Meet the author: Jacqueline Harvey

MEET THE AUTHOR

Jacqueline Harvey (credit Jenni Bradley)

Jacqueline Harvey is the author of the popular Alice-Miranda series, Clementine Rose series, and Kensy and Max series. Her books have sold over one million copies in Australia alone.

Jacqueline speaks to thousands of young people at schools and festivals around the world, and says the characters in her books are often made up of the best bits of children she’s met over the years. While she is not a twin, like Kensy and Max she does have excellent powers of observation and has always thought she’d make a great spy.

Jacqueline’s latest book is Alice-Miranda in the Outback (book 19 in the series).

From the publisher:

Alice-Miranda and her friends are off to the Australian Outback! They’re going to help an old family friend who’s found himself short staffed during cattle mustering season. The landscape is like nothing else – wide open and dusty red as far as the eye can see. It’s also full of quirky characters, like eccentric opal miner Sprocket McGinty and the enigmatic Taipan Dan.

As the gang settles in at Hope Springs Station, mysteries start piling up. A strange map is discovered indicating treasure beneath the paddocks, a young girl is missing and there are unexplained water shortages. Can Alice-Miranda get to the bottom of this desert dilemma?

Alice Miranda in the Outback by Jacqueline Harvey

Alice-Miranda is a well-travelled girl! Have you been everywhere Alice-Miranda has been?
Yes Alice-Miranda has travelled a lot. I’ve been to most of the places she’s been, although I haven’t ever travelled to Spain and that’s where Alice-Miranda at Sea begins. I had to do a lot of research about Barcelona particularly and in that instance I find Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Streetview invaluable. I have been to a few places in the Australian outback but Coober Pedy isn’t one of them (and part of the new book takes place there) so I have had to do a lot of research on the town and the landscape and the mines before and while I was writing the story. I find it easier to use places I’ve travelled to as it helps create the atmosphere but as I said – you can do your homework too.

Alice-Miranda in the Outback is the latest book in the series. How long did it take you to write Book 19, from first draft to final draft?
I spent a few weeks plotting and planning over the Christmas New Year period then sat down with a goal of having the draft finished in 6 weeks. I basically wrote just over 10,000 words a week for that time and achieved the goal. There would have been about another six weeks of rewriting, editing and proofreading after that. I knew that I would have to write quite quickly to meet the deadline but I found it such a fun story that it was a joy to work on each day.

When you wrote Book 1, did you write it as Book 1 in a series?
I originally thought Alice-Miranda would be a picture book. How wrong I was. Once I started to write the first book as a novel I thought it would be a series – I had ideas for about five books when I initially submitted it.

How do you keep track of all the characters across multiple books in the series?
Spreadsheets! I have a spreadsheet with the characters in all of the series so that I don’t accidentally give someone the same name. It’s a very helpful reference.

What’s your next writing project?
At the moment I am writing Kensy and Max: Full Speed which will be out in October 2020. It’s set in London and Switzerland and takes the children back to the days when their parents worked in ski resorts all over the world. I’ve wanted to write a book where they can exhibit their extraordinary skiing and snowboarding skills and this is it. I have also just finished a short story Kensy and Max: Spy Games for the Australia Reads campaign which will be out at the beginning of November. I have been working on a couple of side projects as well but they’re still top secret so unfortunately I can’t share just yet. Suffice to say I’ve been keeping busy in lockdown.

Alice-Miranda in the Outback is available from bookshops and libraries!

AWESOME EXTRAS: