Where did the idea for Clubs come from?
Clubs began with Ms Love, about four years ago. I wrote a couple of 4 minute stories for The Big Chair (a television programme) about a class of kids and their teacher; by the time the stories were done I liked Ms Love so much I just wanted to know what she’d get up to next. Lolly came a little later, when I was thinking about how to tell the Room 7/ Ms Love stories. Lolly’s cheeky, anarchic voice is the perfect one for reporting Room 7’s different personalities and Ms Love’s adventurous teaching. Clubs is just the first in a series of stories about the class – the tricky business of school clubs came right out of my own primary school days. We were maniacs for clubs.

What were the clubs you were in?
The strange thing is that though for a few years I was constantly inventing clubs I can’t now remember the names of any of them…I think I mostly enjoyed making up the rules and the passwords, making the badges, deciding where the club rooms would be, and – most importantly – who could, and could not, be in the club! There were a lot of clubs I wasn’t in, as well, and I felt rather as Lolly does about it – cross and slightly vengeful.

Are you in a club now?
Sort of. We don’t call ourselves a club and we don’t have any rules or passwords or badges, but we are all united by a passion for two things: cooking and eating. So, I guess we’re a kind of dinner club – we get together regularly to cook gourmet food and eat it. We talk about it rather a lot while we’re eating, too…Maybe there is an unofficial rule: if you don’t like eating you can’t really belong…

Does Ms Love belong to a club?
As you can tell from the story Ms Love has mixed feelings about clubs; she’s tended to avoid them. Occasionally she’s wondered if she’d like to form a Valiant Ranger club. And Brett (the school caretaker) has invited her to join his Go Club. She’s thinking about it.

Did you ever have a teacher like Ms Love?
My most memorable teacher was a little like Ms Love in that she had strong views on things, was very talented and allowed her pupils to explore their own different talents. But her life was very different to Ms Love’s because she was a nun. Her name was Sister Barbara and she taught me for the first five years of my primary school life so she was a very significant person in my life. She had a beautiful singing voice, she could draw very well, and she laughed a lot. She let me write plays and stage them. We sang songs a lot in her classroom (Ms Love’s very keen on that, too). She was also very beautiful.

Are any of the children in the story people that you know?
I feel as if I know everyone in Room 7 very well. Some of them are very like kids I know – or knew back in my school days. Billy Button (who’s in the next book) is based on two boys I know now and like a lot. Byron is a little like my nephew, Rowan. Tash is like someone I was at school with who was very, very shy. And we’ve borrowed the names (surnames, too) of many of the children Jacqui and I know. The interesting thing about doing a book with an illustrator is that their view of the characters is quite crucial. Once Jacqui started drawing the children’s faces and bodies and their actions that often altered how I thought of them – which was rather enjoyable. So, they sometimes began from people we each knew but then evolved into unique identities.

Is there much of yourself in the story?
There are bits of me throughout the story – my history, my likes and dislikes, words that I like, things I’ve heard people say, etc. One of the nicest things about writing about Lolly and Room 7 is that I can rustle about in my memory recalling entertaining things from my own school days and childhood– and my childrens’. For instance, I had a tragic ginger cat who was fat and unwashed and I love homonyms. Also, I think Lolly is a little like me and Jacqui.

Who is your favourite children’s author?
I read so much and love so many different authors that I find it difficult to say who my favourite is – there are many favourites! Just some: EL Konigsburg, William Mayne, Jan Mark, Paul Fleishmann, Margaret Mahy, Russell Hoban, Shaun Tan, Odo Hirsch, Jack Lasenby, Geraldine McCaughrean, Margo Lanagan…I could go on a long time…

When did you begin writing?
I began writing stories as soon as I could print (around 5 years). I still have my story books from when I was 6 and 7 – most of the stories about witches and fairies and my sister, Clare – these being the things that most fascinated me at the time. Later on, until mid-high school years, I wrote plays and my classmates acted in them, which was very obliging of them. When I was 28 and my daughter, Luciana, was a baby I started writing short stories based on my extended family. Then I wrote a novel for teenagers…and it’s kept going from there. Clubs has been the most fun, though.

What is your favourite book?
If I did have a favourite book it would be Father’s Arcane Daughter by EL Konigsburg, but the true answer is that I have many favourites.

Can you draw?
No. Not even a convincing stick figure. I regard drawing and all art work as something close to magic – that is, people who can draw seem to me to be like magicians. That’s why it’s been such a fascinating experience working so closely with an artist. Watching Jacqui bring Room 7 and Ms Love to life visually was a little like watching a spell in progress. When she drew Ms Love for the first time it was like meeting someone I’d known for a long time but never quite seen clearly. I recognised her immediately.
Jacqui understood everything I thought about Ms Love and her class – but, more importantly, she read between the lines of my stories and what I told her about the characters as I knew them, and inserted
her sense of the story – and extra story - in pictures, so the book expanded far beyond what it would have been if it had only been composed of words.

Apart from writing and reading what do you
like doing?
I like cooking very much. I like running. I like talking to my friends on the phone. I like going away to other towns and cities. I like hanging out with family. I like playing the piano and singing (but I don’t get a chance to do the latter very often). I like driving long distances.

What does the D in Lolly’s name stand for?
Lolly won’t tell me.

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