Interview With…. Sally Odgers

Hi Readers. Today I am chatting with Sally Odgers. Sally hails from The Apple Isle, Tasmania. Sally is the author of some 270 books, published over thirty-six years.

I will just say that I have had the pleasure of visiting Tassie a few years back. What I can say about Tassie is that it is very picturesque, peaceful. Although far from the rest of the world (especially for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere), it is a place you really need to visit, at least once. 🙂

Sally, please tell our followers something about you 🙂
I’m from Tasmania, and still live here. I’m arguably Tasmania’s most-published living author,… if you go by word count and number of publications. I started writing as a child and haven’t stopped since. I’m a daughter, sister, wife, mother and grandmother and alpha-bitch to our Jack Russell pack. I write, read, walk, garden, edit and assess manuscripts for others, run a tiny collective called Prints Charming Books, a blog called Promote Me Please, a listing called Tassie Book Talks and a fleet of websites.

270 books is quite the achievement. Tell us, what inspires you to get out of bed each day?
I’m not a morning person, but I have to get up to go and see to my dad. He’s 93 and I go to his place to get him up and give him breakfast. I take a dog along.

If you could hang out with one famous person for one day, who would it be and why?
I’d have loved to spend some time with Diana Wynne Jones. I’m not sure she’d have liked me, but it would have been interesting.

What’s the story behind your latest book?
I have two. One is Bush Rescue, a children’s book co-written with my husband. It’s part of the Pup Patrol series and is published by Scholastic. We worked up the series to follow our Jack Russell and Pet Vest series. The other is Heather and Heath, a long historical novel from Satalyte Publishing. That one sprang from research I did in the 1980s and 1990s for a tourist guide and also from family stories. It’s about three generations of women who love the high country property of Glen Heather. Scottish immigrant Ness arrives there in 1837, colonial-born Isobel marries its young owner in 1861, and her granddaughter Alice holds it during the Great War.

What are you working on next?
I always have a lot of WsiP, but most of my time is taken up with affordablemanuscriptassessments.com, my manuscript assessment and editing service. Some of the books I work on as and when I have time include a fantasy called Garlands of Thorn and May, one called The Green Door and another called Khloe: Out of Arcadia.

Do you have any special/extraordinary talents?
I’m pretty good at assessing and editing work for others. I discovered this talent by accident in the 1980s. I can also write a poem on any subject at a moment’s notice.

Who are your favorite authors?
Elizabeth Marie Pope, Diana Wynne Jones, Sally Rogers-Davidson, Michelle Tatam, Geoffrey Trease, Ruth Park, Margaret Mahy, Anne Farrell…

What do you like to do with your free time?
I don’t really have free time, since I work seven days a week. However, I do multi-task, so I walk the dogs and exercise myself while “reading” via audio book and doing the shopping and P.O. run. I also exercise one dog while gardening (he is our potter-dog whose back condition means he can’t do long walks).

Tell us about your plans for upcoming books.
I’m working on the last stages of two Prints Charming titles that should have been out in February. However, my dad had a fall, and so I got behind. I have a new Pup Patrol story to write and a mass of editing and assessing to do. I am also working with artist Kerri Slaven on a series called The Fairies of Farholt.

Where can people find you on the web?

www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com
www.printscharmingbooks.com
http://promotemeplease.blogspot.com.au
http://tassiebooktalks.weebly.com
sallyodgers.weebly.com
jackrusselldogdetective.com
@Sallyodgers
Amazon
SallyOdgers.com