Today we are thrilled to bring you the first instalment of an exciting new feature that will allow us to learn a little more about the authors we love.
Our very first Ask An Author is Barbara Hannay, I reviewed The Grazier’s Wife late last year and The Country Wedding has just released this month.
About Barbara Hannay, in her own words
I was born in Sydney and moved to Brisbane when I was four and I’ve been moving north ever since. These days I live with my writer husband in the Misty Mountains of Far North Queensland, a beautiful part of the world which is also the setting for my latest novels, The Grazier’s Wife and The Country Wedding.
I can’t help being a writer. It’s the way I’m wired. I’ve been sharing stories all my life. Even before I learned to write, I drew pictures and passed them through the slats of orange boxes and these were “movies” that I made my smaller sisters watch. When I joined the Brownies, the first badge I earned was the writer’s badge, and at school, English and History were always my favourite subjects.
Although I was an avid reader and loved to write stories, my very practical parents (an engineer and a bank teller) didn’t encourage me in this direction and so I became an English teacher. But I was still writing poetry and short stories in my “spare time” and after I was married (to a journalist – of course!) and our children arrived, I wrote stories for the children which they illustrated, and I submitted short stories to women’s magazines.
I was in my forties (and still teaching) before I plucked up the courage to start writing novels and submitting to publishers. I gathered the usual collection of rejections before the exciting “call” came from London and since then I’ve published fifty novels that have been translated into more than twenty-six languages.
I’ve won awards such as Romance Writers of America’s RITA award and Australia’s Romantic Book of the Year award and at times I’ve even been able to travel to research my stories. Last year my husband and I visited Shanghai to research the historical details for my most recent release The Country Wedding which, like my other recent novels for Penguin Australia, is an intergenerational story that includes a historical thread from World War 2 entwined with a contemporary romance.
So for me, becoming a writer was a dream come true. I can’t deny it’s hard work, but I look forward to every day and discovering what will happen next to my characters.
The Country Wedding Synopsis
For the next week we have Barbara Hannay on call to answer your questions, so if there’s anything you want to know about her career or any of her books please write your question in the comments section below and she will get back to you. Please do remember our authors are busy people too so you won’t necessarily get an immediate answer but all questions asked before Friday the 25th August will be answered.
For more great authors check back in the coming weeks, we will have authors in to coincide with book club reads. If you haven’t heard about our sampling club you should check out the Beauty and Lace Club.
The Country Wedding is published by Penguin and is available now from Angus & Robertson Bookworld, Booktopia and where all good books are sold.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!