Posted in Reading, Writing

An Interview with Helen Hollick, Author of Cosy Crime and Much More!

In this week’s post, I’m pleased to share an interview with my author friend Helen Hollick, who during lockdown took to crime! Cosy crime, that is (or cozy, if you’re on the other side of the Atlantic from us).

cover of latest Sophie Sayers audiobook Also new this week: an interview with me has just gone live on the website of Saga Egmont, the award-winning audiobook publisher currently in the throes of publishing audiobooks of the first seven Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries. Click here to read my interview on Saga Egmont’s website. (Link will open in a separate window.)

Continue reading “An Interview with Helen Hollick, Author of Cosy Crime and Much More!”

Posted in Reading, Writing

My Christmas Gift to my Readers: A New Sophie Sayers Christmas Story

Each Christmas for the last three years, I have enjoyed taking part in Helen Hollick’s “Story Song” blog series, which is a bit like an advent calendar of stories.

Every day between 1st and 24th December, she posts a new story by a different author. Each story is inspired by a song, and readers are invited to guess the song by reading the story. You can read all of the stories on her blog completely free of charge.

This year, my contribution is a new Sophie Sayers short story set at Christmas, called The Secret Ministry of Frost.

It also features some characters from my St Bride’s School novel series.

Click the link below to read this heartwarming new story for free:

Read The Secret Ministry of Frost online now

  • Will you be able to guess the song by the end of the story?
  • Award yourself a bonus point if you have already recognised the poem that the title comes from!

***Please feel free to share the link to the story with anyone who might enjoy it.***

Cover of Murder in the Manger
The third novel in the Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries series is set at Christmas

Although my Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries series includes a novel set at Christmas (Murder in the Manger), the cosy world of Sophie’s Cotswold village, Wendlebury Barrow, is a rich source of festive stories, and I plan to write enough to fill a little book with them in time for Christmas 2022. More news on that nearer the time!

In the meantime, I wish you a merry Christmas, with lots of good books under your Christmas tree, and a new year filled with peace, joy and love. 

 

 

 

Posted in Reading, Travel, Writing

Travels with my Books #2: From the Caribbean to Exmoor with Helen Hollick

sea witch banner ad

As a longstanding fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland, which I first visited in the original theme park in California at the age of eight, I was delighted to discover when I first met Helen Hollick that one of the series of historical novels she writes has as its hero a charming pirate Captain Jesemiah Acorne whose adventures often take him to the Caribbean.

The smash-hit Jack Sparrow films came much later than the theme-park ride,  and I believe it’s the only case of the ride inspiring the film rather than the other way around.

Just like the ride and the films, Helen’s pirate novels plunge you into the Caribbean, amongst other places, including, closer to her home and mine, the rolling hills of Exmoor in Devon. I’m delighted to welcome Helen to my blog today to tell us all about her travels with her books!


headshot of Helen Hollick
Helen Hollick, author of historical, fantasy and contemporary fiction

Hello, Helen, and welcome! To set the scene, could you please your books’ setting on the globe

Now, this is going to be one of those ‘which one shall I use?’ moments. You see, my Sea Witch Voyages are set in various locations because they are, well, voyages aboard a ship – the Sea Witch – with a pirate and his crew. Captain Jesamiah Acorne finds himself getting into trouble from Jamaica to Devon, from Virginia to the Bahamas via Cape Town, South Africa! However, as it is rather cold here in the UK at the moment, let’s head for somewhere warm …Port Royal, Jamaica!

Please briefly describe the books you have set in the Caribbean.

When The Mermaid Sings is a prequel novella to my Sea Witch Voyages series telling the story of how Jesamiah fled his home in Virginia because of his bullying elder half-brother. He is seeking a sailor friend of his father – but ends up finding more than he bargained for: the ghost of his father, Captain Morgan, a mermaid – and the start of a life of piracy!

What makes Port Royal, Jamaica, such a great setting for fiction?

