Pulling at the bit

Amy Brown is moving fast on any literary ideas she has. Photo / Supplied

If anyone seemed set for a career writing literary fiction, it's Hastings-born Amy Brown. She even looks like a poet, flaxen-haired and waiflike, sensitive and softly spoken. Plus she ticks all the other boxes - a poetry book shortlisted for a Montana award, graduate of the Victoria University creative writing course, lots of work writing literary criticism. So it came as a surprise to just about everyone when her first published novel turned out to be a children's pony book.

"It was unexpected for most people," Brown admits. "My old tutors were a bit baffled I think by the new turn in my career."

Although now based in Melbourne where she's completing a PhD in contemporary epic poetry, Brown had a horsey Hawke's Bay upbringing, show-jumping ponies and hanging out at pony club. She was also an avid reader of pony stories - particularly the Jill books, an English series by Ruby Ferguson that was originally published in the 1950s.

Brown's own first pony book, Jade And The Stray (HarperCollins, $18.99), is very much modelled on the classic Ferguson books and she isn't shy of admitting their influence

"I still like reading them," she admits. "It's my guilty pleasure."

After a friend gave her a pony book for her birthday, Brown decided to have a go at writing one herself. "I was working in a marketing job, had just finished a poetry book and had the energy to write something completely different," she explains. "Originally I was doing it just for my friend but then I thought I should send it off to a publisher and see how it went."

Brown's story Jade And The Stray tells of Aucklander Jade Lennox who moves to the tiny town of Flaxton to live with her grandfather after a family tragedy. Lonely and out of place she rescues a stray pony and finds learning to ride it proves her salvation. It's a wholesome, simply told moral tale that touches on topics like friendship and bullying.

"I wasn't thinking of my other writing at all," Brown says. "This was a different exercise altogether."

Since she was aware HarperCollins were already publishing Aucklander Stacy Gregg's best-selling Pony Club Secrets books, Brown decided to send her completed manuscript off to them. "It cost $40 for the postage from Australia which, being a student, was an investment so I thought, 'I hope this works'," she says.

Just two weeks later she got the call to say HarperCollins really liked the story and wanted to publish it. "I thought my mother was playing a joke on me at first," Brown admits.

That was last year and already she's written the follow-up to Jade And The Stray and is embarking on her third pony book, juggling it with her thesis and the contemporary epic poem she's trying to write.

"They're so completely different that they work quite well together because I can procrastinate about one and move to the other," she says.

Brown doesn't think of her pony books as a "dumbed down" version of her more literary writing. "I remember at Victoria my supervisor Damien Wilkins telling me it's impossible to dumb down your writing. You have to believe in what you're doing - you can't be cynical.

"Although it's not as complex as writing poetry, in some ways I've tried to take it seriously and, as faithfully as possible, to write a modern New Zealand version of the books I really enjoyed when I was little.

"While the first book is definitely derivative - the Jill stories provided my initial scaffolding to hold it up - I think they'll move away from Jill as they go on."

Brown isn't sure why little girls are so enduringly addicted to pony books. "There are Freudian theories about them being an introduction to romance novels - the relationship with the horse is sort of like falling in love. But they're also adventure stories with problems to overcome. As long as there are little girls there'll be a market for pony books I think."

Still only 25, Brown has a long writing career ahead of her. Her dream is to produce a wide range of work - more poetry and children's books, more literary criticism, and a literary novel for adults. "I'd like to write as much as possible," she says.

"I remember Bill Manhire [director of Victoria University's creative writing programme] saying if you have an idea you shouldn't tell yourself that you'll do it one day, you should start straight away and that's what I did with the pony books."