NICOLA MORGAN

About Me

My Odd Childhood
The oddness of my childhood began on 11th November 1961, the day I was born - in a school. My parents lived in the school and presumably thought it was a perfectly sensible place to have a baby. We moved several times in my childhood - always to schools. My father was a headmaster. In fact, he was my headmaster, teaching me English and French while my mother taught maths and science. All that is odd enough, but what was odder was that they were boys' schools and I am, I assure you, not a boy.

It was a childhood of huge freedom. The schools were in the country, so in the holidays my sisters and I had free run of amazing facilities and endless countryside. I spent my days climbing trees, building rafts, making bows and arrows, and riding my pony in the woods where Mondays are Red is set.

At 11, I went to a girls' boarding school. Strangely, no-one there was at all impressed by my tree-climbing or weapon-making skills.

University
I did Classics and Philosophy at Cambridge. Philosophy was the best bit - endless discussions about meanings, and meanings of meanings.

Work
It was all very well being trained to discuss meanings of meanings but exactly how was it going to earn me a living? I desperately wanted to write but I also knew I had to have a 'proper job' to tide me through the rejection letters.

I became a teacher. I taught English in such a small school that I was the whole English department. This school led me into the world of children with reading difficulties like dyslexia. I did a Diploma in teaching people with reading and writing problems, and when my daughters were young I was able to combine motherhood with teaching from home.

Through this work, I became interested in how all children learn to read and in 1994 I set up Magic ReadersT. Groups of pre-school children came to my house to have fun with all sorts of pre-reading activities. I wanted to create happy, confident and excited readers, at the same time as showing parents how to help their own children.

By 1999, I'd had quite a few home-learning books published and my writing was taking over. Soon I stopped teaching altogether. Magic ReadersT became a website, The Child Literacy CentreT

I still run that site. I receive many emails from parents who need advice about helping their own children and I answer every one personally.

Small FAQs:

Q: What's your favourite food?
A: Anchovies, haggis, pickled onions, the stinkiest blue cheese and horse-radish.

Q: Where do you live?
A: In Edinburgh. The reason that there's a picture of woods here is because those woods are where I used to live just outside Edinburugh  -  I still go walking when I'm stuck for ideas.

Q: Do you have any hobbies?
A: Reading, cooking, glass-painting, making mosaics, talking .

Q: What do you hate doing?
A: Gardening. The trouble is, I love sitting in a beautifully-kept garden. My new garden is TINY, which is fantastic. Big enough for me to sit in and not big enough for a lawn-mower.

Q: Do you have a pet?
A: Until recently we had 3 cats, but now there's just the dog. No, the dog didn't eat the cats - I don't think.

The dog is a yellow labrador called Amber, a gorgeous nuisance. This is a picture of her practising to be an Andrex puppy. She didn't get the job.

I gave her an important part in Mondays are Red, to make up for it.

Q: Computer or Pen?

A: What's a pen? Definitely computer. If I wrote with a pen I wouldn't be able to play frequent games of spider solitaire, would I? Also, I change too many things too often, so it would destroy several forests if I used paper.

Q: What is your idea of heaven?
A: Lying in a hammock in my tiny garden on a scorching day, sipping something chilled and fizzy, after hearing that my next novel has been accepted by my publisher.

Q: And hell?
A: Gardening, in the rain, in February, in Scotland, after receiving an email from my editor to say that the text for my new novel is rubbish and I'll have to start again.