12 Curly Questions with author Maree Coote

1. What's your hidden talent?

Cooking

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Cruella de Vil of Hell Hall, from The Hundred and One Dalmatians, by Dodie Smith. Larger than life, stylishly evil, perverse, entitled, greedy, vain and shameless, Cruella is also graphically arresting — with hair half black and half white. She’s also a woman, and it’s time for more women villains.

3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (alive or dead)
Tom Stoppard, Lewis Carroll, Dr Seuss, Edward Lear, Germaine Greer.

10 Quirky Questions with author Amelia Mellor

1. What's your hidden talent?

I’m not really the type to hide my talents – I’m more of a ‘look at what I can do!’ kind of person. But people are often surprised to find that for someone so entrenched in the world of words, I’m pretty good at visual arts and crafts as well. I recently crafted a set of potion bottles as props to promote Oceanforged using old perfume bottles, epoxy resin and alcohol inks. I hand-paint wooden toys for the children in my life. Lately I’ve been collecting sea pottery from the beach to eventually make a mosaic.

10 Quirky Questions with author Margaret Wild

1. What's your hidden talent?

I would like to say levitation or time-travelling, but, alas, I’ll have to settle for an endless capacity for playing Scrabble.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?

Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair by William Thackeray. She is clever, resourceful, selfish, 
remorseless, resilient and fascinating. I reread Vanity Fair every five years or so just for the pleasure of encountering Becky and her shenanigans yet again.

10 Quirky Questions with author Margaret Wild

1. What's your hidden talent?

I would like to say levitation or time-travelling, but, alas, I’ll have to settle for an endless capacity for playing Scrabble.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair by William Thackeray. She is clever, resourceful, selfish, remorseless, resilient and fascinating, I reread Vanity Fair every five years or so just for the pleasure of encountering Becky and her shenanigans yet again.

10 Quirky Questions with author Katrina Roe

1. What's your hidden talent?

I’m great at finding things that nobody else in my family can find. Oh and I make a mean cup of tea. Seriously, you should try my tea.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Dolores Umbridge. She is the villain I love to hate. She’s just like the mean girls at school who pretended to be nice while stabbing you in the back.

10 Quirky Questions with author/illustrator/designer Anna McGregor

1. What's your hidden talent?

My arms are ‘double-jointed’ and I can bend them in some weird ways. Is that a talent?

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
The Evil Queen in Snow White. I find powerful female villains exciting and complex.

3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (alive or dead)
Roald Dahl, Julia Donaldson, Carson Ellis, Jon Klassen and Edward Gorey.

10 Quirky Questions with author Christopher Cheng

1. What's your hidden talent?

I used to play the piano and guitar well (separately, not together... I'm not that talented) and I used to sing!

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Mine is not a WHO (Dr.) it's a what... a DARLEK

3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (alive or dead)
More than a few authors and illustrators have feasted within these walls so these are five who haven’t:
William Shakespeare; Agatha Christie; Charles Dickens; CS Lewis; Marcia Williams (feasting at Marcia’s abode has been exquisite on many occasions so it would be awesome to do the same here. And I would cook).

10 Quirky Questions with author/illustrator Inda Ahmad Zahri

1. What's your hidden talent?
Juggling household objects. I learned to juggle from friends at uni who even gifted me a set of juggling balls one year. I’ve since lost them, but found that juggling things around the house or from the pantry is just as fun. My favourites are onions, as they have a lovely way of peeling off midair.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Miss Trunchbull from Matilda by Roald Dahl, because she is so committed to her villainy! She is confident and proud, inspiring (even if she inspires fear) and cares so deeply about crushing souls that she embodies it from head to toe.  

10 Quirky Questions with author/illustrator Jess Racklyeft

1. What's your hidden talent?
Growing wild (ok, messy) gardens!

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
It would have to be a Dahl villain like Agatha Trunchbull or Veruca Salt. So much character they dripped off the page and into your dreams.

3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (alive or dead)
Well, now I feel like Roald Dahl should come, and some friends like Anna Walker, Davina Bell, Anden Wilder and Claire Saxby.

10 Quirky Questions with author Lana Spasevski

1. What's your hidden talent?
I’ve recently started making bread, short-crust pastry, pasta and anything that has a dough that needs to be made from scratch. After working in food marketing for over a decade and now on a kids’ book series all about food, I’ve been inspired to take more risks in the kitchen and upskill!

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
The White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is such a fascinating villain. I love wintertime and who wouldn’t want to have access to a magical potion that creates enchanting foods like hot chocolate and Turkish delights. Except I would use this magical potion for good causes like creating bottomless pits of writing snacks.

