1 Space Demons (still, in the view of ACHUKA, by far and away the best Virtual Reality fiction) was an extraordinary debut novel. How did you, at that time, develop such an awareness of the computer games scene?

I'd spent a lot of time watching kids, my son in particular, play computer games. We didn't have a computer then so he used to go to arcades and delis to play, and I used to go and hover in the background. Order I was fascinated by the way the kids played, and the physical level of their involvement, and also by the stories themselves. They seemed so quirky and strange (the plot of Donkey Kong for instance). I was also impressed and slightly shocked by their violence. I started writing my first novel which was going to be a fantasy adventure called Waking/Dreaming. The computer game arrived in it quite by accident, as I was writing. I've discovered since that this is perfectly typical of the way I write. I never know exactly what it is I want to write about until I start writing, and it often (usually) turns out to be not quite what I expected. When I wrote Space Demons there were very few virtual reality novels, it was still a very new idea, but now of course there are heaps of them.

2 When writing Space Demons did you already know that the story would turn into a trilogy?

I always wanted to write more about these characters, so I knew I would write a second one. Then I wanted to find out more about the Japanese aspect of the story, so the third one came into being. But the trilogy was not planned in an overall way. Rather one story just led into the next, more episodically. Order And getting to Japan, doing the research and feeling confident to attempt a book about another culture and country took much longer than I'd anticipated, so there's rather a long gap between the first book and the third.

3 At that time, now over a dozen years ago, were you writing with the aim of becoming what you are now, a full-time children's author?

I started writing partly because I needed a job. I needed to earn some money, even more so when my husband retired early in 1994, and we still had three children at school and university. I was very lucky to get quite a lot of funding from the Literature Board of the Australia Council in the early years of my career, which helped me to get establishd as a full-time writer. Order Other people early on told me not to expect to make any money from children's books, but I have been able to support my family from it. But the need to do so is what drove me to diversify so much: to write plays as well as novels, to try lots of different forms of children's books, and to do quite a lot of speaking tours, school visits and so on.

4 Your style of characterisation has many attributes found more normally in adult fiction. Have you written for adults as well as for children?

I wrote one short story for an adult anthology a couple of years ago. Apart from that, no. I came to Australia as an adult migrant. I think I was really fortunate to find my voice as a children's writer in a new and totally unfamiliar culture which I had to learn through my own children as they grew up in it.

5 Well-observed relationships between parents and children feature in many of your books. The adults are as well drawn as the younger characters, which is rarely the case with children's fiction. I think, especially of the grandmother and mother (very different but equally vivid characters) in Foxspell.

Character is what interests me above all. And relationships between characters. All my work springs from these people who come into my head and take up life there. Order I sometimes wonder if it came from my very unpredictable mother whose moods I had to read from an early age. People sometimes accuse me of being psychic as I know what they are thinking or feeling, but it's just that I am very sensitive to body language (like Joella in Galax-Arena), and I love studying people.

6 When you were over in the UK in the summer of 1998 ACHUKA heard you speaking at an outdoor event and was amazed to discover that you had gone out at night, on all fours, in the bush, during the writing of Foxspell, the better to understand the life sensations of a wild animal. Do you commonly undertake such a direct line of 'research' and if so can you give any other examples.

This was probably the most extreme example! But writing for me is quite physical. It's rather like improvisation in theatre (which I love doing, by the way). I played a lot of acting-out games as a child - dramatic adventures with lots of characters and exciting plots in which my friends and I would be animals, or Greek gods or Norse heroes or Red Indians - and when I write now I do the same thing. I act out each of my characters. It helps if I physically do the things they are doing to a certain extent. I often speak their dialogue aloud as I write too. I live inside their skin, animal or human, and see the world through their eyes.

7 Your chapter book, Pure Chance, about horse ownership, is said to be based on a horse once owned by one of your three children. To what extent did/do the experiences of raising a family affect your work as an author of children's books?

Pure Chance is almost the only time I have used part of my children's lives so directly. Order Usually I am a little shy of doing this. I feel their lives are their own story. But I certainly used the background of their daily lives - their language, their likes and dislikes, hopes and fears and so on. I was afraid that when they left home I would be out of touch with that age group. What happened was that first I wrote for much younger children, out of my memories as a mother. Now I am writing more timeless and ageless novels. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are adult novels, but I'm not sure that they are children's books either.

8 As you've said, in addition to novels for older readers--Foxspell and Under The Cat's Eye, for example--you have written a good deal for very young children as well. If your publisher told you that from now on you must concentrate on just one of these audiences, which would it be?

At this stage I would want to write for the older age group, but that is because the next ideas in the queue in my head are for that age. Order (I consider Under the Cat's Eye to be for around 8-12 year olds, by the way. I've never thought of it as a ya novel.) I love writing for the younger age group but in many ways, apart from the fact that the books are shorter, it is much harder, much more of a mental effort.

9 There is some worry in the UK children's books market that a recent year-on-year expansion of sales will be reversed when the under-15 population goes into decline (due to a drop in the birth-rate) at the turn of the century. How do population fluctuations affect the market in Australia?

