Jenny Nimmo

Jenny Nimmo

About Author

Jenny Nimmo was born in Windsor and grew up on a free-range poultry farm on the Berkshire/Surrey border. She now lives in a converted watermill in Wales, where she has lived for 26 years. She has tried to learn Welsh and while she is not fluent in Welsh, her three children are. Her husband, David, is a painter and print-maker.

For as long as she can remember, Jenny has loved books. She has been writing for thirty years, after training as an actor, then a floor manager and finally a tv director. "I always believed I would write, but not that I would be an author," she says.

Her first book was 'The Bronze Trumpeter' published in 1975. She feels passionately that every child should have access to as many books as they want. Jenny enjoys writing about magic because it is inexplicable and unpredictable, and anything can happen.

She says, "Writing and thinking about writing take up more time than I could ever have imagined. I don't have many hours left for anything else. At night I read for hours: biographies, travel books, history books, classics and contemporary fiction, but never fantasy. After a day spent writing it, I need to escape with something completely different. That doesn't mean I don't love it when I return to it every morning."

In 1986 her book The Snow Spider won the Smarties Grand Prix, and in 1987 it was awarded the Tir na n-Og by the Welsh Arts Council. The Rinaldi Ring, was chosen as Guardian Book of the Week and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and received a commendation.

Jenny's latest series is The Children of The Red King quintet.

To follow is an interview with Jenny Nimmo, who featured as Author of the Month for ReadingZone in June 2006:

"I began making notes for The Children of the Red King in about 1992. I was responding to requests for a fourth book to follow The Snow Spider trilogy. I wanted my new hero to be descended from an African magician, rather than a Welsh magician. I felt this would connect him to the wider world, a place where mankind began, in fact.

I always planned to write five books about The Children of the Red King. I like the number five. We have five digits on each hand and each foot. Twice five is ten. The perfect number, in my opinion, for its simplicity in Math. So the king would have ten children, five good and five bad.
My favourite book in the series, so far, is 'The Hidden King'.

It has taken me exactly a year to write each book. I try to write every day, but it doesn't always work out that way.

When people first started to compare my books with Harry Potter I was at first shocked, then upset - after all I had written about a boy magician ten years previously - but then I came to realize that Harry was so famous people couldn't help comparing him with every other book about magic - or schools - so I became resigned. However I was particularly cross when someone on the Internet suggested I had stolen the names Moon and Pettigrew. I had already used the name Moon in a previous book, and Miss Pettigrew was my former English teacher. I rarely look into sites about my books now, except for the few I know I can trust.

Exploring ways to give the endowed children their special powers was great fun. So far I haven't deliberately left out an endowment. I'm keeping several in reserve to the next three books. Yes, there will be a trilogy to follow the quintet.

When I write fantasy I take myself back to the time when I was beginning to enjoy reading for myself. I always preferred books of legends, myths and fairytales. They set me free from a world where I wasn't always happy.

When I was six I was sent to a boarding school very like Bloors Academy. It was cold, dark and scary. My children were always begging me to write about it, but it wasn't until they left home that I felt I could re-create it. I feel rather mean, sending Charlie there."

Author link

www.jennynimmo.me.uk

Interview

THE SECRET KINGDOM

April 2011

Published by Egmont Press

Jenny Nimmo answers some readers' questions:


Q: Charlie Bone and the Red Knight was the last book in the Charlie Bone series - have you missed writing about Charlie Bone?

A: I didn't think I would miss Charlie quite as much as I do. When I'd finished the last book in the series I felt that I needed a break from Charlie, but after a year of being without him I long to know what he is up to.


Q: Why did you decide to write a prequel to the series? (The book can also be read by itself.)

A: With each new book that I wrote in the series, I became more and more interested in Charlie's ancestor. Eventually I decided that I had to find out how and why he left Africa and came to Britain, and while I was finding out, naturally, I wanted to write it all down.

Q: Which of Timoken's magical gifts would you choose for yourself, the ring, the cloak or the alixir?

A: If I had to choose just one of Timoken's magical gifts it would be the cloak. I wouldn't want to remain young while my friends and relatives grew old, and I'm not sure I would want magical fingers.

Q: For those who have not read the series, what is Timoken's role in the Charlie Bone books?

A: Timoken's only role in the Charlie Bone books is as a spirit that lives in a tree, who will one day help Charlie to find his father. In the first five books the Red King appears in the prologues, usually in connection with something magical that later comes into the book.

Q: Who is your favourite creature in The Secret Kingdom?

A: I have always loved the leopards that eventually became cats, and I had no idea that I would ever write about a camel. He just appeared quite suddenly in 'The Secret Kingdom', and as the story continued I found that I had fallen under his spell. So Gabar has to be my favourite.

Q: What draws you to write fantasy adventures?

A: I'm not sure why I write fantasy adventure. I think it must have something to do with all the legends, myths and fairytles I read as a child. Whenever I try to write non-fantasy, a magical element always begins to creep into my work. So I've given up trying to avoid it, and just sit back (or forward to be more accurate) and enjoy it.

Q: What has been your biggest adventure in life?

A: Perhaps my biggest adventure was going to live in Italy for a while. My time there gave me the inspiration for my first novel.

Q: How did you first come to writing?

A: I had written stories and poems since I was very young, but never thought I would become a professional writer. But then I worked on the BBC children's programme, 'Jackanory', and I often had to write my own versions of legends and fairytales. I began to make them up. People believed in them, and I realized I could probably write the book that I'd been thinking of ever since I left Italy.

Q: What are you writing now?

A: I am now working on the second book about Timoken. In this book he has arrived in Britain.As yet it hasn't got a title.

Q: How does your writing day go?

A: After breakfast I go into my writing-room and either write or think or both; sometimes I find I can't think or write, so I go out for some fresh air, and when I come back I usually find that I can do all the things I couldn't do before.

Q: What do you do to relax?

A: I walk, or run or dig the garden. Before I go to sleep at night I allow myself to read a book, that's the best relaxation of all. If I began to read during the day I'd never get any work done.

Author's Titles