Am I alone in believing that our natural skills manifest themselves in their own time? You could drum hundreds of hours of algebra into me as a kid and I’d still be perplexed and left wondering what I was supposed to do with it. Ask me to write an essay on the most obscure of subjects on the other hand and I’d be in my element.
I was good at just two things as a child – story-telling and riding horses. Both passions have remained with me throughout my life. As has a voracious appetite for reading. I wrote my first novel when I was in my twenties, using an electric typewriter, carbon paper and Tippex to make corrections. Any of you old enough to remember those draconian aids? I had to trudge to the library to do my research. You really had to want to write in those days!
The book languished in the back of a cupboard ‒ probably the best place for it! ‒ and I discovered it later in life when I had both the time and the desire to lose myself in a romantic world of my own creation. Thankfully, the god google and “Word” had been subsequently born, making the life of a writer a hell of a lot easier.
I had found my niche, especially since I chose to write Regency romance and horses are a vital part of that world. Why Regency? Because Jane Austen was a huge influence and one of the reasons why I wrote a series of Pride and Prejudice spinoffs. I desperately wanted to know what happened to Jane and Lizzy after their marriages. Jane wasn’t around to tell me, so I decided to make it up. How hard could it be with the help of a lively imagination and the aforementioned writing tools?
I was also able to make my heroines a little feistier than they would have been at the time without, I hope, making them unrealistic or too stupid to live. Ah, the power of the pen!
I’m probably not the only one who finds the real world …depressing, which is why I get so much pleasure creating worlds where right always triumph and loves conquers all.
Nowadays I write contemporary revenge crime as Evie Hunter which isn’t that far removed from the days of Austen, but for the horses. The desire for revenge, envy and pure evil hasn’t gone anywhere. If they had, I’d be out of a job!
Pick up your copy of E. V. Hunter’s latest cozy mystery here: https://mybook.to/strangleforsocial