Cassandra Golds
Cassandra Golds was born in Sydney, Australia and grew up reading Hans Christian Andersen, C.S. Lewis and Nicholas Stuart Gray over and over again — and writing her own stories as soon as she could hold a pen. Her first book, Michael and the Secret War, was accepted for publication when she was nineteen years old and she is proud to have been “discovered” by the incomparable Jennifer Rowe (also known as Emily Rodda) who was her very first editor and mentor. In collaboration with the artist Stephen Axelsen, she went on to write a string of flamboyantly themed graphic novels, all of which have been published as monthly serials in the venerable New South Wales School Magazine in Australia.
She wrote Clair-de-Lune after coming upon the fascinating fact that many people have difficulty in saying their own name without 'pulling back' their voice. The Museum of Mary Child, her latest novel, was inspired by a nightmare.
“I dreamed a whole chapter of that book,” she says. “It’s the one where Heloise first sees inside the Museum. But the rest of it I made up while I was awake!”
Cassandra writes in a room with buttercup yellow walls and a poster-sized map of Narnia hanging on the wall above her desk. She has had this map since she was ten years old. Her favourite book is Down in the Cellar by Nicholas Stuart Gray and if a genii gave her three wishes she would use one of them to bring it back into print for the readers of today. If she wasn’t a writer, she would like to be an actor — but only if she could be in a production of Hair or Godspell.
You can friend her on Facebook (where she has started a Nicholas Stuart Gray Appreciation Society), or follow her on Twitter.
“That is not what I meant. Of course you belong here, because you have offered me your friendship, and friends always belong together. But friends look out for each other's welfare, and I am concerned for yours. I wish only to protect you.""It is I who must protect you!" she exclaimed, although she did not understand why she felt this so strongly. "You need protecting. I can look after myself.""None of us can look after ourselves," he said after a moment. "We all have to look after each other.”
“For love was a kind of folly, a losing game. The greatest of all Wastes of Time. But then, that depended on what you thought time was for.”