Welcome, everyone, to my newsletter! Here you will find out all I've been up to in the last few months, and also have the chance to read an interview with the wise and wonderful Jane Yolen, one of my favourite writers for children.

It is soon after Imbolc, one of the four main festivals of the pagan Celtic calendar. Celebrated on February 2nd, it falls halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. In Scotland, it is icy-cold and spring seems a long way away, but here in Sydney, Australia, it is blazingly hot, and we're glad we live near the ocean.

Here is my summer garden, filled with flowers and vegetables

In The Puzzle Ring, Candlemas is the day in which my heroine, Hannah, travels back in time to the days of Mary, Queen of Scots, to try and find the lost quarters of the puzzle ring and break the curse upon her family. She reflects that Imbolc is also called Candlemas because traditionally candles and lanterns were carried, and fires lit, to honour the Celtic goddess Brighid, spirit of poets and smiths, healing and the hearth.

Here in Australia we have all seen the destructive power of fire with terrible bushfires raging across the country. Hundreds of people have died, and thousands of animals. We've all been affected by the harrowing news – my family and I have been in tears watching the news every night, trying to imagine what it must be like to live through such terror and grief. Even my children have dug deep into their piggy-banks to make donations to the Australian Red Cross Bushfire Appeal Fund, wanting to do anything we can to help those who have lost everything.

It's impossible to grow up in Australia and not be aware of the danger of bushfires. I remember days when Sydney was ringed by pillars of smoke, and black ashes drifted in the hot, orange wind like seeds of destruction. I can remember being caught by bushfires while on holiday, and not being allowed to make the long drive home – and then driving through a moonscape of black, charred ground and black, incinerated trees.

All my friends and family are safe, I'm glad to say, though we all know someone who has been affected. It makes me want to count my blessings every day, and be so glad for all I have.

This is a baby blue-tongued lizard in our garden.
We've had to change the name of its mother from Mr Bluey to Mrs Bluey.

It has been a busy time for me, with my daughter Ella starting school for the very first time, and my two big boys beginning a new school year. I've also been doing the final proofreading for The Puzzle Ring - and talking about covers, maps, and design details, and my plans to go to the UK in June to celebrate its launch. It comes out in Australia in May.

Sadly, The Gypsy Crown was not the winner of the 2008 Cybil Award for Middle Grade fantasy, which was won by Neil Gaiman, with The Graveyard Book . I was just very proud to have been included on such an honour roll of the world's best children's writers.

However, happily, Sea Magic has been nominated for a Western Australian Young Readers' Book Award for 2009. This is particularly lovely as titles are chosen by Western Australian children. You can read more about the WAYRBA Awards.

'Sea-Magic' book cover

Some sketches of the robot-shark in 'Sea-Magic'

I also spent a week as Writer-in-Residence at the Tanglin Trust School in Singapore. I had such a happy week meeting so many new people, talking about books and writing, and seeing the sights of this vibrant city. Thank you so much, Barbara, the Junior Librarian at the school, and everyone else in Singapore, for looking after me so well!

Here I am, enjoying the heat in sweltering Singapore

I am now looking forward to getting back to work on the new novel. Its working title is The Wildkin's Curse, and so far I have written just 8,000 words. Yikes! I'd better get moving!

Don't forget to book for the writing week in Fiji – it'll be so much fun!

INTERVIEW WITH JANE YOLEN

Jane Yolen is one of my favourite children's authors. She moves easily between wonderful picture books like Owl Moon and How Do Dinosaurs say Tonight? to some of the most beautiful and important fiction for older readers, The Devil's Arithmetic and Briar Rose, both of which deal with the Holocaust.

She has also written Queen's Own Fool, a superb historical novel told from the point of view of Mary, Queen of Scots' favourite jester. As you all know, I've spent the last year totally possessed by this tragic Scottish queen, which builds on a lifetime's love and obsession with Scotland. Jane Yolen has what I consider a practically perfect life – she spends 4-6 months of every year in Scotland and Europe, and the other months in Hatfield, Massachusetts, a beautiful and historic town on the Connecticut River.

Called the Hans Christian Andersen of America, she is also a poet, a teacher, and a reviewer and critic of children's literature. Jane Yolen's books and stories have won the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, the Golden Kite Award, and the Jewish Book Award, among many others.

She is also the author of one of the best books ever written about the importance of fantasy in children's literature. Called Touch Magic – Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood, it was first published in 1981, and recently reissued and expanded. Here is one of my favourite quotes from it:

"To do without tales and stories and books is to lose humanity's past, is to have no star map for the future."

So I'm very proud and pleased to have Jane as the first of my favourite writers to be featured in my newsletter. Here are the answers to my questions:

Are you a daydreamer too?
Definitely. Though before I became a writer of fiction, I daydreamed situations in my life differently. I was the prima ballerina of Balanchine's company, the owner of a horse ranch, queen of the prom. Now I daydream larger scenarios in which I do not figure, but my characters do.

Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Yes, because my parents were both writers. Maybe "want' is the wrong word, though. I just assumed a ll adults were writers, along with their day jobs.

Where do you write?
Anywhere my laptop is. Sometimes in my official writing room, sometimes in my tv room. (A bad back precludes sitting for long periods at a formal desk.) Sometimes in the summer in the garden.

What is your favourite part of writing?
All of it. I love the initial spurt where something comes of nothing. The moment after I had no ideas at all, and suddenly my fingers are typing something new. Finding a better way of saying a sentence. Finding out what a character secretly wants. When an ending surprises me. And I love revisions because there are more surprises. The only thing I don't love is the sadness of finishing. The surprises are over, I am leaving my most intimate friends. Some I may never see or talk to again.

What do you do when you get blocked?
Work on something else. That leaves the hind brain, the lizard brain, alone to figure out the blockage. It always works, though it may take years. I am of the firm conviction that things DO work out.

Kate: How do you keep your well of inspiration full?
By reading, listening, being curious about the world.

Kate: Do you have any rituals that help you to write?
A cup of tea and fingers on the keyboard, butt in chair.

Kate: Who are ten of your favourite writers?
Isak Dinesen, James Thurber, William Butler Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Alice Hoffman, Ursula LeGuin, Ruth Rendell, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Shakespeare, Bernard Cornwell.

Kate: What do you consider to be good writing?
Munchy prose, lyrical lines, strong storytelling.

Jane Yolen's website: www.janeyolen.com

My very best wishes

www.kateforsyth.com.au