My agent and publisher shocked me recently by informing me that it’s thirty years since my first novel THE WILD HUNT was published.  I’m not quite sure how that can have happened, but here we are.  These are the novels that kickstarted my writing career, especially THE WILD HUNT because it was the one that obtained me a leading literary agent when she picked the manuscript from her slush pile and read it at her desk there and then, before writing to offer to represent me, thereby taking me away from my life as a part time shelf filler on the twilight shift at our local supermarket.  In the daytime I was looking after my two sons then aged 2 and 5. My work station was in their playroom, and I would multi-task – writing on an Amstrad Green-screen and doing my best not to stand on the Lego.
After agent Carole Blake began representing me, I had to wait another three months for THE WILD HUNT to be sold at auction in a bidding war between four different publishing houses before I could hand in my notice and begin my new career, but I am delighted – and relieved – to say that writing historical fiction has been my day job ever since.  One son is now a software engineer with children of his own (his turn to step on the Lego) and the other is a nurse in a busy A&E unit – and deals with people who tread on Lego!

This is the letter of reply I received from leading literary agent Carole Blake, offering to take me on Blake Friendmann’s books.

THE WILD HUNT did not spring fully formed of its own accord onto the stage, but was part of an apprenticeship process going back to my teen years.  I began writing my first novel by hand in a spare school exercise book when I was fifteen,  and inspired by the BBC children’s program Desert Crusader, mainly because I fell in love with the gorgeous hero.   I had told myself stories verbally for as long as I can remember, but this was the first time I had written anything down.  I called the novel ‘Tiger’s Eye’ after the precious stones in the hero’s sword hilt.  My father teasingly suggested that I call it ‘Crispin’s Capers.’  I realised as I wrote that this was what I wanted to do for a living and that awareness was like something very obvious and natural clicking into place.

These are a couple of pages from my vcry early efforts written in the school exercise book – the black at the base is from the scanner. My writing was neater in those days.

Of course, knowing what I want to do for a career and achieving that goal were two different things, especially in the crowded and competitive market of book publishing and I spent my twenties pursuing that elusive goal researching and writing several more historical novels – eight in all.
I suppose I was teaching myself how to write historical fiction and thoroughly enjoying myself at the same time.  All of those early novels were rejected by agents and publishers at one time or another, but that rejection only spurred me on to fresh effort, and indeed, since then, parts of my early novels have been sneakily embedded into some of my published ones!

THE COMING OF THE WOLF, the prequel to THE WILD HUNT, very nearly made the cut early on.  It received one rejection from an agent of ‘adult fiction’.  This was my fault for thinking in my innocence that ‘adult fiction’ meant something a bit less spicy than the material that particular agent represented.  Undaunted by the rejection, I got on with its sequel, THE WILD HUNT,  and the rest is history.  (see above letter from Carole Blake)  I never forgot THE COMING OF THE WOLF though, and reworked it many years later. A sample chapter posted on my website was met with calls for more by readers, so I reworked it again and sent it in.  It  now proudly joins the other three novels in the series.  THE WILD HUNT went on to win a major UK award for a first novel of a romantic or traditional nature – the Betty Trask Award.  The particular year I won, the awards, administered by the Society of Authors, were presented in the Banqueting Suite at Whitehall by HRH Prince Charles.  A bit different to filling the pet-food shelves at the Co-Op.

Me and HRH presenting me with my cheque.

THE WILD HUNT went on to be sold around the world in 21 different countries at the last count, as well as being serialised in a Scandinavian magazine, and is still in print in the UK, as are its sequels THE RUNNING VIXEN and THE LEOPARD UNLEASHED.
You can find a full list here of all the novels I have written complete with extracts. https://elizabethchadwick.com/novel-extracts/

A selection of covers, current and previous from THE WILD HUNT series.