Joanna Rees writes sweeping romantic adventures that combine mystery, romance and glamorous international settings. There’s a hint of Jackie Collins or Shirley Conran in her heroines, girls like Vita, the heroine of her A Stitch In Time historical fiction series.

The second book in the series, The Hidden Wife, is a story of creativity and courage, living in the turbulent and freeing times of 1920s Paris and London and then 1929 Hollywood coming up next.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and Joanna talks about the dream start she had in writing – with an early book that went to the top of the best seller charts and was made into a movie – and the ups and downs life has brought since, including facing down breast cancer and writing about it in a novel, a funny novel, which will be out next year.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

A working relationship that ended in marriage"Instant" success - and ups and downsThe shock of breast cancerThe serendipitous meeting with novelist Jeffrey ArcherTackling controversial topics with humorOn being the "ultimate chatter box"

Where to find Joanna Rees: 

Website: https://mumwritesbooks.wordpress.com/

Blog: https://mumwritesbooks.wordpress.com/

Facebook: @joannareesbooks

Twitter: @joannareesbooks

Her husband author Emlyn Rees: https://emlynrees.com/

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny Wheeler: But now, here's Joanna. Hello there, Joanna, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us.

Joanna Rees: Jenny, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be on, and I love the podcasts. I'm very excited to have a chat today across the other side of the world. I'm in slightly stormy Brighton in the UK.

Joanna Rees - historical adventures

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, it's lovely. Beginning at the beginning, was there a once upon a time moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction, and if so, was there a catalyst for it?

Joanna Rees: Well, yes. I always was a writer. Mainly I was a talker actually, it's by accident I became a writer. I would have probably been better off doing what you're doing, a podcast or radio. When I was little, I was a terrible chatterbox and I had an older sister who I'm very close to, who was a real bookworm. She used to love reading books. My mother used to take us to London – we lived in Essex, which is about 30 miles away from London, but my grandmother lived in London. I always loved London.

We used to go and see her at the weekend in the car, and I used to always want to chat and my sister wanted to read, and so my mother gave me a book and said, just write everything down. Thus followed this ridiculous long diary entry of ‘we're at the traffic lights’, ‘oh no, they just changed’ – me trying to record the journey as we went. But my dear Nanna in London would patiently sit down and listen to some of the stuff I'd written.

The writer's fantasy life

That was my first inkling that I could entertain people with my writing. Skip forward and I went through school and to university. I did an English drama degree and I always wanted to be a novelist. I always had this vision that I would be rolling up to Harrods in a great white stretch limo in my beautiful trouser suit, signing for my fans. I had ridiculous fantasies about it.

Anyway, then I got sucked into real life, waitressing and terrible jobs. Eventually I got this job as a copywriter for an agency. You know cereal packets, when you have your cereal in the morning, and you have promotions on the back.

We had sugar puffs and I was writing Honey Monster’s Soccer Pop-Up’s. I was suddenly like, I don't want to be doing this. I want to be writing a novel. Why am I at 10 o'clock on a Friday night, in the office, still trying to close this all down. It really wasn't what I wanted to do.

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