Back in the late 1600s Port Royal was known as ‘The Wickedest Town In The World’ because of all the pirates and privateers who dropped anchor in the harbour. So much looted Spanish treasure was taken there, even servants were well off financially.

Unfortunately, in 1692 a massive earthquake destroyed most of the town and killed thousands of people.

The harbour remained, but the town was never rebuilt – Kingston was established on the other side of the bay instead. I wanted to make When The Mermaid Sings a partial ghost story, so Port Royal was an ideal location for Jesamiah to go to.

What is your relationship with Jamaica and how much of your life have you spent there?

None at all! I’ve never been to the Caribbean – however, later in the series (Ripples In The Sand, Voyage Four and On The Account, Voyage Five,) I bring Jesamiah and his wife (he’s grown up since When The Mermaid Sings) to Devon, England, so I have many scenes set in and around Barnstaple on the North Devon coast, and on Exmoor, both of which I know very well as I live nearby!

What is special about the people native to Devon?

May I mention one real person in particular? My previous editor, Jo Field, now retired, used to live at Instow not far from Barnstaple. I used to live in East London, so visited her twice a year for a writer’s chinwag and a holiday. It was because of where she lived that I decided to bring Jesamiah (and his ship, Sea Witch) to Devon, and consequently I also fell in love with the place. In 2012 we won the lottery (on the opening night of the London Olympics) and decided to move to Devon.

I hadn’t realised, all those times that I came on the train to visit Jo, travelling from Exeter to Barnstaple, that I would be passing right by the house I now live in!

I can see a section of the Tarka Line railway as it winds through the Taw Valley from my bedroom window – it’s like looking down on my very own real model railway!

If your protagonist or other characters come from elsewhere, what challenges do they face dealing with the local people?

Jesamiah was born in Virginia, the son of an English privateer and a Spanish mother. I rather assume he would have a typical Colonial Virginian accent – which is quite far removed from the Devon dialect. When he first sets foot ashore at Appledore he has a bit of a job understanding some of the Devonshire words, as the following excerpt from Ripples In The Sand shows:

 

banner ad for Ripples in the Sand

The rain had started to lash down as Jesamiah kicked open the door to the Full Moon and negotiated his way through, taking care not to scrape or bump Tiola enfolded in his arms and wrapped in a swathe of blankets.

    The landlady, a homely woman in her early thirties, bustled from behind the counter concern bubbling from her as energetically as the wisps of hair escaping beneath her lace cap. “Oh my, the poor maid looks nigh on exhausted.” She shooed away an elderly man sitting before the fire, ushering him to another seat. “Set ‘er down ‘ere Cap’n. The girl’s lighted the vire upstairs an’ put a pan in t’warm the sheets. It be a nice corner room overlookin’ the harbour, it’ll do you cheerily.” She pursed her lips and tutted. “I suggest you keep them shutters closed ‘cross the smaller side winder though, sir. The view o’ the drang oft’n be not respec’able.”

     Grumbling beneath his breath the old man, as bald as a coot but with a great bush of a white beard, took his half empty tankard of cider along with his pipe and baccy pouch, and shambled to a settle near the window. He sat, sniffed disdainfully and wiped his nose on the cuff of his coat, which he ostentatiously drew closer around his chest, then turned the collar up against the draught. “It be goin’ t’snow on them moors,” he predicted. “Prob’ly ‘ere an’ all. Vruzzen in us’ll be.”

     “Drang?” Jesamiah queried, not recognising the word and struggling to understand the conversation. Tiola had a slight Cornish burr, but his ear was not attuned to this unfamiliar Devon dialect. He shrugged, guessed he would pick it up soon enough.

     The old man chuckled. “Nowt wrong with Cock Lane tha’ an ‘ealthy man can’t be makin’ good use ov.”

     Getting the gist of the statement Jesamiah raised an eyebrow, was about to repeat his ‘drang’ question, but let it pass.

The typical ‘pirate speak’ that we think of (‘arr’ and such) actually originates from Robert Newton who played Long John Silver in Treasure Island. He was a Cornishman so improvised his West Country accent. Many sailors – and pirates – came from Cornwall, Devon and Bristol, so all had a similar accent, including Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh.

