About Josie

I'm a keen gardener who will try to make a bonsai out of almost anything, I've been a teacher, a cookery demonstrator, a tailor/dressmaker, a medical secretary, a house renovator and decorator, a quilt maker, a decorator of cakes for all sorts of special occasions and the sort of idiot who will give almost any challenge a go – which is how I came to start writing, on a dare from my husband.

Not long after the last of our children was born I had a ‘never-event’ medical catastrophe that left me unable to speak, read or write but because I'm the wife, mother, daughter, granddaughter, sister and aunt to people who love the written word I had to battle to learn again because, most of all, I'm a reader and a writer.

Learning those skills again became my introduction to category romance – a growing family and running our own business hadn't left much time for leisure reading for a while – and after I waded laboriously through the pile of second-hand novels my husband brought home for me to teach myself to read again, I made the mistake of wondering aloud if I could possibly write one and he said… ‘I dare you.’

I’ve had fifty-two published, so far, there are another nine in various stages of completion and I have at least thirty-seven outlines of ideas for future projects. That's a total of around five million words, when I get there, but doubtless by that time there will be more stories in my head waiting to be written.

Several years ago I had the misfortune to be interviewed by a journalist who made no secret of her disdain for category romance and anyone who wrote it and that put a bug in my brain… a bug that resulted in a number of gruelling years of fitting in hours of study with the Open University. So, the next time a disdainful journalist disparaged what I did, I was able to say, ‘Yes, but I do it with a BA Hons in English Literature… and I’m not the only one.’ 

Of course, that is now out of date because I'm part-way through studying for an MA in Creative Writing - also with the Open University.