10 Quirky Questions with author Lana Spasevski

1. What's your hidden talent?
I’ve recently started making bread, short-crust pastry, pasta and anything that has a dough that needs to be made from scratch. After working in food marketing for over a decade and now on a kids’ book series all about food, I’ve been inspired to take more risks in the kitchen and upskill!

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
The White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is such a fascinating villain. I love wintertime and who wouldn’t want to have access to a magical potion that creates enchanting foods like hot chocolate and Turkish delights. Except I would use this magical potion for good causes like creating bottomless pits of writing snacks!

10 Quirky Questions with author Jo Dabrowski

1. What's your hidden talent?
Making rice. I can get it really light and fluffy. There’s nothing worse than stodgy rice.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Annie Wilkes in Stephen King’s Misery. Who hasn’t wanted to hobble an author?

3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (alive or dead)
Nina Stibbe and Nora Ephron - I love funny women. Mo Willems and Shinsuke Yoshitake - my favourite picture book authors. Richard Osman - I haven’t read all his books; I’m just a huge fan of Pointless. I’d serve my deliciously fluffy rice and, if they didn’t like it, I’d hobble them.

10 Quirky Questions with author Libby Hathorn

1. What's your hidden talent?
Inadvertently killing every rose bush that I hopefully plant!

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Count Dracula

3.You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (alive or dead)
William Shakespeare (geinus writer poet playwright), Judith Wright (poet extraordinaire), Maggie O’Farrell (Hamnet), May Gibbs (Snugglepot and Cuddlepie), Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), Alice Munro (short story).

10 Quirky Questions with author Penny Harrison

1. What's your hidden talent?
I am an excellent daydreamer and am also very talented at hiding it. I do this by disguising it as listening intently, meditation, research, gardening, you name it.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
It would have to be the Wicked Witch of the West, from The Wizard of Oz. She's so deliciously evil in her obsession to steal the silver shoes from Dorothy. I love that she carries an umbrella, instead of a broomstick, and is afraid of the dark, as well as water.

10 Quirky Questions with author Naomi Woodward

1. What is your hidden talent?
My hidden talent is telling extremely long jokes with terrible punchlines! Don't talk to me at a party because you'll never get those 15 minutes of your life back.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
It is an extremely close call between Jadis from The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis, and King Haggard from The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle.

10 Quirky Questions with author Deborah Abela

1. What's your hidden talent?
I am a brown belt in Judo. So watch out everyone... I’m also very short, so that may not be as scary as it sounds.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
I love Count Olaf from A Series of Unfortunate Events. He’s so mean and wicked and has no idea of how unfunny he really is, which of course makes him hilarious.

10 Quirky Questions with author Fiona Wood

1. What's your hidden talent?
I am my family’s handy person. I’m the keeper of the tool box, the electric drill etc. I love fixing things.

10 Quirky Questions with author Katrina Nannestad

1. What's your hidden talent?
Tickling dogs’ tummies. I’m so good at it, I have two settings – one that puts them to sleep, the other that makes them do that funny thing where they kick their back leg in the air.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Miss Kaminski from Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy (by Karen Foxlee). She’s beautiful, polite and helpful, but she keeps getting Ophelia’s name wrong and you just know that something about her is not quite right and… Well, I can’t say too much or I’ll give the story away.

3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (alive or dead)
Dr Seuss because I like to think he would talk in rhyme all evening and would be totally honest about the food – for instance, if I served Brussels sprouts, he’d roar: ‘I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere. I do not like those Brussels sprouts. Scoop them up and toss them out!’

10 Quirky Questions with author Jackie French

1. What's your hidden talent?
I can milk an echidna. (Do not try this).

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
Confession time: I don't believe in villains, and can't quite believe in any of them. The people who cause the greatest misery may be misguided, ignorant, confused, have their good sides, or be psychopaths or sociopaths. The only psychopath I have known well never truly loved anyone, even herself. She was a victim as much as any of the many others she hurt. I mostly read books without villains, except maybe Violet Sepotho in The Ladies Detective Agency Series: beautiful, manipulative and sashaying from fraud to fraud, but as she never succeeds, I'm not sure she's a real villain. Real villains succeed, at least 'til the end of the book.

10 Quirky Questions with author Mary Anastasiou

 

1. What's your hidden talent?
Most people wouldn’t know that I sing, or at least I used to. I recorded back-up vocals for a kids' album when I was eight and my first demo tape when I was 12.

2. Who is your favourite literary villain and why?
The Big Bad Wolf of course. Who else gets to eat both Grandma and the Three Little Pigs in two children’s classics?

3. You're hosting a literary dinner party, which five authors would you invite? (Alive or dead)
Edgar Allan Poe, Hafez (Persian Poet), Margaret Atwood, Roald Dahl, JK Rowling