Jubilee Books: When did you first realise that you wanted to become a writer?
David Almond: When I was a kid, when I was pretty young, I was probably about 6 or 7 when I first started to think consciously about it. I used to go to the library and see the books on the shelf and want to have books like them, I used to write books and little stories when I was a kid.

What is it about writing that appealed to you?
Everything about it, the feel of books, the look of books, I loved reading, I had an uncle who used to print a local newspaper and my mother said even as a baby I used to point and laugh at the pages coming off his printing machine, so it's probably just loving print I think.

At the start of your books there's always a few paragraphs about your family and the place where you grew up. How important is this period in your life in affecting both the settings and the subjects you write about?
It's really pretty central now, more and more I use the landscape that was around me when I was growing up, and a book like Counting Stars definitely grew straight out of my childhood in a small town on Tyneside, and the way people spoke, the stories they told, the different kinds of characters that were walking around the streets are really important to me. The history of the North East, the local landscape, North Eastern mythology and folklore, it's all very, very important to me.

Your books are very specifically set in the North East of England both in their settings and language. I know that your books have been pretty successful in America, have you been surprised by this?
I suppose I was quite surprised, but then I've done two American tours and the books are doing really well there, but there's something about locality and individual human experiences that are universal. Kit's Wilderness, which has done incredibly well in America, is focussed right into the heart of the North Eastern coalfields so I did wonder whether that book would travel at all, but when I did travel around there seemed like a universality to human experiences. When I was in the US people would come up to me and say it's just like West Virginia or Pennsylvania and I think, anyway, I learned how to write about the North East not just by reading local writers but I was influenced by loads of American writers, the way I write about the region, certainly some Southern States American writers were a big help.

I read a quote by Philip Pullman who said that he thought successful fantasy should read like realism. You speak about your own books as works of realism, although there are elements of fantasy in them. What do you think about the relationship between fantasy and reality in fiction?
For me the primary thing is the reality, I think fantasy can't work at all unless it's based in a deliberate and recognisable reality, I feel that all my works are grounded in the real world although they do have fantastical or magical elements in them. I think that you can't believe in the magical bits of them unless you believe it takes place in a credible world, to make the reader feel as thought they are in a real place, a real world , so for me the two things do merge together but the reality is the primary thing.

You've just had a play published Wild Boy, Wild Girl, and Skellig is due out as a play. What do you think it'll be like seeing your work interpreted and performed in this way?
It's interesting, with a book like Skellig it's really interesting, to see how it does change on the stage because when it appears on the stage it becomes someone else's interpretation. But a book is like that anyway, when somebody reads a book they give their own interpretation to it. With a stage version of a book the interpretation takes place on a physical space, and I think a stage play can be suggestive and still leave a lot of space for the viewer to imagine their own world and their own characters. It becomes more difficult when you get into films or movies, because there's probably going to be a film of Skellig and the problem we're facing at the moment is how to maintain that fine line between fantasy and reality, you can do it on stage but I think it's much more difficult to achieve in film.

I know that you've also written stories aimed at an adult audience, but what is it that you enjoy about writing for children?
When I started to write for children I suddenly found that I had an audience that were interested in the things that I'm interested in. And also children are willing to explore all kinds of ideas. The children's book world is very experimental world, you can play around with plot, with language, narrative, type styles, the shape of the pages, so it seems to me a much more open field and children are kind of only semi-civilised, whereas adults grow up and assume they know everything and they loose a bit of their excitement in the world, children still retain some of their excitement about the world we live in which is great for a writer.

Are you particularly conscious of your audience when you're writing?
I suppose I am at the back of my mind, but the primary thing is to get the story right and to write the best story you can. I suppose, overall, I do have a sense that this is for kids between 10 and 13, that kind of age and maybe I'm trying to write the kinds of books that I wanted to write at that age, but I don't try to design my books for a predetermined age, the main job is to get the story right and make it work.

Your first book Skellig is, in some ways, critical of the school system, I'm thinking about the character Mina in particular. How did you feel when you found out it had become a set text in schools?
It was pretty ironic really, it's kind of read everywhere, it's swallowed up and loved by teachers and pupils, so in that sense I'm really pleased because children are considering the different attitudes towards education, 'Is school the only way to learn things?', so I think it's a good thing. What I do see when I travel around is that Skellig is used fantastically well in schools because of the number of brilliant teachers there are, some of the duller stuff about Skellig actually comes actually from the department of education, the really inventive stuff comes from teachers and especially children.

