their two-year scheme.  I went by myself of course, with no money to my name to speak of, and was flabbergasted when on sailing down the Suez Canal on Valentine’s Day I met a man and knew he was the one and only.  We married in Australia.”  But didn’t work with horses there.   “... I am talking about over half a century ago.  At this time the economy of that country depended solely  on the wool clip.  For the three and a half years we were there the wool clip failed and there was a tremendous amount of unemployment. It was a case of getting any job to pay a wage.”  

Three of Hazel’s books are set in Australia:  her first, Fury, Jago and Untamed.  She could probably already have written the books without going to Australia:  a voracious reader, she said “I did not have to get background for my Australian books.  I already had it!  I could just about quote We of the Never Never by Mrs Aeneas Gunn; Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood and Banjo Patterson’s poetry, especially Waltzing Matilda, The Man fromSnowy River, and Clancy of the Overflow.

I asked why she’d decided to bring the English and Australian books together in Untamed.  “Untamed?  I wanted to be different!!  I have always been  the lone wolf. I  have never run with the pack and I never will!”  There were no more Leysham Stud books after Untamed.  Was this, I wondered, a deliberate decision?  “Yes! Untamed  was a deliberate end to this series as I wished  to go into adult historical thrillers.”

Hazel Peel 2

And why, I asked had she decided to start her writing career by writing for children; and about horses? “I was young when I began writing but I knew then [to] only write about that which you know. I did not have the confidence, the knowledge of life, let alone the ability, to write for adults even though I was such a very well read person and still am. Writing is nothing but another craft which a person has to learn, which cannot be acquired from a book. It is another form of art and must be treated as such with many lessons and colossal experience. I started with the children’s books because they were shorter and they did not need to be so deep. I thought I would cut my teeth on these then when I had written X number move on to adult books. This is exactly what happened.”
 

Hazel had her first piece (a short story called Pit of Fear) published in Australia. The attraction of working with horses had worn off. “I became fed up with the long hours and slave wages, so went back to London, living in a hostel at King’s Cross.... travelled Europe, and when I was 21 I decided I wanted to see more of the world so applied to go to Australia as a migrant on

After Hazel’s husband returned from working in the Middle East for six years, they went travelling, and visited Communist Russia, Iceland, the Amazon Jungle, Brazil, Namibia and South Africa, America, Canada and the Channel Islands.  It was the trips to the Channel Islands that inspired Hazel’s book Sea Gem.  This is her favourite of her adult novels:  of the horse books it is Jago.  “I put my heart and soul into that book,” she said.

Hazel’s husband died four years ago.  “To say I was devastated is the understatement.  Life had to go on though, so it was back to my writing with a vengeance.  Publishers and agents did not want to know me so I thought they could “get stuffed” and I would self publish with Amolibros.  This is how I spend my widowhood.  I have brought our four books.  One, Sea Gem, is out in audio with Isis, and another, Bold Spirit, has come out in large print with the BBC Chivers division.

I am now in my 78th year and pretty disabled physically, but there is nothing wrong with my brain (thank gawd!) and i intend to bring at least three more books out before I drop off the twig.  It has been very hard work but also therapeutic against grief because my beloved died just three months before our golden wedding – and we never had family.  

I am a nobody but I like to think perhaps my 77 years of endeavour and one-track-mind effort might encourage other people to go and do their own thing and to blazes with what people say or think!”