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This journal is a combination of my memories and what I wrote in my diary at the time, as well as other notes.
Summer 1989
If I have to lay the thanks (or blame) for writing this book at anyone's feet, it will be at Christina Hardyment's. The Telegraph magazine had recently published an article by her about Arthur Ransome and where the locations from the 'Swallows and Amazons' books really were. I have been a life long AR fan and had identified many of the locations myself but the article was fascinating reading, especially as it told me about the origins of the Swallows, something I had not known before. That was my introduction to the Altounyan family, the real Swallows, and would eventually lead me to the newly formed 'Arthur Ransome Society'. It also led me to T'Tenneb.
I had finished my 'A' levels and was beginning the long summer before university. I had written a book (not very good), three years before, and although I had planned out a detective novel, I had never seriously started it. I remember sitting in the garden one day, wanting to write something else and thinking "What about a fairy story, actually with fairies?" With Arthur Ransome's use of real people as characters fresh in my mind, my thoughts turned to two sisters that I baby-sat a lot back then. I decided to write a story for them; and starring them. Enter Rachel and Alex and the toothfairy device to get them to the magical land.
With the basic premise in place, I began to populate my magical island with a community of fairies. To do this, I followed Arthur Ransome's example again and drew on what I was familiar with, my own community, and more specifically, my church community. My village became Notnilc Notsa, with our village hall being transformed into the Meeting House. The south porch of my church became the entrance to Nala's castle, whilst the inside I used as part of Tremag's castle. Many of the village social activities make an appearance in the book; harvest suppers, church choir and bell ringers, even the horticultural show gets a mention. As to the fairies, they are almost all people I know within my village social circle and Nala is also based on a real person. My pet cat, being such a character in her own right, had to be included, and it was so easy to write her in.
T'Tenneb itself, if I could visit it, would probably look very much like the area of the Chiltern Hills where I live. The view from the hill just above the village is over a flat plain with the range of hills stretching away to either side, and in the distance is a lone chimney sticking up into the sky. There used to be about five, but in 1998 the others were blown up. I am sure that it is these chimneys that gave me Tremag's castle. They must have been lodged in my subconscious waiting until I needed them.
I decided the title early on but I'm not sure where the plot came from exactly. I know I began with an image that was eventually removed from the book; a fairy running by some trees, and as she ran her skirt metamorphasised into a pair of trousers. Sadly, this did not fit in with how the fairy characters developed. My other initial idea was engineering, as I would be studying that at university. I thought it would be interesting to have all these machines and devices in the realm of magic where they would not be understood. From this starting point, over the next year or so, the story grew and developed as I thought about why the sisters went to the island and what could happen to them. I imagined all sorts of scenes and events, but nothing was written down. At some point during this process, I began jotting notes in a small book that I had acquired from school. First is a description of the island;
T'Tenneb
Magical land, consists of an island with some smaller islands to the north and south-east. Home of Nala is on a south-eastern island. Mountains in west for ferrous metal mining and forging for coins to pay for teeth. Teeth are currency. Forest near centre is major settlement.
Castle of Tremag in north of island on the Loan Peak.
Island is 15 Tinus long and 10 Tinus wide.
River Tilltwist flows from the Loan Peak past the forest of Mallenow to the sea in the east.
This description has not changed much. I dropped some of the names and the tinus over time. I did try and work out an exchange rate of teeth, but somewhere along the way I decided it didn't fit in with the community I had built so the teeth collection became one of the world's accepted mysteries.
The next page of the notebook has a character list. I must have decided on most of the names by then as there is no crossing out. Then follows details of the histories of the main characters, which again have not changed much, and
Continued on page 2
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