What are the distinguishing features of one of the destinations you write about in terms of geography, geology, flora, fauna or any other detail you care to mention?

I will take us to Exmoor, as I know it better than Jamaica. (Although as I write this, in mid-January, I believe it is snowing up on the moors, so Jamaica would be warmer!)

Wild Exmoor ponies

Exmoor is a wild place – it is even home to the wild Exmoor ponies (we have three moorland bred ponies of our own on our farm). The moor was made famous by RD Blackmore’s Lorna Doone, and indeed I have borrowed the Doones and used their fictional descendants in Ripples and Account.

Valley of the Rocks, Exmoor (photo copyright Cathy Helms)

The north coast of Exmoor rises steeply from the sea, giving glorious views, although usually also windswept ones. There is a particular geological features of rocky outcrop that looks a little like the ruins of a castle. Many Victorian poets visited this incredible geological feature, Robert Southey in August 1799, was impressed, describing it as ‘… the very bones and skeletons of the earth’.

In On The Account, Jesamiah’s wife, Tiola Oldstagh (who is actually a white witch) spends the night on Exmoor, described in the following extract:

banner ad for On the Account

An hour after dusk had settled into the star-frosted night, Tiola fed another stick into her meagre fire. The wood was damp and it gave off more smoke than heat, but it was better than nothing up here on the windswept openness of Exmoor’s exposed coast. She was sheltered in the hollow behind the magnificent tor of rocks that separated the valley from the sea, three hundred feet below. A place steeped in myth, legend and mystery. It was said that the Devil had resided in a castle of rock with his many wives, but angered at their infidelity he had blasted the eyrie to pieces. All that remained were the bare, jagged bones; the skeleton rocks piled stone upon stone. Nothing but a story, an old tale to explain the strangeness of a natural glacial formation – the Devil did not exist, but Tiola was aware that something was lurking out there in the darkness, watching her.

     The stick flared into flame and the light caught the glint of an eye a few yards off. Tucking a loose strand of her black hair behind her ear, Tiola calmly added more wood to the fire and smiled to herself. This was the Valley of the Rocks, known also for the herds of feral goats that thrived on the coarse sea-salt grass. A huffed snort and a stream of misted breath evaporated into the cold air. A wild pony then, not a goat; one of the distinctive two-thousand-year-old Exmoor breed with their thick, weather-resistant, shaggy coats and light-coloured muzzles. Had she borrowed such a pony from the stables at Tawford Barton she would be at her destination by now, but her mission was secret and she wanted to know who had been watching her these past seven days, and had followed her, this night, up on to the moor.

What are your top tips for any readers planning to travel to the setting of your book?

To Jamaica – watch out for pirates, and parrots who have learnt to sample the beer from kegs in the taverns … of course, that only applies if you can also time travel back to the 1690s!

To Exmoor – take stout walking boots and something warm and dry to wear. Even on sunny days it is windy up there… but breathtakingly beautiful.

Helen Hollick hangs on to her hat on Exmoor!

‘Only in Port Royal…’ name three things that could only happen there!

  1. In November 1720 you would have seen the trial of Anne Bonney and Mary Reed, the female pirates who sailed with Calico Jack Rackham. Mary died in gaol, Rackham was hanged, but no one knows what happened to Anne.
  2. Time travel back a little further, and you could meet Captain Morgan, who was a privateer against the Spanish, but then became Governor of Jamaica … and yes, he is the Captain Morgan who gave his name to the rum!
  3. ‘Jamaica Gold’ – pineapples – used to be  highly valuable because Jamaica was one of the few places where they grew, were easy to harvest and transport back to the Colonies – and even England.
stone pineapple on a building
Spot the pineapple!