Are you often surprised by what you see in the schools about Skellig?
Oh yeah, I've seen some stunning work done and it just emphasised how I feel about teachers today, they're just fantastic and compared to teachers I had at school are just amazingly creative. One of the things I like about schools now is the relationship between children and staff, to kind of relax and have a friendly relationships, which is only for the good. Kids get terrible press now and teachers do but the reality is much different from that.

There's been a lot of interest in children's books over the last couple of years notably with the success of the Harry Potter books and more recently Philip Pullman winning the Whitbread Prize. What do you attribute this success to?
I think one of the things is that suddenly people are realising that there is a lot of good writing in children's field, and also we went through a kind of rather boring period when people imagined that all children could be interested in is computer games, videos and gameboys, of course they are interested in those as well but there's been this rediscovery that kids are actually interested in stories. There has been this kind of new wave of recognition that stories matter, that books matter and that some of the best writing that's being done today is being done by children's writers. Also in children's writing you find that people are dealing with big human and literary themes, 'Where do we come from?', 'Where are we going?', 'Is there a God?', because that's what kids are interested in.

Do you have any favourite children's writers at the moment?
I think Philip Pullman is marvellous, Melvin Burgess, an American writer Gary Paulson, I could go on, J K Rowling is doing a fantastic job, Jacqui Wilson, it's a very rich field.

Who were your favourite writers as a child?
I think my favourite was Roger Lancelyn Green, who did lots of rewrites of ancient myths. He did a fantastic version of the King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. As a teenager I loved books by Lobsang Rampa who invented this fake Tibetan childhood. I also used to pinch my sisters Enid Blyton books.

Where and when do you usually write?
Well I used to write in a little room at the back of my house in Newcastle but I've just moved so now I write in an attic, we live in a stone house in the country and the attic overlooks Northumbrian countryside.

How do you relax? Do you have any hobbies or interests?
I love walking, I do a lot of walking especially in the North, in Yorkshire and Northumberland, I like travelling, whenever I get the chance I go camping especially in Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Dales. I also like the usual stuff like going to the pictures or the theatre and listening to music.

What are you working on at the moment?
I'm working on a new novel at the moment which will probably be called 'The Apprentice' and a TV drama of Hansel and Gretel for the BBC which will be on this Christmas.

I also have a few questions from some school children.

'If you could go anywhere in the world to get inspiration for and write a book, where would it be? (Hannah)
I think I'd go to Tibet if I was looking for inspiration, I've always wanted to go and I've never been.

'How long does it take you to write a book?' (Chris)
Well it varies but Skellig took about 7 months and the other books took about a year, that's from first idea to writing the last sentence.

Who is your favourite author and why? (Jamie)
My favourite author is Herman Melville who wrote Moby Dick, I think he's an incredibly brave and bold writer, and in a book like Moby Dick he takes so many risks and produces wonderful adventure and takes readers with him and he's not scared to be magical and he's not scared at being very realistic and he has just wonderful language.

'If you could have your books illustrated by any artist either dead or alive who would it be?' (Chloe)
Heironymus Bosch.

If you had been in Michael's shoes what would you have done? (Lottie)
It was like I was in Michael's shoes, because when I was writing it I really felt as if I was Michael and I didn't know what Michael was going to find in there. I think I would have done what Michael did which was to keep it a secret but then try and find someone who could confirm it for him and, of course, he finds Mina, so I think I would have done what Michael did.

Have you ever started a book and not been able to finish it because you ran out of ideas? (Florence)
I started a book and didn't finished it because I got new ideas, so I had to leave the old book behind and start a new book and that's still half finished, I may go back to it or I may not, but I think writing the first half of it was how I developed the new idea which just seemed to come out of the blue and that new idea was what eventually led to Skellig so it was a good thing to do to leave that old book behind.

One last question, do you have any tips for budding authors?
Believe you can do it, just write and enjoy it, see it as a game, it can be serious but it's also like playing. Don't be afraid to write rubbish, I write loads of rubbish, so write lots of rubbish do lots of scribbling, mess about a lot, read a lot. Write on a computer but scribble over your computer printouts, write in double spacing or triple spacing if you're having trouble. Try to relax and just enjoy it, do the best you can. Go further than you think you can, write longer than you think you can, even if you think you're writing rubbish.