About Sue Limb
Her passions, apart from her writing include natural history,
horticulture and agriculture, travel, architecture, music, politics and
painting. Sue’s fictional creations have become inspirational to
children and teenagers all over the world, providing hours of
entertainment curled up on the sofa and no shortage of chit chat in the
playground and the common room as well.
For 7+ year olds there’s:
RUBY
ROGERS - Ruby wants to be a gangster when she grows up. Not a horrid
violent one, obviously - more a kind of female Robin Hood living in the
treetops, preferably with a troupe of monkeys, a species Ruby adores.
Her human family consists of a teasing eccentric older brother Joe, a
Geography teacher father who has no sense of direction, and a midwife
mum who regularly falls asleep on the sofa instead of providing lavish
suppers. Ruby's best friend Yasmin is a Muslim, though not so you'd
notice. Yasmin loves dolls and clothes and is shrewd about
relationships. She and Ruby have a fiery but devoted friendship and
through Yasmin's older sister Zerrin, Ruby gets to know Holly
Helvellyn, Gothic eccentric and Ruby's ultimate role model.
For 12+ year olds there’s:
ZOE
AND CHLOE Chloe and Zoe are best friends, unless there are boys around,
of course in which case it’s every girl for herself. Deliciously
comedic, the obsessions, embarrassments, disasters and joys of teen
life are captured with pitch-perfect comic timing.
As well as:
GIRL,
15... Life can be trying when your best friend is a goddess, you are a
woeful underachiever, and your love-life is as messy and as mucky as a
sticky quagmire of mud. Painfully spot on, the Girl... series reveals
with Technicolor precision the agony and the ecstasy (and the
embarrassment) of being a teenager. With razor-sharp observation and
deadpan humour we are offered a privileged peek at the life of Jess,
charming, but most definitely insane. This series has a unique voice
and humour that will make you want to read it again and again - if you
can bring yourself to put the books down in the first place.
A Q & A with Sue Limb
Q. Where do you get inspiration from?
A. Everyday life:
things I overhear on buses, embarrassing memories from my own teenage
years, books I like (Jane Austen sometimes). As you go through life all
your experiences form a kind of compost heap and sometimes something
beautiful grows out of it. And sometimes something ugly!
Q. Is it better to write about things you know or write from imagination?
A.
I always set my books in places familiar to me. Otherwise it would be
like taking an exam in Physics without ever opening a textbook! I
admire writers such as Philip Pullman and J.K. Rowling who can let
their imaginations fly into the most amazing fantasy. But I do like my
own arena: everyday comedy.
Q. Do you write for you or for an imaginary reader?
A.
I think I write to amuse myself and to keep myself interested in a
character. I’m always delighted and rather surprised when I hear from
readers that they’ve enjoyed a book. When I was younger, if I was stuck
with a book I used to imagine I was writing it as a kind of letter to
amuse somebody I fancied. I suppose this would make me pull out all the
stops and try my very best to impress! But nowadays I have become a bit
more chilled out about life. I don't get wild crushes these days,
although sometimes I dream that famous old men are kind to me…(Bill
Clinton, David Attenborough, if you really want to know.)
Q. What do you come up with first the plot or the characters?
A.
If a character is interesting, and she or he has a plan or an agenda,
and then obstacles crop up which interfere with the plan, the plot will
take care of itself.
Q. How do you plan a story?
A.
Sometimes I just have a character with an ambition - the ambition can
be very minor - and then just take it from there. I think it's always
useful to have surprises in a story - somebody behaving very
differently from normal because of a secret reason....
Q. Should you know the end before you start writing?
A.
No! I never do. Many writers feel their characters take over and grab
the steering wheel! I've only just completely rewritten a book (Zoe and
Chloe: Out to Lunch) because the outline I had originally sketched out
didn't work, and I realised I had to start at the beginning again and
move one of the characters across a whole continent so he could
participate in the story more.
Q. What do you think is the essence of a good story?
A.
It should unfold with surprises, grip you and involve you. The
character or characters should be interesting people you would like to
meet. You should, when reading it, be unaware of your immediate
surroundings and find the book really hard to put down.
Q. Who should you ask to read over your work and take advice from?
A.
If you're still at school, your English teacher. I have editors at my
publishers who do that kind of thing for me. My daughter (who is 22 so
was recently a teenager) offers helpful advice when she thinks my
choice of words is too old-fashioned.
Q. What is the first step to getting your work published?
A. Send it to publishers and agents, and if it keeps getting rejected, just keep on sending it.
Q. How should you present your work to publishers?
A.
Follow the advice in The Writers and Artists' Yearbook. Always present
your manuscript double spaced and only on one side of the paper!
Q. What’s the best advice anyone has given you in your writing career?
A.
"Give your characters difficulties and don't try too hard to be funny
all the time." Oh – and never stop reading, and as you read, notice how
other writers are working.
More About Sue Limb