Because of its rarity, and the difficulty in keeping it fresh during a long sea voyage, the pineapple was regarded as the food of the wealthy. For the well-to-do, ‘visiting’ either for afternoon tea, or to dine, was one of the prime sources of entertainment. Social intercourse was a way to show off what you had, and an essential way to keep up with the local gossip and news. Status, and the ability to show it, was an essential element. Keeping up with the Joneses is nothing new!

The Colonial hostess would seek subtle ways to brag about what she had, and would take great pains to outdo her neighbours. Elegant furniture, sumptuous and elaborate gowns, exquisite china and silver tableware, fine linens, expensive tea… Food was displayed on platters and arranged in elaborate pyramid styles, often dripping with sugar. Dinner was a culinary delight and always extravagant.

The laid table would be kept as a surprise, behind closed doors until the moment to reveal all came. Fresh fruit was a grand thing to be displayed, but topping it all would be the pineapple. It was rare, expensive, and wonderful to look at, touch – and eat. It was the crowning celebrity-status glory of the feast.

Have you ever noticed stone pineapples outside houses? To have one on display at a dinner party meant you’d made it to the top of the tree – but fruit doesn’t stay fresh for long, so it soon became popular to place stone ones on gateposts and such to indicate a wealthy household, and also as a sign of welcome. So keep an eye out for the not-so-humble pineapple!

Are there any other authors’ books with the same setting that you’d like to recommend?

Dozens, but I am going to cheat and select Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier.  It was – still  is – a real pub, on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, named by the Trelawney family who founded it in 1750, from the money they made in Jamaica – and for the smuggled rum which passed through on its way from Cornwall to London. Du Maurier wrote her story after being stranded there in thick fog one night.

Where is your latest book set?

Helen’s latest novel takes us to Chingfod, Essex

Somewhere completely different! A north-east London suburb, Chingford, where I was born in 1953, brought up and worked until the early 1980s. A Mirror Murder is a cosy mystery set in 1971 with the lead character, Jan Christopher, working (as I did!) as a library assistant.

I decided to give writing a murder mystery a go after being inspired by Debbie’s wonderful Sophie Sayers Series! (I confess, I am a little in love with Hector – although this might be because he owns a bookshop!)

Here’s an introduction to A Mirror Mystery:

Eighteen-year-old library assistant Jan Christopher’s life is to change on a rainy Friday evening in July 1971, when her legal guardian and uncle, DCI Toby Christopher, gives her a lift home after work. Driving the car, is her uncle’s new Detective Constable, Laurie Walker – and it is love at first sight for the young couple.

But romance is soon to take a back seat when a baby boy is taken from his pram,  a naked man is scaring young ladies in nearby Epping Forest, and an elderly lady is found, brutally murdered…

Are the events related? How will they affect the staff and public of the local library where Jan works – and will a blossoming romance survive a police investigation into  murder?

Where will your next book be set?

Which one? *laughs* I really must write the sixth Sea Witch Voyage – which starts in Gibraltar, and will feature Exmoor and Devon again – but also Spain, possibly Portugal and France as well, I’m not sure because I’m never quite certain where trouble will lead my Jesamiah…

I am also writing the second in my planned Jan Christopher Mystery series: this one will be set in Devon at Christmas. Great fun with lots of snow and murdered victims.

I’ll look forward to reading them all, Helen! Thank you so much for taking us on this virtual journey around your books today. 

(All images in this post are the copyright of Helen Hollick unless otherwise stated)


ALL ABOUT HELEN HOLLICK

Helen Hollick taking inspiration from atmosphere at Instow, Devon

Helen Hollick and her family moved from London in January 2013 after finding an eighteenth-century North Devon farm house through being a ‘victim’ on BBC TV’s popular Escape To The Country show. The thirteen-acre property was the first one she was shown. She loves her new rural life, and has a variety of animals on the farm, including hens, ducks, geese, dogs, cats, Exmoor ponies and her daughter’s string of show jumpers.

First accepted for publication by William Heinemann in 1993 – a week after her fortieth birthday – Helen became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am The Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend, and she also writes a pirate-based nautical adventure/fantasy series, The Sea Witch Voyages.

