VERONICA HELEY

Veronica Heley is celebrating the publication of her 64th book in the UK this Christmas, though the USA publication date will be a couple of months after that. She’s been in the business now for over 30 years, having her first crime fiction book published in l977 – recently re-issued in 2008. She’s written a straightforward biography of St Paul, some historical fiction, many articles and reviews, masses of children’s and resource books, and learned how to write story-boards for cartoons. She enjoys giving talks and teaching about writing.

She is married to a retired probation officer who sometimes gives her ideas for stories, and has a married, musician daughter. She is active in her local church and community affairs, likes to break for coffee with friends and does the garden when she has time. She has been a member of a book reading club for over 30 years, but has decided that life is too short to read depressing literature any more.


I THOUGHT I KNEW IT!

On and off for some time, between writing my two series of gentle crime books for adults, I’ve been working with another Christian writer to retell Bible stories with a difference for children. She is brilliant at retelling the good old stories such as Silent Night, putting the well known tales into modern guise. She also thinks up Easy Ways to Christmas Plays. These are published by Bible Reading Fellowship and Concordia. Look up her website at www.vickihowie.co.uk and you’ll see what I mean.

The idea was that she produces a modern twist on a bible story, and I would then retell it very simply from biblical sources. Originally we envisaged this becoming an illustrated book, with CD Roms of the stories and pictures tucked inside the cover. This would be a resource book for adults to use with children, or for children to access by themselves. Well, that idea is still in the pending file, waiting for the end of the recession.

But recently we were asked if we could produce a children’s take on the Nativity story for a Christmas Eve publication in the Methodist Recorder. Of course we could. Vicki had just the right story tucked in her files, and of course I’d done this sort of thing before – not least for Frances Lincoln when I did the text for their superb pop-up book on The Nativity, illustrated by Francesca Crespi and published by Frances Lincoln.

Being in a hurry as usual, I dashed into the first draft and sent it off to Vicki by email. Ouch. I’d broken the first rule of re-writing text; I hadn’t checked with the Bible first, had I?

Vicki let me down gently. There is no donkey in the Bible version. Nor an innkeeper. And did my last sentence really convey the angel’s joy at Christ’s birth? Er, well . . . no, it didn’t.

Now that’s what I call friendship; to be able to point out errors in such a way that I could spring to correct them without embarrassment.

So I did what I ought to have done in the first place, which was go back to the Bible and re-write my version to suit.

I really ought to have known better, oughtn’t I? How many children’s enactments of the Nativity story have I sat through in my time? In all the years in which I was writing solely for children, how many times have I retold bible stories in Junior Church, and for Christian book publishers? In those days the first thing I did was to re-read the original, no matter how well I thought I knew it, and no matter how busy I was.

No excuses; I shouldn’t have trusted my memory.

Well, that was a salutary lesson. I do trust no one else falls into this trap come Christmas. Remember: no donkey, no innkeeper. But plenty of angels, please.

Veronica Heley’s 64th book, MURDER IN HOUSE, tenth in the Ellie Quicke series, came out in June 09 in the UK, September 09 in the USA. The next one, FALSE PRETENCES, 4th in the Abbot Agency series, comes out in the UK in December 09, and March 2010 in the USA. Check out her Web site at: www.veronicaheley.co.uk/