It Was All Through Diamond

So what was I writing? Anne McAllister hopes it was about a hero called Andreas –but unfortunately not. The story I was writing was called - like this post - It Was All Through Diamond.

At the time I was addicted to the books of Lorna Hill. Not the ballet books - the ones I loved were the books gathered together under the collective title of the Patience books and the Marjorie books – they had horses in them for a start. And they had Guy. Guy Charlton. I was very much in love with Guy. So much so that I named a character in my own story after him. Only my Guy was Guy Laurence.

My ‘book’ was very derivative – based so much on my own childhood reading. If you look carefully at the list of ‘Patience’ books, you’ll see that even the title is not really my own – right there in the list of Lorna Hill books is one called It was All Through Patience - and no I did not read it in the year it was first published (1952)! The children in Lorna Hill's books rode horses and they went on camping holidays – and the children in my story rode horses and were on a camping holiday – neither of which were things that I’d actually ever done.

Write about what you know? Nah! Not me – not then.

So the very first lines of the very first ‘book’ (it’s all of 45 pages long) are these:

CHAPTER ONE

Diamond was lost, there was no doubt about it. We had left her in the meadow only ten minutes ago, but now she had vanished.

Perhaps I’d better explain. My name is Bettina Powell, Betsy to my friends. My twin brother, Steve and I, my friend Judith Grey and Steve’s friend Guy Laurence were on a camping holiday together when we discovered that Diamond had disappeared. Diamond is Judith’s mare.

See – (putting my creative writing tutor hat on here ) even then I had some idea. Grab ’em in the opening lines, or at the very least, the opening pages. These days I might start with a sheikh’s arrival in a big, sleek car, with outriders, bodyguards, on powerful motor bikes riding beside him (At The Sheikh’s Command) , or a dark, devastating Sicilian marching into a church at a wedding and declaring . . . (no – sorry - you’ll have to wait for that it’s in the next book Sicilian Husband, Blackmailed Bride). In those days, it was a missing pony – but the technique’s the same.

Interesting editing point – at some point later, I must have gone back to revise this masterpiece. In pencil I’ve scribbled the ages of each of my characters. So the additions say that the narrator, Bettina and her twin Steve are 14, Judith is 13, and Guy is a mature 15. So even then, my heroes were the ‘older man’! Isn’t is an intriguing - and slightly spooky - point too that my other male character here is called Steve, the name of the BM, my real life hero. Premonition? (Insert X files music here) Or just coincidence. This personal link continues with another detail, another important character who appears later on. But I’ll come to that soon.

So – It Was All Through Diamond (paying homage to Lorna Hill) is the first piece of my writing I have a hard copy of. And for me, as the writer I am now, the really interesting thing about it, is how quickly I became fickle, and abandoned poor Guy. Guy was supposed to be the hero, but he didn’t stay that way.

Because the trouble with Guy (that sounds like another Lorna Hill title – The Trouble With Guy) – that is, the Guy as written by Lorna Hill, was that he was just too perfect. He was kind, considerate, honest, patient (most of the time) and possesses both immense physical and moral courage. He was rich and talented, a consummate rider and later a caring vet. In other words, he was just too good to be true. He was like Julian in the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton – the infuriatingly know-it-all, always right, elder brother – while I had always preferred hot headed Dick of the FF, the younger boy who, along with ‘George’/Georgina was always getting into trouble and getting things wrong.

So Guy was never going to really satisfy me as a hero. And very soon he fell by the wayside as I introduced a new character. By then, I’d been influenced by a couple of other very important (to me) books – and a very important TV programme - and my ideas on heroes had started to change dramatically.

So what influenced the creation of the Kate Walker hero?

To be continued . . .