Kathryn Cave

Q: What were you like at school?

Shy

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

A poet. An actress. A hairdresser. A hermit. Biggles.

Q: Which three words describe you best?

Serious, hopeful, creative

Q: What is your favourite word?

Grace

Q: What makes you cringe?

My own carelessness, often.

Q: What are you afraid of?

Dragons

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

Lunchtime

Q: What is your most treasured possession?

What's in my head.

Q: What do you do as a hobby?

I draw. And I read a lot.

Q: What strange habits do you have?

They aren't strange!

Q: What’s your favourite food?

Gingerbread

Q: What do you day dream about?

Faraway places: mountains, rivers, wild coastlines.

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

I'm not telling.

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

Artist.

Q: Do you feel younger or older than your current age?

Younger by a century or so.

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

An Australian writer called Elliot Perlman. He writes with such pace and wit that I'd be very surprised if he wasn't good to talk to.

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

Awareness

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

To lighten up.

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

My faint-heartedness.

Q: What has life taught you?

To smile and to open my eyes.

Q: How long have you been a writer?

I always wrote a lot - letters and journals and so forth. I wrote my first book in my early thirties.

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

I don't think I ever decided.

Q: Where do you do your writing?

Anywhere.

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

Best part: no one can tell me what to do - autonomy. Worst part: no one can tell me what to do - so I get lost or stuck.

Q: Which of your own characters do you most identify with?

Something Else. But I expect I'm more like Septimus Similon or even Captain Razumov on a bad day. We are in all our characters to some extent.

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

Do something else.

Q: What was your favourite book as a child?

The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White.

Q: What book do you wish you had written?

Three Dollars by Elliot Perlman: it's written with pace, insight and honesty, and it's very funny too. Otherwise, Middlemarch.

Q: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Just do it. We get better with practice.