Romna’s illustrious moderator has several writing personas. Using different pseudonyms she has written French Textbooks (while working as a language teacher), Fantasy, Science Fiction and ‘How to Write’ books. But it is as Anna Jacobs, prolific writer of historical romances, historical sagas and books about modern family relationships that she is now best known. “I’ve always loved social and economic history – how people lived, played and earned their daily bread.”

Anna has published 46 novels – with others written and not published and some still in the pipeline. “I scribble partials so there are lots in the store cupboard.” This should please her many fans. For in terms of PLR she is in the top ten of ‘most borrowed authors of adult fiction’.

Anna has two different publishers for her two favoured genres: Hodder for the historicals and Severn House for the moderns; and she writes them in two different places. The moderns are mostly written in her recently acquired English home in the heart of the Wiltshire countryside where she now lives for five months of the year. “I grew up in industrial Lancashire and always had to ask my husband about wildlife. Now I’m learning for myself.” The Historicals are mostly written in a coastal holiday town in Western Australia where she’s lived since emigrating in 1973, (“I hate snow with a passion”), where free dolphins are regular visitors, and where she can draw on her ‘wall of research books aimed at understanding the people of the past.’

Anna takes her research very seriously and explores the past in detail. “I’m passionate about not making mistakes.” She even studied a two year history unit “to understand the basics’, and finds memoirs interesting and useful, often providing a trigger for new ideas.

Drawing her settings and her characters from the UK and the antipodes she writes complex books with multiple characters. Is it difficult to say goodbye to one set of characters before developing the next? “It takes at least half an hour to get rid of them! By the time I’ve finished one book new characters are already nagging at me. I see them and hear them. I think of them as people not characters. Stories can wake me in the night and I see scenes. Often a new book is triggered by a situation and this can lead to a character. Or I might write the first chapter and the characters walk on stage and begin to develop themselves.”

Naming the characters from the start is also very important even if the names are changed later. “I couldn’t start Lancashire Legacy until I found the name of the hero. Then he came to me in a dream. He was a six foot two inch Scot and he said, ‘My name is Magnus Hamilton, woman!’ So, then I was able to get on with the writing.”

How does Anna “get on with the writing”? “It often comes patchily. Some books start slowly with constant rewriting to set up the plot and introduce the characters. Others like Freedom’s Land ‘just pour out’. I can rush through 3,000 words then crawl through the next 5,000.”

Since teaching herself to type more than 20 years ago Anna has written directly onto the computer and she is lost if anything goes wrong with it. She has an ergonomic ‘qwerty’ key board and mouse and with her awareness of hand, body and seating positions makes a specific effort to avoid repetitive strain injury by having an ergonomic set up in her office. She also takes a break and does something else for a while after approximately an hour at the computer, although “dust, iron, and cook are all four letter words in my book. Fortunately my husband is a great cook.” He is also Anna’s business manager and fight scene choreographer.

Anna’s day normally starts about 5.30 am which leaves time for emails, breakfast, and playing cards—her catalyst for writing. “Cards also help relax the brain when I get stuck.” She is not always a disciplined writer, “but I am addicted. I love telling stories. I think I was born to write” and she writes on and off for the rest of the day. “Writing doesn’t usually last past tea time; after two to three thousand words I run out of steam.”

Anna found her initial inspiration in her role model Georgette Heyer and she is still an avid reader. “I get through three novels most weeks. I can’t not read. Television doesn’t fill all the gaps in the brain so I read at the same time. But not sagas. They’re too close to home.”

Like most writers Anna’s books weren’t published immediately. “It took a few years to get my first novel accepted in 1992… then I won $10,000 in an Australian fiction competition and had my first novel published, Persons of Rank, (the sixth I’d written) and I thought I was away. But the Australian publisher changed direction and didn’t want any more of my books.” But then she found an English publisher who did and she now publishes two to three books each year. In 2006, Pride of Lancashire won the award for Australian Romantic Book of the Year and four other books have also been short-listed for the same award.

Any advice for aspiring authors? “You have to be professional and business-like. I try to write with the market in mind, not just the books I want to write. You can’t afford to be pie in the sky. You also can’t afford to wait for inspiration. You need to sit down and write. And only you can do it. No one can stop you writing. They can only stop you being published.”

Not unnaturally Anna finds writing a lonely business and takes every opportunity to meet other writers. “The computer has been a life saver. It’s wonderful now I’m on various email lists. I can have contact with other writers every day.’ A great supporter of the RNA Anna has been involved with ROMNA from the beginning and she started the yahoo list. “It’s been amazing. There’s still enough English in me to enjoy the English slant on life.” And in recent years Anna has been a welcome presenter and participant at the RNA conference.

“I can’t ever think of retiring. I still keep trying to improve with each novel I write. If ever I have time perhaps I should write about food intolerances – which I suffer from. People think I’m just being fussy but I’ve been severely handicapped by them.” Anna developed a number of food intolerances following ME in the 90s and now has to take her own supplies wherever she goes to ensure she doesn’t go hungry.

But her books are going from strength to strength and her latest paperback, Freedom’s Land, about the early days of western Australian settlement is now available. Her new books, Saving Willowbrook in trade paperback and In Focus a modern novel in hardback, will be out in November.