Jade: What first got you into writing and when did you start?
Linzi: Even as a little girl, I was an observer of life around me and I sat around in the corner like a sponge. I was quite a quiet child. I started writing poetry first as a teenager – very dark, sombre stuff. Then at about nineteen or twenty I started writing short stories. I also had a diary that I kept when I was nine or ten, so I just kept journals as a child and then got serious about it in my early twenties.

Jade: I read in an interview that the best piece of feedback you’ve had from your readers is that they’ve been transported to a different time and forgotten where they were. Is this what you had hoped to achieve with your novels?
Linzi: Yeah, I think reading is an escape, and at the same time it’s an experience to completely absorb yourself in. Just going from my experiences as a reader, it’s great to get lost in a book and also come away from it knowing that you learned something along the way, or you’ve gained some insight, or you have some questions that you didn’t have before about something important, or not important. So the notion of actually transporting a reader to another time and place is definitely something that I do and enjoy. That’s the kind of book I enjoy so I think I write what I enjoy which is an absolute immersion into another world.

Jade: With more and more novels being adapted into films, is that something you would want to happen to either of your books?
Linzi: Yeah, I write very visually. It’s almost like I have a screen in front of me and I actually see the action, as it were. It’s just always as I’ve written. I’ve been told by a lot of people, particularly with Gypsies, [The Year The Gypsies Came] that it’s very filmic. Of course I would be thrilled to have either one of them done for film. I think they would be good stories, both of them. I would love to see somebody put them up on the big screen.

Jade: Do you have a favourite book?
Linzi: I love the classics in many ways but I think my favourite book is A Moveable Feast by [Ernest] Hemingway. I think I relate to it because it’s about his really lean, struggling years in Paris through the freezing cold. It truly resonates with me in a big way, I love that book. It’s not one of Hemingway’s better-known works, but definitely my favourite.

Jade: Which author is your biggest writing influence?
Linzi: I have a few. I was a big fan of Alice Hoffman for a long time. Even though she writes quite differently than I do, but I think I read all of her books. Alice Monroe – I like the Alice’s I guess! I think in some ways [F. Scott] Fitzgerald, being the observer he is definitely a big influence on my work. I think those are probably the three.

Jade: Do you ever get writers’ block, and if so how do you overcome it?
Linzi: I get writers’ block every day! It’s funny; I’m one of those writers’ that when I’m writing I’m fine. To get me to sit down I’d rather be sweeping the floor or taking the animals for a walk – I’ve got lots of dogs and cats. I’m not a writer who sits all day and writes. I write in two to three hour spurts and that’s it. I don’t know why that is but that’s pretty much how I write. Then I get up and do something and then if I’m lucky I’ll get back to it but often my writing day is three hours and not more.


Jade: Do you have any new projects coming up at all?
Linzi: I’ve just started to formulate a new Young Adult book. I’m working on a notion which is headed in a few directions. I thought I wouldn’t set another book in South Africa but I think I have a fairly interesting idea for it which I’m not quite ready to talk about, but just that it’ll be Young Adult and fairly dark – my books are dark, I don’t write light stuff. I’ve also been toying with an adult novel.

Lily: When you were growing up, was the Apartheid in South Africa an important event in your life and that’s what influenced you to write Ruby Red?
Linzi: Yeah, I think that Apartheid was ever present because we lived with it in our faces every day. Blacks weren’t allowed to ride the same buses, go to the same schools, sit in the same restaurants, and because I came from a white South African family, it was something that we were aware of. I was more amongst the minority that thought there was something wrong with the Apartheid in terms of a way of life for blacks. I definitely felt very strongly that expressing and putting down on paper, through the eyes of a young girl, how we perceived it as children. I think it was equally important for young black writers to write about South Africa in that same way, from their perspective.

Lily: Did you find it difficult writing in the past?
Linzi: No, I actually think I do better drawing from history and from my memories rather than from present day. Life, I think that’s pretty much my style. I think I’ve known for a long time that with Gypsies, [The Year The Gypsies Came] I really wanted to write about a particular time that definitely harkened back, in some ways, to my own childhood, although it’s not autobiographical. I think with Ruby [Ruby Red] I felt so strongly. I mean we have books about the Soweto Riots and I think with Ruby, I really wanted to talk about a particularly time, and an uprising of children which was very significant. Not a lot of people know about outside of South Africa. I think it’s easier having history to draw on and I had to research a lot with Ruby Red, and Gypsies too but I think it’s definitely like going back into my old history books and history lessons. Remembering it all and putting it down into fictionalised form.

Lily: What was your favourite book when you were a teenager?
Linzi: I was a huge Enid Blyton fan – I loved her books, I really did. I was definitely a Judy Bloom fan, but I grew up with Enid Blyton in South Africa and I followed all of her books. Secret Seven, The Enchanted Forest so I was a big fan of hers.

Lily: At school, did you know you wanted to become a writer?
Linzi: I think that I knew that it was my strength. I don’t know that I knew conclusively that I was going to be a writer. I thought I was going to rescue animals. I do that as well, but I think it started to become more and more clear to me when I got to about nineteen or twenty that I knew it was something I wanted to pursue.

Lily: Do you like to read other books whilst writing your own to help your own books come along?
Linzi: No, and that’s my one cardinal rule. I actually don’t. I can go for very long periods of time when I’m in the thick of writing unless it’s really far a move from the subject matter that I’m writing. I don’t read anything that is in any way similar. I read very little when I’m writing; I find that you don’t even realise that you could be potentially influenced and sucked in another direction. So I find I’ll do some reading and then get to my writing but I rarely mix the two.