The Rayner Unwin Connection.

At the end of the sixties my flat-mate and close friend, Joy Chant had her first book, the fantasy Red Moon & Black Mountain accepted for publication by George Allen & Unwin.

Rayner Unwin, interested, as ever, in fantasy talked to her a lot about the fantasy world she and I shared and later on a request came back that he would like to see the fantasy I was writing. He had to wait several years, since at that time (1971) I had just got Keré’us to Eloruna where he had met the Dark Lord and then I had written across the typescript in red ink, WHERE THE HELL DO I GO FROM HERE? I understand JRR had a similar moment when the Hobbits met Aragorn in the inn at Bree. I don’t know what it is about inns that so slows fantasy writers down! At least I knew who the Dark Lord was, it was the plot I was struggling with.

By 1976 I had a first draft typed out. This Rayner read, and sent back with a long letter, telling me where I was going wrong and expressing a desire to see the next draft. He was quite right, of course, it was turgid, very confusing and my writing style lapsed into inappropriate modern idioms.

I was by now expecting my second baby and it was not unsurprising that it took me until 1978 to finish the second draft, by which time I was on the third baby. What was surprising was that Rayner wrote back and said the book was quite good enough for him to offer to publish it. It would need considerable editing, but he did not want to do this until he had sold it in America and he would work with the American publisher to edit it jointly.

Oh bliss! Oh rapture! There I was, 34 and going to have published by George Allen & Unwin the first of an eleven book saga, with simultaneous publication in America! I went up to London to see him and remember being very pregnant and having great difficulty choosing what to eat for lunch. So then it was agreed, and Rayner sent the book off to Lester del Rey who represented Doubleday at that time. Lester thought there was a market for it in the States, but it needed a serious reader, and he could not take it on, his readers preferring a stirring novel over which they could relax.

It was then bounced off a series of American publishers, finally ending with Houghton Mifflin whose children’s department loved it, but because it was not a children’s story passed it on to their adult section, who did not like it at all. Rayner wrote to me in 1981, after it had been rejected by Warner Books, ending with the words It certainly deserves publication and I wish times were happier for giving it a whirl. And so I went back to being a mother and wife, and forgot my moment of glory.

Then some years ago when I was looking for something entirely different in the attic, the file with the old manuscript and Rayner’s letters in fell off a shelf onto my head and I read the letters again and realised that he had liked the book. I thought, blow everything, I’ll write out the whole eleven book saga on the computer, if only for my satisfaction and perhaps I can get it published. These days the publishing world is so hard to get into that I could not even find an agent, so I have published it myself. I did not know what had happened to Rayner until I tried to contact him to ask if I might quote from his letters on my book cover. Then I found out that he was dead and I do wonder, since it was not long after his death that I had rediscovered his letters, if perhaps he felt he still had unfinished business to settle.