Raised in Hertfordshire in a busy six-sibling household, Roxy Eloise’s childhood was full of fun and friendships. She shared an imagination akin to her youngest brother, and they spent their days building camps and making dens. This wasn’t always well-received; particularly by stable owners whose property their mother tried to stable her horse. The mischievous two’s inventiveness saw them barred from every stable yard but one, the last one. Roxy Eloise’s mother never attempted to stifle her children’s imaginations but instead would move stables time and time again. Some credit for the richly crafted worlds found in Roxy Eloise’s books can be accredited to her dedicated mother.
Roxy Eloise always enjoyed writing stories, but it wasn’t until secondary school that she found real enjoyment in the writing process. During an English assignment, she wrote a short story about two sisters finding an Ouija Board. Pleased with her story, she handed it in for marking. But it was just one sentence in particular she was really excited about. The day she received her marked story back, she eagerly turned to the page of the ‘impressive’ sentence to see if her teacher had noticed it. The teacher had and she’d left a comment. With bated breath, Roxy Eloise regarded the scribbled red ink. The teacher didn’t like her sentence. She said it was unrealistic. Well, as an adult, Roxy Eloise sees it was unrealistic, but as a child, her confidence was shattered. She remembers deciding in that very moment that she was not born to be a writer. She spent the next fifteen years in envy of authors, quite often finding herself in bookstores staring in awe—not at the books—but at each individual author’s name. It wasn’t until her late twenties that she had her confidence restored. Then that year, she sat down and wrote The Guidal: Discovering Puracordis.