Gabrielle Wang

My latest book is The Hidden Monastery (Penguin 2006)

It’s about a mysterious creature called Peng, a boy destined to be a Peng master, a girl in an ancient rainforest, fox spirits and kungfu.

The best thing about being a writer is discovering, as I write, lots of new and interesting people that inhabit other worlds. Sometimes these people come to life like the time I got a phone call from a complete stranger who asked, in Chinese, to talk to Mimi. I was working on my first book The Garden of Empress Cassia at the time and Mimi was the main character – a Chinese girl. Turns out the guy had dialed the wrong number, but it sure was creepy.

If I wasn’t a writer I’d be a graphic designer and illustrator which was my job before I became a writer, or I’d get a job working with refugees.

My first published work was a short story in Comet magazine called 'Bigfoot'.

Morning person or night-owl? Morning person because I have a morning dog who never lets me sleep in. ‘Breakfast is calling’, she tells me with wet nose nudges. 

My first job was on a boat shelling abalone off Wilson’s Promontory. The diver would come up from the ocean floor with his bag of abalone and empty it onto the deck. Then we would have to prize open the shell with a knife, scoop out the abalone, throw the shell overboard and the abalone in a bin. It got so repetitive that by the end of the day, I would be throwing the abalone overboard and the shell in the bin. Oops! Kept the seagulls happy though.

On a quiz show, my special subject would be Chinese ghost stories.   

My last holiday was to Spain and Morocco on a painting excursion.

My perfect Saturday is watching my son play soccer, horseback riding, bushwalking, having someone else cook dinner then eating it in front of the TV.

The last CD I bought was David Gray’s, White Ladder – music to chill to.

I’m currently reading Beloved by Toni Morrison and Jane Godwin’s Falling From Grace. Both great reads.

Big Brother or Australian Idol? Neither.

Favourite film/TV are Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away. Supernatural, Prison Break, Medium, Smallville are all fun to watch and I enjoyed the recent series of Thank God You’re Here.  

My favourite book is impossible to say but here is a small selection, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton, Secret Seven books, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl Short Stories, Tao Te Ching, Laozi, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee,Of a Boy, Sonya Hartnett, His Dark Materials Trilogy, Philip Pullman.
 
The book character I would most like to meet is Bessie from The Magic Faraway Tree. Imagine having this amazing tree within walking distance of your house and being able to visit all those cool lands.

The book character I would least like to meet is the shark from Peter Benchley’s book Jaws.

The worst thing I’ve ever written were a series of tiny picture books the size of a matchbox called The Little Green Mouse, The Little Purple Fly and The Little Pink Lion. Here is the story of The Little Green Mouse.

Once upon a time there was a little green mouse who lived by herself in her little red house. She was all alone in this big wide world because her lashes had never been curled. She had no friends to call her own except for her dear little red comb. She tried and tried but all in vain until she found herself almost insane. One day as she was going for her daily stroll, along the way she met a holy mole. ‘Good morning to you, sir,’ said she, ‘How would you like to come home for tea.’ But alas when he saw her lashes like hay, he said, ‘Oh no, my dear, I must be away.’ So the little green mouse sadly walked to her home. Where once again she did moan and groan. ‘Oh dear what shall I do?’ she cried and she sighed, ‘to have some friends of my very own.’ With tears in her eyes she walked out the door. Along the primrose path and down to the shore. Suddenly she was lost for she had forgotten her map. She tripped, she stumbled and fell into a mousetrap. ‘Oh dear,’ she cried in her meek little way. ‘My head is caught, I knew this would happen one day.’ And into her bag her compact she unfurled. And found to her surprise that her lashes had curled. With streams of tears she burst into laughter. And to this very day she has lived happily ever after.

When I was growing up I wanted to be an artist, an archaelogist, a folk singer, an ethologist and a zoologist.

My heroes are… I have many, but to name just a few - Hugh Evans, Young Australian of the Year and founder of the Oak Leaf Foundation, philosopher and ethicist, Peter Singer, environmentalist David Suzuki, cartoonist Michael Leunig, and composer J.S Bach whose music takes me to another world.