Vivienne’s fascination with books, and particularly illustration, began as a small child when she crept into her grandfather's study to pour over his beautiful books of fairy tales with their detailed subtle watercolours by Arthur Rackham. Her mother's bedtime stories also set her imagination alight, and favourites such as Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree led to many childhood adventures in which she and her two brothers would search the countryside, convinced they would find that tree and all its fairy folk. This inspired her to write and illustrate her own stories with which she regaled her wide-eyed younger brothers at bed-time.
Her love for Art led to several art prizes and eventually to a Degree in Illustration and Graphic Design, followed by professional work for Ladybird books such as A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Recommended by their editorial director to three London agents, she was represented by Temple Art Agency and worked for (among others) Oxford University Press. Her work as a Visualiser for Selfridges Design studio also allowed her to create artwork which was turned into 3D sets for their famous Christmas windows, exhibitions and Grottos, and led to her work being reproduced in the TV Times and national newspapers. Her creativity led her into marketing and promotional work and then to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where she lived for eight years, running her health club and writing for magazines and newspapers there.
Vivienne fell under the spell of that sub-tropical jewel that is Tenerife and its fascinating history and culture, and began writing stories that encompass historical fact, as well as the myths and legends of the islands and even science fiction stories. They are based on the adventures of her two pet Cocker Spaniels, Oscar and Libby, and the series of eight books, The Eight Pearls of Wisdom, is set in different periods of the swash-buckling history of that island from the theories surrounding its very formation as it rose from the Atlantic Ocean, its colonisation by ancient aboriginal tribes, the Guanches, the first known inhabitants of the Fortunate (Canary) Islands, at the time of the fall of Troy and later during the Spanish conquest, the wanderings of Ulysses, who stumbled upon the islands, when blown off course on his return to Greece, to the two hundred years of pillage at the hands of pirates and the attempted conquests by Lord Nelson. The books are a non-stop adventure story that follows our characters as they travel back through every decade, from prehistoric times to the present and beyond to face and overcome many challenges in order to discover a pearl of wisdom from each adventurous challenge.
Will the collective knowledge and wisdom of the pearls ultimately save the human race from its current course of ecological self-destruction?
The books' aim is to also focus children’s minds not only on moral issues but on geographical, geological, historical and archaeological subjects, as well as ecological issues, in a sometimes light-hearted, sometimes dark, but always thought-provoking manner.
For her entry, Vivienne has submitted the first few chapters from Book Four, The Pirate Story, as it is the one in which Oscar actually meets Libby!
Her dream and goals for her illustrated work are to see the series published, and possibly reproduced as films, and to go on to write other illustrated adventure stories.
