Anne Cottringer

Q: What were you like at school?

I was a small skinny tomboy and desperately wanted to be tough but in fact I was a good little girl in class. I loved running around at break time and we played elaborate games of tag that went on for days. School was fun, but summer holidays were wonderful!

Q: What did you want to be when you were a child?

A boy, because they seemed to own the world.

Q: What is your favourite word?

Words with 'l' and 'm' -- like caramel and camomile.

Q: What makes you cringe?

The memory of the curly hair perms my mum used to give me when I was little girl.

Q: What are you afraid of?

Those dreams where I'm holding onto an object that takes me up into the air and I hang on too long. I go too high to let go and get carried higher and higher...

Q: When did you last have a really good laugh?

Last night. My teenage son makes me laugh all the time.

Q: What do you do as a hobby?

It's not really a hobby but I have an allotment. I get really dirty, get an aching back, sometimes have a robin land on my finger and I even manage to grow stuff to eat. Raspberries! Yum! My son suggested that I say that I build rockets in my shed as that is more interesting, but it wouldn't be true.

Q: What’s your favourite food?

Chocolate chip cookies

Q: What do you day dream about?

Having my own horse.

Q: What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?

I would like to be a dancer -- a ballerina, a ballroom dancer, a breakdancer. All at once.

Q: If you could meet one person, dead or alive, who would it be?

My grandmother who died before I was born.

Q: What quality do you most admire in a person?

Moral courage.

Q: What is the most interesting place you have ever visited?

Bolivia. I made a film there and I long to return to the places we filmed - from the high Andes to the Amazon forest.

Q: What would you most like to change about yourself?

I want to have a good singing voice!!

Q: What has life taught you?

Your children will never willingly do the washing up.

Q: What is the best advice anyone has ever given you?

I once tried to adopt a personal motto which I read, probably in the Reader's Digest my mum used to get: 'Face the sun and the shadows will fall behind you!' But I was too shy to live up to it.

Q: What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve done?

I'm not sure if this is outrageous but I never ever told my mum about it. I was born and spent my childhood in Niagara Falls. When I was 9 years my friends and I used to 'hike' down to the Falls area. There was a road down to where the tourist boat, 'The Maid of the Mist' docked. It was used by the people who worked on the boat. One day we discovered this road and followed it down and played on the rocks a few hundred meters from the bottom of the Falls. We had a great time jumping from rock to rock and watching the water swirl around them. I still remember the thrill of deciding to take that road down to the river.

Q: How long have you been a writer?

My first book was published in 1996.

Q: Was there a specific moment in your life when you decide to become a writer?

I loved reading but I wasn't very good at 'compositions' as they were called when I was in school. One day I wrote a story about wild horses full of flowery language. The teacher praised it and I read it out to the class. That was the beginning.

Q: Where do you do your writing?

In a small crowded study overlooking a parking lot and the back of an Indian restaurant. I wish I was one of those people who write anywhere, but I need my desk!

Q: What are the best and worst things about being an author?

Rejections from publishers are the worst things. Whiling away the hours in an imaginary world is one of the best things.

Q: Where do you get your greatest ideas from?

A small bubbling pool of goo inside my head. Also they fly in through my ear from somewhere.

Q: What do you do to combat “writers’ block”?

I get out my 'anti-writer's block rocket propelled grenade' and that usually does the job.

Q: What was your favourite book as a child?

'Pit-a-Pat the Forgetful Cat' Ask me again and I'll tell you something else.

Q: What book do you wish you had written?

His Dark Materials trilogy.

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Read! Read! Read! Enjoy words. Play with words. And don't lose the plot. (Like I do!)