Authors Electric

Most of us have teachers who remain in our memories for one reason or another. I have two very different ones, who both had a powerful effect on my writing.             I was an only child, and my parents were the same age as everyone else’s grandparents. We moved house several times, too, so I frequently had to try and fit into a new school with some clear disadvantages. My father was Polish, so no one could pronounce my surname, let alone spell Krzewinski. He’d been a headmaster, and so had strong views on teaching, but no idea of the British education system. In Poland, teachers were revered and their word was law. And on the whole, if they were anything like my dad, they had the interests of the child at heart. I was also left-handed, which was still viewed as a bit odd, and I was small for my age which, with a July birthday, wasn’t ideal. In addition to all this I was particularly good at art and English, and hopeless at s...

I started out as a radio writer, doing plays for Afternoon Theatre and a short series called Just Before Midnight , one of which I re-wrote for the stage. I also penned short stories for both radio and magazines. Writers sometimes feel that things have got a bit stale, so I did an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa, which was terrific fun. After that I became a poet for a bit. The need to make some money (and on the suggestion of my agent) I started writing rather more racy stuff under a pseudonym, initially in short story anthologies and later in novels for – shall we say – the more adventurous female reader. Eventually I was told there was too much plot in my stories, and not enough of the other, so I did a complete about-turn to children’s books, which have been my most successful venture. I’ve also done a couple of straight adult novels. This means that I have mixed in many different writing worlds, and they’re not the same by any means. They do, of course, change over the ye...