I don't have any useful statistics at my fingertips on this, but I feel the market is changing radically. I think it's coinciding with the end of 'childhood'. I feel the 'literary' novel for children is quite endangered in Australia. Publishers seem to have turned to series to combat the flow of imported material, Disney, film tie-ins, and the long-established books like Beatrix Potter, AA Milne, and Thomas the Tank Engine. When authors write for series, they tend to lose their identity and their individuality. Australian children's writers have had ten or fifteen years of reasonable sales into schools, but I see this dwindling too as schools' funding is cut. We are also facing the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax in the future which if applied to children's books will depress the market even further.

10 Can you describe your workspace, your writing 'tools' and the shape of a typical writing day?

I work in a small study with two desks, a filing cabinet, three book cases and a bed, on the desks are a fax machine, lap top computer and printer. I work on the computer, and type straight onto it. I write my first draft with no real plan, but usually several years of thinking about the story and the characters, key scenes in my head, bits of dialogue and so on. I write the key scenes first and then work out how they fit together. At the end of the first draft I make outlines on big sheets of paper. I put the plot down one side and the characters along the top, and then map out the whole work visually. Then I write another draft, and after that a couple more. I aim to write at least 2000 words a day, and work from 9.00 till 12.30. In the afternoon I usually rest and read between 1.00 and 3.00. Then I do a little more work, not writing, but maybe editing or proof reading, answering letters and so on, till 5.00.

From 5.00 - 7.00 I have a walk, study some Japanese, do research. I try to carry a notebook around with me to write ideas down, but at the moment I've got too many ideas for this lifetime, so I'm not actively seeking them any more! However, things constantly occur to me at odd times and I like to capture them.

11 How long does a full-length novel for older readers take you to write?

I think I would allow two years from when I start writing until publication. I like to give things time to brew nicely before showing them to anyone. A novel seems to have its own life, and it is a mistake for me to try and hurry it.

12 How have e-mail and the Internet helped or affected you as a writer?

I like using email, it's very useful with overseas publishers, especially in the UK as the times are not very convenient for phoning. I'm not sure about researching on the Internet as when I try it I get hopelessly sidetracked. I'm not very good at it, I suspect. BUt I don't think I would be able to live where I do (in a small coastal town) without all the electronic genies that help me out.

13. By and large, Australian authors are very well-represented in UK lists (Kelleher, Jinks, Dubosarsky, Kline, Gletizman, Jennings, Simons, Fienberg, yourself), but is there any fellow writer that you would like to see more widely known?

David Metzenthen, Wendy Orr, Libby Gleeson, Eleanor Nilsson, Nadia Wheatley, just to name a few.

14 Are you able to tell ACHUKA what your latest book is about. When is it due for UK publication?

I am writing a sequel to Galax-Arena. Its title is Terra-Farma. I don't know about UK publication yet. Galax-Arena (which I consider my best work) is out of print in the UK. [But available from amazon.com--see below.]

Order

15. Children's Literature: An Illustrated History (OUP 1995) says this about you: "Gillian Rubenstein (sic!) is one of the Australian leaders in experimental fiction for children..." This seems, to a UK reader, an odd description given that, in contrast to, for example, Morris Gleitzman, your narrative style is neither obviously experimental nor obviously Australian. What, if anything, do YOU think you have in common with other contemporary Australian children's authors?

I think some of my work not available in the UK at the moment is more Australian and more obviously experimental. I'm thinking of Beyond the Labyrinth, Galax-Arena, the Jake and Pete stories and the poem picture books. Maybe original is a better word than experimental. My concerns in these books include invention of language, writing against stereotypes and a sort of anti-sentimentality.

I don't think I do have a lot in common with other contemporary Australian writers. I've always felt in a group of one, on my own. Partly because Australian is a second language for me, partly because I DIDN'T grow up here and I can't pretend I did. I feel as if I belong to England, Canada, Africa, Australia, and am now making strong links with Japan. So I suppose I feel international as much as either British or Australian.

16. Continuing that line, a review of Under The Cat's Eye, in Viewpoint Spring 1997, picking up on your author's note at the front of the book, considered that its narrative tone "owes something to the work of such authors as C S Lewis, John Masefield and Robert Louis Stevenson..." This certainly puts you in the mainstream of British children's fiction, and provokes the question to what extent do you consider yourself an Australian author?

Under The Cat's Eye is not at all typical of my work. I've always felt a sense of loss, because of not being able to draw on the rich myths and legends and history of Britain which I was brought up on. Foxspell is kind of about this. Under The Cat's Eye was an attempt to write out of that side of my persona - the English child - which is why it is set in a zero zone, not in Australia. But I felt quite inhibited while writing this novel, in a way that I don't feel now I am back in my own weird version of Australia in Terra-Farma.

17. How important to you (as a writer) was your Oxford University experience?

Oxford was terribly important for many reasons. Studying languages gave me a tremendous feeling for style. I spent a lot of time working with the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and in fact wanted to be a playwright long before I started writing novels. And my French tutor, Rhoda Sutherland, saw a writer in me, long before I knew it myself, and gave me invaluable encouragement.

18. Are you a person who has periodic special interests and if so what are they currently?

I'm fascinated by Japan at the moment. I've been studying the language for four or five years, and have just received an AsiaLink Fellowship to spend three months there researching my next novel, which is going to be a fantasy with a Japanese background, or possibly an alternative history. I do get these periodic passions about things. The world is so fascinating and life is so short!