Guest Post: Anna Jacobs
Today I'm delighted to welcome best-selling author Anna Jacobs to WKDN. I came to know of Anna's work through the Romantic Novelists' Association, and was incredibly impressed to learn that she publishes three books a year with a mix of historical and contemporary subjects. I set out to write a book a year, and that's pretty challenging with the amount of research and promotion that goes into each novel. So how do you write three books a year? Over to Anna to find out ...
Kate has
kindly invited me to talk about my writing, with the focus on the fact that I
write 3 novels a year.
She wants to
know how I do it. Well, it all stems from the way I developed as a writer . . .
In the
mid-1980s I was working full-time, we had two teenage daughters and I was
studying for my Master of Business – the worst possible time to get serious
about writing. I’d been writing novels for fun for a year or two, but suddenly
I found myself longing to write full time.
I started
getting up at 4am and writing before I went to work. Lovely, peaceful house, no
interruptions . . . bliss! I only had a limited time to write, and there was no
such thing as emails then, so I didn’t fiddle around. I wrote steadily on our
brand new computer.
It was early
days in the technology. We had a Kaypro, with one floppy disk to run the word
processing program (Wordstar), one floppy to write on, and you couldn’t fit
more than one chapter to a disk.
My early
attempts at novels didn’t get published but writing them taught me so much. And
as my skills improved, the rejections got more encouraging.
The turning
point was learning to get better tension into the stories. I decided to write
something to practise that, not trying to get it published but keen to improve
my skills. It turned into a science fiction story that was a psychodrama cum
ripping adventure yarn.
‘Envoy’ was
such fun to write. I’d wake in the night with an idea for another plot twist
and creep into the ensuite to note it down. Later, it became my fifth novel
published, under my Shannah Jay fantasy writing name.
It’s been
out of print for a while, but is available as an ebook. It’s recently had a
film option taken out on it by someone who’d remembered it for ten years.
Fingers and toes crossed here! Film projects don’t always get funding. You can
see ‘Envoy’ on Amazon or on my website at:
Back to my
first book published - I entered a big writing competition in 1991, winning a
$10,000 prize and publication. ‘Persons of Rank’ was a historical romance in
the Jane Austen style, great fun to write. I’d had a month’s leave from work in
which to write it. No time to waste.
The next
year I fell ill with chronic fatigue syndrome, and could no longer work. I
could write for an hour or two, then I’d have to take a nap. Again, fate was
training me to ‘seize the moment’.
After a
dreadful year in 1992, I started to get better, and in 1993 I had six novels
accepted for publication. Talk about feast or famine.
I was now
writing historical sagas for one publisher and fantasy novels for the other, so
I had to write two novels a year.
I never did go
back to work, because I still wasn’t fully recovered physically, so I took
early retirement. I was so happy writing!
After a few
years, the Australian fantasy line closed down (these things happen to
writers!) so I concentrated on writing historical sagas, which were earning me
a lot more money anyway. But I had some spare historical romances left from my
early days and I re-wrote them in between contracted sagas. I was not only
speeding up as a writer, but understood my craft better and could see how to
make them more gripping.
My agent
sold a couple of the historical romances to another publisher, so I was back to
writing for two publishers. I continued to speed up at writing and became more
addicted to story telling, which is what drives me most of all.
After a few
years I decided to extend my skills by writing a modern relationships novel. I
found it stimulating to write something different. However, I had to write it
fast to fit it in between contracted books. (Story of my writing life, grab
what time you have and use it.) My agent sold it to the first publisher he
showed it to, who then wanted more modern stories.
I have over
60 novels published now, with more on the way. I have ideas bouncing about for
attention in my mind and I’m writing for three publishers.
I still get
up early. I still write the ‘dirty draft’ of a story as fast as I can, then I
polish it. I stay focused and don’t fritter away my time.
MY RECENT
BOOKS
I’d like to
end by telling you about my recent books. I’ve been writing a series of
historical novels about a trading family based in Western Australia (where I
live for half the year) and set in the 1860-70 era.
I didn’t
intend to write this series but a character in the previous series started
walking through my dreams and wouldn’t go away. So I had to write Bram’s tale.
Western Australia had trading links with Singapore and India in those days,
very interesting to research.
Bram is my
favourite of all the heroes: a man of medium height, Irish, scrawny and
definitely not handsome, but with a great big loving heart. And he has some
interesting family members who’ve featured as central characters in the other
books in what will be a five-part series.
I’ve just
finished writing No 5 and I’m grieving at having to leave Bram. Maybe one day
I’ll come back to him . . .
You can read
about ‘The Trader’s Wife’ and try the first chapter on my website at:
Or if you
prefer modern novels, try ‘Winds of Change’, a coming of age story about a
woman getting a new life. I so enjoyed writing it! There aren’t enough older heroines around.
Now, I have
to get back to work . . . I’m writing Book 2 of the Greyladies series, set in
Wiltshire in the early 1900s, with one of the nicest covers ever:
Thank you, Anna, and all best for your new publication at the end of October.
So, do you think you could follow Anna's example? Hope you are all feeling prolific and inspired - happy writing!