Despite being impaired by the visual disorder of glaucoma, Helen is now branching out into the cosy mystery genre with a new series of quick-read novellas. The first in her Jan Christopher Mysteries series, set in the 1970s, is out now. A Mirror Murder  incorporates often hilarious memories of working for over a decade as a library assistant.

Her non-fiction books are Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of A Smuggler. She occasionally gets time to write…

Click the link to order A Mirror Murder in ebook or print: getbook.at/MirrorMurder 

Visit her website: https://helenhollick.net/

Like her Amazon Author Page: http://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick

Subscribe to her newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/HelenHollick

Follow her on Twitter: @HelenHollick


Next month: join Alison Morton for a trip to the fictitious land of Roma Nova, evolved from the ancient Roman empire in her series of alternative history novels – and for a trip to France in her new contemporary thriller, Double Identity

(To receive each new post in your email inbox, just type your email address in the box beneath the “Follow Blog” button in the sidebar to the right of this post.)

Posted in Writing

Christmas Ginger – a New Christmas Story Free to Read Now (The First Ever Sophie Sayers Prequel!)

Debbie Young with Helen Holllick
With Helen Hollick, novelist and founder of the Discovering Diamonds blog

Today I’m pleased to share with you Christmas Ginger, a heartwarming festive short story that I’ve written for novelist Helen Hollick‘s  Story Song series, in which during December a different story inspired by a song is published each day on her Discovering Diamonds blog.

Christmas Stories Past

line drawing of Hector's House by T E Shepherd
Hector’s House was the scene of last year’s Christmas story (Copyright Thomas Shepherd http://www.shepline.com)

The first story I wrote for Helen’s blog was Lighting Up Time, set at the winter solstice, and since published as an ebook, audio short, and a tiny paperback the perfect size for a stocking filler.

Last year my contribution was a short story called It Doesn’t Feel Like Christmas, set in the Hector’s House bookshop, featuring Sophie, Hector, Billy and other favourite characters from my Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries. You can read that one here – and see whether you can guess before the end which song inspired the story! (This one hasn’t made it into a book yet, but will be included in my planned Wendlebury Barrow Christmas Compendium in 2021.)

Christmas Story Present

photo of angel made of beads
One of May Sayers’ many souvenirs from her travels – a South African Christmas angel

For this year’s series, I decided to write a story I’d had in my head for a while: the return of Sophie’s late great-aunt, May Sayers, to live in the cottage that she’ll eventually leave to Sophie.

In this story we find May unexpectedly alone for Christmas, in a scenario that sadly so many people will face this festive season. Then an unexpected visit from her old friend Billy inspires the ever-resourceful May to use an old-fashioned trick to transform her lonely vigil into her most special Christmas ever.

Whether or not you’ve read any of the Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries yet, I hope you will enjoy this gentle Christmas tale.

Christmas Ginger has not yet been published anywhere else. so for now the only place you can read it is on the Discovering Diamonds website:

READ “CHRISTMAS GINGER” HERE

Christmas Stories Yet to Come

By Christmas 2021, I’m planning to publish The Wendlebury Barrow Christmas Compendium. One of my projects over this holiday season is to write another new story inspired by the poinsettia – which I’ve just discovered rather pleasingly is named after one Joel Poinsett. More of that to follow in my story next Christmas!

Also in the new year I’m planning to write a trilogy of short stories, May Sayers Comes Home, as well as a new novel in each of the Sophie Sayers and St Bride’s School series. I’m going to be busy!

For now, have a peaceful and restorative Christmas, and I’ll look forward to catching up with you here on my blog at the end of the year.


