So tell us a bit about your latest novel.

‘In 25 minutes I’ll be dead’  Josh tells us in the first line of Dead Boy Talking.

Lying in a pool of blood Josh knows he hasn’t got much time to think.  Yesterday he stabbed his best mate, Ranj, and now it has happened to him. In an unrelenting rush we see how decisions made in haste lead to even worse choices.   But as his life slips away the last 24 hours start to look very different and Josh wonders what did happen to his missing older brother.  He thinks about Skye – will she forgive him?  He wonders if anyone will come and find him in time, and as the snowflakes fall on the growing pool of his blood we find out what led to his situation.  We get to know the people in Josh’s life – Skye, Danny, Ranj and also Harry and his gang, the YHT- and will anyone get to Josh in time?

What was your road to publication like?

I never imagined I would be a writer, I even had a teacher, when I was 7, who wrote on my school report  ‘lacks imagination’, so if the teacher said it, it had to be true so I could never think up stories, could I?

But one day, when my own children were all school age, I started to write a picture book and draw the pictures, just for fun.  It wasn’t particularly good but I soon realised that I preferred telling the story to drawing the pictures.  I entered a local library short story competition and was amazed when I won it. I put the small winnings towards a correspondence course on writing for children.  I was halfway through the course when I sent off a story to an educational publisher and they liked it enough to offer me the chance to put ideas forward for a series for reluctant readers.  I got the contract for a series of 8 books a couple of months later.  That was in 1996 and I have now had around 60 books published for all ages from picture books to /YA and a writing handbook for aspiring writers (Writing for Children)

What is the best part about being an author?

I love being able to travel and talk about my books, to meet young readers from all over the world. When I hear that someone who never liked reading has discovered books they like, after reading one of my books, it is the best feeling in the world.  But most of all I love to disappear into a story and live as my characters, laughing and crying along with them and discovering their story.

And the worst?

There is never enough time to write all the things I want to write, and to do all the things I want to do!

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Write about something that excites you.  If you are not fascinated by the story you are telling why should anyone else be?  Make sure your characters live and breathe, get to know them and they will tell the story for you. Write as often as you can, even if you think it is not very good, keep going. When you get something written down you can go back and have fun editing it and making it better and better.  Go back and cut out the boring bits and change the way you tell parts of the story to make it more exciting or scary. 

What is your writing process like?

I often start with a single idea, a person or a place – someone having a conversation or an argument, perhaps.   With Dead Boy Talking it was the title and the first line ‘(In 25 minutes I’ll be dead’) and I had a picture in my head of a boy all on his own, having been stabbed. I could hear Josh’s voice speaking in my head.  

I usually start to write down whatever it is that has intrigued me It may be a few paragraphs or a couple of pages but I just keep on writing, and then I stop.  At this point a start to ask myself questions about who? What? Why? and where?.  I start to think about the characters and sometimes I write a character diary where a character introduces themselves to me as if they were starting a diary.  They tell me who or what bothers them, angers them or makes them happy and so I get to know them.  Often I know what will happen just before the end, what the final crisis will be but not how it will all turn out at the end or how the characters get there.  If I plan it too much I think I would get bored with the story. I like to discover what is going to happen along with the characters

Have any of your characters demanded more page space than you had originally planned?

When I was writing Dead Boy Talking I realised that Josh had no real reason to fall out with his friend Ranj and he had too nice a home life to suddenly start having so many problems. I began to realise it was all because of his brother, Gary.  Up until then I hadn’t known anything about Gary but he suddenly became very important to Josh and to the plot.

Has researching for a novel ever got you into any funny situations?

My first YA novel SPIDER tells the story of Spider, a boy who has a history of stealing cars and going joyriding. There is a bad car crash in the book and I realised I needed to find out more about what happens after a crash.  I went out with a Paramedic crew as an observer, on a Saturday nightshift, which was quite scary at times. I also had the opportunity to spend a day at the fire service training college when they were simulating car crashes and extracting the crash victims. It was very exciting and quite fascinating.

As a writer, who are your main influences?

As a child I loved CS Lewis  and the idea that you could climb into a wardrobe and climb out in another world fascinated me. Now I read a wide range of writers and all kinds of fiction.  I think I am influenced by all the books I read, in different ways. I often find myself analysing the way a book had been written.  I particularly love it when I read something that has me so engrossed that I find I am at the end of it before I start to think about what the writer was trying to do, or how they did it!

What have you read recently and loved?

I read a lot of YA novels and I have recently particularly enjoyed Cathy MacPhail’s GRASS and Anne Cassidy’s HEARTBURN

Can you tell us a bit about what you are working on just now?

I am working on another YA novel about a house fire that has been started deliberately and kills three people. Four teenagers are suspected of having started it, and subsequent fires.  But the story is really about how dangerous it can be to make snap judgements about people, not just those we don’t know, but also our friends.

Where can our readers find out more about you?

My website  www.lindastrachan.com

Bookwords Blog www.writingthebookwords.blogspot.com

Crime Central blog www.crimereading.blogspot.com