Eleanor Watkins, author of 40 books!

Back in August we put up a brief profile of author Eleanor Watkins, but as Beech Bank Girls III (recently released) is Eleanor's 40th book - wow, what an achievement! - I thought it would be nice to have a longer piece. Eleanor has kindly written the following fascinating account of her childhood on a farm in the Welsh borders, how she came to follow the Lord, and a bit about her writing career to date. Enjoy! :-)

“I think I was conscious of God from a very early age. As a family we attended an Anglican church; I loved the words and rhythms of the Prayer Book service and often pondered their meanings. Our church was a tiny rural one, looking as if it had been dumped down in the middle of a field, sister to the Parish church in the village and much beloved by the diarist Francis Kilvert, whose books are full of names and places I know well. We would walk to church, wearing wellies in wet weather, over a mile of fields, hills and dips, narrow lanes and streams to cross.

Living in the depths of the countryside reinforced my deep inner feeling that there must have been a master Creator behind the wonder and beauty of the natural world. Our farm perched on a hillside overlooking the beautiful Wye valley, facing the misty blue ridges of the Black Mountains across the river. My brothers and I had a hundred and twenty acres of fields, streams and woodland as our playground and we knew every inch of it; each tree, every bend in the stream, the damp places where golden marsh marigolds and delicate wild orchids grew, the reed-fringed pond where we took our jam jars to collect frog spawn, the best horse chestnuts for conkers. We built houses in trees and dens in bushes, dammed the stream and diverted channels to create islands. We also sometimes did forbidden things, like building fires in woodland, or squeezing through holes in hedges to trespass on neighbours’ land. Looking back, it was an idyllic childhood, free of restriction - we truly ‘walked in Eden.’

  

Our farmhouse was draughty and sadly lacking in mod cons; one cold tap supplied all the domestic water, heating consisted of open fires and a couple of smelly oil heaters. We read by oil lamps or in bed by candlelight (fire hazard!), the toilet was at the bottom of the garden down a long and shrub-fringed path, scary in the dark, and we bathed in a tin tub in front of the kitchen fire. My parents were hard-working and often hard-up, but our house was full of books and magazines, from encyclopaedias to classics, poetry to farming magazines and children's comics. We all read avidly, studied the things that interested us, travelled to other times and places through the printed page. My brother wanted to be a naturalist, and I knew from very early on that I wanted to be a writer.

A turning point in my life came at sixteen, when three friends and I went to our village hall to see a film and listen to a visiting evangelistic speaker. As the evening progressed I had the growing conviction that these people knew Jesus in a personal way, and, more importantly, that his death on the Cross that I heard about in Sunday services had been for me, personally, and that I needed to make a decision; to accept him into my heart and life or to reject him. I had the uneasy feeling that the former decision might restrict my blossoming teenage social life, so I headed straight for the door when the meeting ended. My friend, though, persuaded me to respond to the altar call, and together we duly stayed behind for counselling. Once pinned down, I prayed the sinner’s prayer with sincerity, and really felt that something significant had happened.

Over the years, I’m amazed at the way God has kept his hand on me through many ups and downs, wanderings and strayings (on my part), heartaches and problems and happy times, and the incredible diversity and wonder and adventure of life lived with Jesus. I’ve met so many amazing people and learned and experienced so much in so many ways, from the joy and wonder of being filled with the Holy Spirit, to the pain of church splits and the hard work of setting up new enterprises. I don’t always understand what God is doing, but I do believe that, in the end, ‘all will be well, and all will be most well, and all manner of things will be well.’(Julian of Norwich)

I’ve written stories since I could hold a pen, and had my first acceptance at the age of 21, when Christian Herald newspaper accepted one of my short stories for the princely fee of three guineas! They took several more, and later published a children's serial which I had started when I was sixteen and finished a few years later when I was looking for something to do during my baby son’s nap time. My first book was published by Victory Press in 1973, the story of a boy and a fox cub. By then I was a farmer’s wife and mother of three small boys, living in a farmhouse in the lee of the Black Mountains facing across the valley to my childhood home. Life was busy, but I persevered with the writing and more books followed with Victory Press. A lean spell in publishing came later in the 70s and 80s, and I turned to short stories and articles, selling a respectable number to various magazines in this country, Australia and the US. Children's fiction was my first love, though, and it was with relief that I discovered Lion Publishing, who helped and nurtured me enormously, and later Scripture Union and Kevin Mayhew.

Beech Bank Girls III: Christmas is Coming!, published this year, is my fortieth book, not counting the dozen or so manuscripts, finished and unfinished, that lurk in my files. I began the Beech Bank Girls stories after reading something similar in secular teenage fiction and wondering how it would work if the girls telling the stories had experienced Jesus in their lives. The first couple of publishers I approached were dubious, then I met Janet through the pages of the ACW magazine, she liked the stories and the rest, as they say, is history. The latest book was inspired by the bitter weather of last winter which started before Christmas – I thought it would be fun to have a pre-Christmas story with a cold and snowy setting. The girls themselves are not goody-goody or super-spiritual, they are ordinary girls who laugh, cry, fall out sometimes, face heartaches, make mistakes, act silly and have a lot of fun. I want the readers, above all, to have a sense of how precious they are to God, how much he loves them just as they are, and to know that he has wonderful plans for their lives.

I write mostly in longhand, in a spiral-bound manuscript book, editing each days’ work later the same day, editing it again when it goes on the computer – and then again, and again…… My three pieces of advice to budding writers? 1. Read. 2. Write. 3. Make sure you have a good editor. I can’t emphasize that enough. However well you think you’ve edited your work, there will always be things you missed, or that could be improved on. Whether a lot or a little needs to be changed, a good editor is a must.

 

A few years ago, on a trip to New England, I visited Walden Pond and was very taken with Thoreau’s idea of a little hut in the woods, having the fanciful notion I’d like one to write in. My husband, bless him, took this on board and some time later obtained a small wooden hut and set it up in our own woodland. It was a nice idea, but alas!, very little writing has been done there. The grandchildren play in it and I go there occasionally to watch wildlife, or to have a scream or rant without danger of disturbing the family or upsetting the cat! These days, I can’t get by without piles of books, concordances, notes on bits of paper, the phone, and a computer with Google, Amazon and Facebook to provide distraction at regular intervals. Plus a comfy armchair, central heating and a cup of tea, of course!"

Eleanor at the Christian Resources Exhibition at Sandown Park in May.

All three Beech Bank Girls books, for girls aged 10-14,  are available from good bookshops everywhere (support your local Christian bookshop if you can) or direct from our website  www.dernierpublishing.com/youthf.php at price £5.99 each. For more information about these books and our others, scroll down to previous posts, find us on facebook:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dernier-Publishing/173040439575 or check out our website!