My Other Books with a Christmas Theme

(all available in paperback and ebook – click images for ebook store links)

cover of Stocking Fillers by Debbie Young
The perfect antidote to Christmas stress
cover of Stranger at St Bride's
A gentle mystery solved at the School Christmas Fair
cover of Murder in the Manger
When Sophie’s nativity play goes wrong…
Posted in Reading, Writing

My Favourite School Story – Helen Hollick on Ruby Ferguson’s Jill Series

The fourth in my occasional series of interviews with author friends who love school stories

First in my own series of school stories for grown-ups

When I launched my St Bride’s series set in a British girls’ boarding school, I asked some author friends which school stories they’d most enjoyed when they were growing up and invited them to share their enthusiasm on my blog. So far I’ve run posts by Jean Gill talking about Anne of Green Gables, Helena Halme on Pippi Longstocking, and Clare Flynn on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – all very different books set in different countries: Canada, Sweden and Scotland.

Now at last it’s time for my home country to get a look in, as historical novelist Helen Hollick explains her passion for a classic English series: the Riding School stories by Ruby Ferguson.

Helen Hollick writes:

First in my own series of school stories for grown-ups

From an early age (about four years) I always had my nose buried in a book. My favourites, back then in the late 1950s, were Alison Uttley’s Little Grey Rabbit series. Not exactly school stories – although I do vividly remember one of them being about Fuzzypeg the hedgehog going to school and learning to read.

(Debbie: I love Little Grey Rabbit too, and recently bought a vintage copy of Fuzzypeg Goes to School!)

I do, vaguely, remember reading one school story. It might have been Malory Towers, but to be honest I didn’t like this genre. You see, I hated school. For my first year at  school I couldn’t see much because I was short-sighted and needed glasses, but it never occurred to Mum that this was the reason I was always bumping into or falling over things. And why I couldn’t see the blackboard.

I hated (even with glasses) always having to sit at the front. Hated being told off for bad handwriting. Hated being moaned at in sewing because I couldn’t see to thread a needle..  So there wasn’t much incentive to spend my own time at school. Even fictional ones.

School Stories with a Difference

Jill’s Gymkhana got Helen Hollick hooked on Ruby Ferguson’s classic series

Those school stories always seemed to have popular, clever, girls with friends. Lots of them. I didn’t have friends. I wasn’t popular or clever. I was shy, scared and unhappy. My friends were the characters I met in books. I met a special fictional friend when I was given a book for my ninth birthday. Jill Crewe in the book Jill’s Gymkhana.

You see, I was pony mad. Jill and her pony Blackboy introduced me to pony stories. From that day onward through my school days I read, lived, breathed – wrote – pony stories. Fiction made up for the pain of being so lonely and desperately wanting a pony of my own. (I had to wait until I was sixteen. Now at sixty-seven I have three ponies, three horses  and two donkeys in our fields here in Devon. Dreams do come true!)

The Jill books brought out the passion for ponies in a simple, funny, quirky and educational way. The first story follows Jill learning to ride and care for her pony, and I learnt with her. Then the second book brought in Mrs Darcy and the local riding school. That was it, I wanted to work there too. Funnily enough, when I did, eventually, get my own horse the owner of the riding school where I kept him reminded me of Mrs Darcy.

Classic 1950s Stories

There was a whole series of Jill stories to enjoy

The stories are very dated now – they are set in post-war England in the early 1950s. That in itself makes them interesting, for the historical detail of life back then. At the very least it wouldn’t be allowed in the 21st century for a girl of thirteen or fourteen to run a riding school! But this is exactly what happens in the second book in the series Jill Has Two Ponies.  Mrs Darcy has to go away so Jill and some friends offer to run the riding school in her absence. All well and good, but Mrs D’s valuable horse, Blue Smoke falls ill. Jill has to summon the vet:

“You girls clear out,” said the vet, cheerfully, “and let me have a look. Go and make me a cup of tea. I’ve been sitting up with a cow for hours.”

     We thought it very heartless of the vet to want tea, but we went into the house and made him a cup. We didn’t make any for ourselves, it would have choked us. Every time I caught Wendy’s eye she gave a gulp, and every time Wendy caught my eye I gave a gulp. We did nothing but gulp at each other. I set off down the yard with the vet’s cup of tea and slopped it all over into the saucer. Then suddenly I saw the vet before me. The heartless man was grinning all over his face.

