What books do you like to read now?
I read a lot of fiction by female authors and there's a Canadian called Margaret Atwood, I like quite quirky fiction not so much mainstream or too literary. Children's books, Roald Dahl, my own kids like Roald Dahl a lot and I read a lot to them.

Did you have a favourite subject at school?
I was very keen to be an artist, so I did a lot of painting in my spare time, but English was either a close second or on a parallel with art, I liked languages as well but didn't get on very well with maths, science and physics.

What do you do in your spare time?
I go to the cinema a lot, ride horses, play tennis and gardening. I also spend a lot of time at Hillsborough, watching the mighty Owls.

What is your favourite food?
French bread.

Do you listen to music?
I'm stuck in the past I'm afraid. I listen but I haven't got a special taste, I like blues.

Do you have a favourite TV programme or film?
I like a film called The Piano, it is about a woman who is dumb, she lived a hundred years ago in New Zealand, she's been taken out there and more or less dumped into an arranged marriage and her only way of expressing herself is through playing the piano and I thought it was a very powerful film, the music is great and hugely visual film which I really loved.

What other jobs have you had?
I've been a waitress, worked in a shop, I've been a teacher, journalist and full time childcarer.

Do you have a favourite place?
The ranch in America, Half Moon Ranch is just my idea of heaven, it's fifteen miles down a dirt track in the mountains, nobody there, it's perfect!

Of your own books do you have a favourite?
That's a question kids always ask me, and I always say it's the one I'm writing now because you're most involved with that bunch of characters, you know them best, your mind is fully engaged and you're having conversations with these characters. So at the moment it would be a series of fantasy books called Dreamseeker, I'm so involved with the research of native American Indians for that and I

Where do you get your ideas from?
I travel a lot, I go to the places where the story is going to happen, so that I'm in the setting and looking at things I can describe and meeting the people who are going to become characters in the book. I observe people a lot. When you're writing for kids you have to have a good memory of childhood, so memory, observation, travel, reading, everything, there's never a moment where you're walking through a street and don't look at somebody and say I wonder what's going on there and store it and reuse it.

Where and when do you usually write?
I do have an office with a big sign on the door that says 'Do Not Disturb', I need a space, like a room of one's own, a couple of computers, I use a word processor and I would identify about four hours a day as really creative stuff and then two or three hours answering letters and doing editorial stuff. My most creative bit is between eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon.

Of all the characters you've created do you have a favourite?
For sheer good fun and enjoyability I would say it's Daisy, from the Definitely Daisy series, just because she's a total mess and a kid with a lot of imagination so you can set a dream world going inside her head. She'll be in trouble in school but she's thinking about the Salem witch trials and being tried as a witch or wanting to chuck the headteacher into the river as if she was a witch. So huge scope for imagination and lots of humour and it cheers me up to write about Daisy.

Are any of the characters in the books based on anyone you know?
Yes. All the people who've ever been mean to me show up as the villains. But seriously I think you've got to combine characteristics of one person, it's more experience you work on but not the people, I wouldn't say I've ever drawn a character based on one particular real life figure.

The illustrations for your Definitely Daisy series are very different from the illustrations for your other books like the Half Moon Ranch and Home Farm Twins books. Do you think about the illustrations when you write the books?
Yes I do. I think my way of working is quite visual so especially for children you keep in mind the image of the book and for Half Moon Ranch we wanted a traditional, glamorous, romantic image and we found the appropriate illustrator in America, Paul Hunt who is very realistic, but Definitely Daisy had to be fun and a bit wacky and not in the least little bit serious so we were lucky to getLauren Child on that one and the image she has created for the

Was the Home Farm Twins Television series how you imagined it would be?
Not exactly, the book is set in the Lake District and they filmed it in Rickmansworth, not a lake in sight! The twins don't look anything like the twins in the book but they are great little actors and I think the way they shaped the twins in the TV series was exactly how I imagined it; friendly, not stand-offish, no ego, they came across as very natural indeed so I was very pleased with them as characters but a bit disappointed in the setting which was purely a financial restriction.

Where does the process of writing usually begin?
It's not entirely creative, I talk to my publisher about what's the next big thing so when I started they said animals because all kids want to read about animals so you're working within that restriction and then luckily I like learning about animals. They sent me out to Florida to learn about dolphins which was great because I was combining something exciting with the learning. So it's a combination of setting a basic framework and then you start visiting and observing. I talked to a few teachers about the Daisy series, what's the funniest lesson you've ever taught and so one told me about this disastrous music lesson, where the kids were totally out of control and she described it in such a way that I thought it would make a fabulous opening scene for one of the Daisy books, Not Now, Nathan! So a lot of talking and a lot of application of imagination to real life situations.

Do you have any pets of your own?
I do, until recently I had a cat who died of old age, and had a very happy lazy life with us, she was a rescue cat from a school in Birmingham, the school was called Wilson Stewart and so we named her Wilson. Again until last year I had a dog called Tess who was a border collie, she also died but we got a new border collie called Cassie and I have a horse called Merlin (pictured!). I always like to have

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
Never listen to people who tell you it's too difficult because it's easy to be put off, if you have an idea stick with it, plan it first, make a kind of map of the story which will give it shape, you don't have to follow the plan exactly but at least the plan takes you through a series of points in the book and you know you're going to come to a particular ending. So planning is important but also letting your imagination take you where it wants to go. Read a lot, I think reading is really important to kids who want to become writers, and the more they read the more expert they become themselves. Keep the imagination alive and write spontaneously and don't write what people tell you to write.