Author profile: Denise Hayward, author of 'Deepest
Darkness'!
"As
a child I loved reading, and I read all the children’s classics – The
Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Alice in Wonderland, Heidi, Little
Women etc. I also enjoyed Enid Blyton – she gets a bad press now but she
drew me into books. Two books that really impacted me were Helen
Keller’s autobiography and The Diary of Anne Frank. Probably more than
any other book The Diary of Anne Frank inspired me to start writing. For
my 13th birthday I
bought a note book with some money I’d had and began to keep a diary. I
think I began by trying to record the boring intricacies of my day but
quite soon it became a place to write what I thought and felt, how I
processed the world. Those early diaries read rather embarrassingly now!
I have never been faithful to writing my journal every day but I have
more or less kept it up ever since. I still have days when I write reams
and occasionally let several days, even weeks, lapse.
I
don’t remember when I first wanted to write children’s stories,
probably some time in my early twenties. I just know that for a long
while I wanted to and then eventually began to put some of the ideas I
had in my head onto paper. From the time I was a young teenager I wanted
to be an actress, and from the age of 16 acting was a total obsession
for me. It was all I wanted to do. I did eventually go to drama school
and then had a summer season in the children’s theatre in Butlins. It’s a
long story but I learned a lot about myself I didn’t like during that
summer. I had been reading Christian books such as Jackie Pullinger’s
‘Chasing the Dragon,’ and Joni Eareckson’s autobiography. I may, at
times, have called myself a Christian up to that point but I was not a
follower of Jesus and these books brought that home to me. Anyway God
sought me out, thankfully, and aged 23 I became a follower of Jesus. And
he very clearly led me out of the acting world. It seemed hard at the
time but I am glad He did. I wouldn’t have survived as a Christian in
that world. That’s not the case for everyone but it certainly was for
me.
I
think it was probably around that time that the possibility of being a
writer began to take hold of me. I certainly began writing more
seriously then. I think my first completed work was probably a one woman
play about Eleanor Roosevelt. I hoped to tour it around schools but
didn’t get much interest – they kept telling me what women they would
like a show about. I’ve never been very good at writing on demand. It
has to mean something to me. However it began, somewhere in me I knew I
wanted to write children’s stories. Of course I discovered writing them
is far easier than getting them published! It always seemed like I was
playing a game that I didn’t know the rules of.
The inspiration for Deepest Darkness came
when my husband, Frederick, and I had a holiday in Canada. We caught
the train from Toronto that crosses Canada to Vancouver, on the west
coast. We stopped off at the Rockies on the way over then continued on
to Vancouver. From there we hired a car and drove around Vancouver
Island. We walked in the Rockies, went whale watching, stayed in an old
loggers cabin and took boats out to see Grizzly bears along the coast.
Throughout the journey the thing that struck us was the wildness and the
unpredictability of it. The reality that as we walked we could very
possibly stumble across a bear was exciting and scary! All the while, as
we faced a wildness that doesn’t exist anymore in Britain, I felt God
stirring things in me, facing fears. Not just the fear of stumbling
across a bear but a certain fearfulness that gripped me. My fear was not
as raw and controlling as Abi’s [from Deepest Darkness] but certainly
controlled aspects of my life. God had long been dealing with fear in
me. But there is simply something about walking in wilderness that
touches something deep. Not just about me, but about the reality that
God is not a tame God, and actually, in the depths of who I am, I don’t
want Him to be anyway.
But
it was in a small place on the west coast of Vancouver Island that the
story began to stir in me. Our hotel was virtually on the beach, we had a
room looking out to the sea. The beach was beautiful, to me it was
paradise. The dark rocks in the sea, the long sandy beach. Behind were
mountains and forests. All that part of Canada used to be temperate
rainforest but most of it has been logged and there is very little
original forest left. But there is some and from the road there was a
boardwalk into the edge of the forest. As we walked I wept, the colours,
the variety of green and the ancientness of this forest, deeply touched
my heart, deeply spoke to me of the One who is the Ancient of Days.
One
morning on the beach, the line ‘When I was a child of 9 or 10 I came to
this island full of fear,’ popped into my head. And it stayed there. It
became a matter of discovering who this person was and what had
happened to her. In many ways Dave, Abi’s father, contains strands of my
story as much as Abi herself. For me, Deepest Darkness is
as much about discovering God is far bigger and wild and real and good
than we ever imagine, as it is about one young girl facing her fears and
finding God cares. He is enough. He made this wild, incredible planet
that He cares deeply about. And yet He knows me and He cares. He intends
life to be fully lived and embraced, He doesn’t want us cowering or
making a life for ourselves that we can manage. He is too wild for us to
tame and life is too huge for us to control but He holds us and lights
our way."
Deepest
Darkness really is a beautiful book; thoughtful, exciting, inspiring
and equally suitable for Christian children or those with no church
background. If you would like to read the first chapter, you can do so
online: http://dernierpublishing.com/deepestdarkness.php
Or here's Janet Wilson, founder of Dernier Publishing, talking about the book:
Or here's Janet Wilson, founder of Dernier Publishing, talking about the book:
Here's the blurb from the book, with some reviews:
Ten-year
old Abi suffers from terrible nightmares and her life is ruled by fear.
On holiday in Canada, she makes a new friend who shows her that true
light shines, even in the deepest darkness. Facing her fears one by one,
Abi opens up her life to the light and finds a freedom that she never
thought possible.
“This is a brilliant story all about a girl called Abi. She's got a fear of everything, but a trip to Canada brings a new friend and some important answers. This is one of the best books I've read – EVER!” - Maddie
“It is a fantastic adventure and God is really real.” - Natalie
“I enjoyed the story very much. I felt for Abi and all the characters, and was really excited while reading the book.” - Polina
"Deepest Darkness' has deeply touched my daughters. There is something about it which has struck a chord with them." - Jo