“She’s just been playing you up,” he said. “A touch of a toothache, that’s all, but you know what these thoroughbreds are like, the least touch of pain and they act as if they were dying.”

(As a horse owner . . .  oh don’t they just!)

I still have that original birthday present hardback edition of Jill’s Gymkhana, and paperbacks of the others in the series – all somewhat battered because I read and re-read them as a teenager (along with many other pony stories). I re-read the first one not long ago and still thoroughly enjoyed it. Alas, I can’t read the others as I am now visually impaired and the paperback print is far too small and faded. A great shame that they are not on Kindle.

Modern Meddling

Jill was a victim of political correctness in later years and appeared in republished (awful) editions. The name ‘Blackboy’ was banned, (why, he was a black pony for goodness sake!). These re-writes completely spoil the feel of the stories – if you want to read them, get the originals!

(Debbie: It irks me too when publishers try to put a modern spin on timeless classics – such as reissuing Just William stories featuring William Brown sans school blazer and cap but with t-shirt and trainers instead. What nonsense!)

Inspiration for a Budding Novelist

The main thing Jill, her ponies, her friends and the Riding School did for me was to teach me to write.

Throughout those years I was either reading or writing. I had my own fictional pony: Tara, a palomino. (I must have heard of Gone With The Wind somewhere around then). I even wrote a story set in a riding school during a GCE exam. I’d finished the questions and had about an hour to kill. So I started writing a story about someone stealing a horse from the local riding school. I filled one A4 sheet of paper. Asked for another. And another.  I had quite a pile on my desk.

What I didn’t realise, the other girls in the class (Chingford’s, Wellington Avenue Secondary School for Girls) assumed I was answering exam questions. Like me they had only filled one A4 sheet and had no idea what else to put. But there was I, scribbling furiously…

They didn’t speak to me again for ages. I didn’t care, that meant they left me alone to escape into the world of ponies and riding schools.

© Helen Hollick


More About Helen Hollick

Thank you, Helen, that’s a fascinating insight both into Ruby Ferguson’s Jill books and into your own evolution as a writer.

I must admit that in my own childhood these stories passed me by, possibly because I’ve never been interested in horses, although my older sister remembers enjoying them. But given Helen’s persuasive tribute, I’m now keen to try one. As they’re all out of print now and have become collectors’ items, I’m going to have to keep an eye open in secondhand bookshops – a favourite haunt of mine, especially on holiday – until I can find one.

Debbie Young with Helen Holllick
Me with Helen Hollick, a great friend and mentor to authors all over the world

Meanwhile Helen grew up to write award-winning historical novels, fantasy and historical non-fiction. I’ve especially enjoyed her pirate fantasy series, which is a must for anyone who is a fan of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series, and her straight historical novels with Arthurian and Saxon themes are among my mum’s favourites!

She’s also become a firm friend and mentor to many, many aspiring novelists worldwide, well known for her generous spirit and kind heart. I’m thrilled therefore to have her as my guest on my blog today.

Find out all about Helen Hollick and her many books via her one of her links below:

Newsletter Subscription: http://tinyletter.com/HelenHollick
Amazon Author Page (Universal Link) http://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick
Twitter: @HelenHollick
Discovering Diamonds Historical Fiction Review Blog (submissions welcome): https://discoveringdiamonds.blogspot.co.uk/

Meanwhile at St Bride’s…

In the meantime, my own school stories are coming along nicely:

  • Book 2 in my St Bride’s School series will be published on 1st July 2020

    The first in the series, Secrets at St Bride’s, was a finalist in The Selfies Awards 2020, given to the best independently published fiction in the UK. With the paperback and ebook selling well, I’m planning to produce an audio version this autumn, narrated by Siobhan Waring, the voice artist responsible for the audiobook of Best Murder in Show, the first in my Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries. You can order the paperback here and buy the ebook here.

  • The second in the series, Stranger at St Bride’s, will be published on 1st July in ebook and paperback. You can already preorder the ebook here.