About Anna Stuart
I wanted to be an author from the moment I could pick up a pen and was writing boarding-school novels by the age of nine. I made the early mistake of thinking I ought to get a ‘proper job’ and went into Factory Planning – a career that gave me some wonderful experiences, amazing friends and even a fantastic husband, but didn’t offer much creative scope. So when I stopped to have children I took the chance to start the ‘improper job’ of writing. During the baby years I wrote in the brief gaps provided by sleeps, playschools and obliging grandparents, publishing short stories and serials in all the women’s magazines.
But my ultimate aim was to write longer fiction and several years ago I published a series of successful historical novels under the pseudonym Joanna Courtney. I will continue to publish under that name but am delighted, as Anna Stuart, to also be able to write contemporary fiction. Bonnie and Stan is a true to life romance set in both the present day and sixties Liverpool and Four Minutes to Save a Life is a domestic drama about how small acts of kindness might just change the world!
Introducing Joanna Courtney
As Joanna Courtney I have published a trilogy The Queens of the Conquest about the three women fighting to be queen of England in 1066. It seemed to me inherently wrong that all we knew about this momentous year was from the male side of the story and I set out to redress the balance. My novels tell the events from the viewpoints of Edith of Mercia, wife of King Harold; Elizaveta of Kiev, wife of Harald Hardrada; and Mathilda of Flanders, wife of William the eventual conqueror.
I am now writing a new series called Shakespeare's Queens which explores the real histories of three of the great bard's best female creations - Lady Macbeth, Ophelia and Cordelia. Blood Queen and Fire Queen are out now, with Iron Queen to follow later this year.
I wanted to write contemporary novels under the new name of Anna Stuart so that readers knew clearly what they were getting but do find out more about my historical work by visiting my Joanna Courtney site.