books I have many favourite authors. Probably Jane Austen and Margaret Mahy if I'm pushed, though. (Can I add Dodie Smith)?
- Why did you want to be a writer?
- There was never an exact moment when I thought, "I'd like to be a writer ". In fact I didn't have much choice. I was one of those people who just found themselves reading and writing like you find yourself breathing.
- Do you have a special place where you write your books?
- The kitchen table.
- What's the best thing and worst thing about being a writer?
- The best thing is the moment you finally finish telling the story. Woohoo! The worst is the struggle getting it told. Boohoo.
- If you weren't a writer, what would you like to be?
- A mother of young children helping them explore our world.
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What advice would you give to aspiring writers? - Read something and write something every single day, even if you don't much feel like it. (Especially if you don't much feel like it)!