Mary-Rose Hayes has just completed her ninth novel, WHAT SHE HAD TO DO (set in San Francisco, California and an un-named cathedral city in the west of England). The story observes the resonances of war, from World War II to the Vietnam conflict, over three generations of a family.

She is the best-selling author of eight previous novels whose genres include horror, suspense and erotic adventure, and has co-authored two political thrillers with Senator Barbara Boxer:?A TIME TO RUN and, most recently BLIND TRUST (2009). Her novels have been translated into sixteen languages and have regularly been Doubleday Book of the Month and Literary Guild main selections. AMETHYST (E.P. Dutton, 1991) was chosen as a TIME/LIFE bestseller condensation.

Mary-Rose has published newspaper articles in England and the United States, and has worked as an associate editor for a press bureau in San Francisco.

She has taught creative writing workshop at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Nevada; at numerous writers’ seminars in the western United States; and has been a guest lecturer at Arizona State University since 2007.

She attributes her love for language and the written word to growing up among writers and artists, and to an early childhood spent in a remote English country house with no television, little radio and frequent electrical blackouts. The only entertainment was necessarily home grown, recalls Mary-Rose: reading aloud by candlelight; listening to the antique wind-up gramophone (record player); and the writing and performing of plays by the family and a succession of houseguests who included a London theatrical director and the Archbishop of Johannesburg.

www.mary-rosehayes.com

Kathleen Jones has also been writing since she was a child. She lived for several years in Africa and the Middle East, where she worked for the Qatar Broadcasting Corporation. Since then she has written extensively for BBC radio and contributed to several television documentaries.

As a journalist Kathleen has written articles and reviews for the Independent, the Guardian, the Daily Express, and the TLS, as well as magazines such as SHE and Cosmo.

Kathleen Jones has published more than 11 books - a mixture of biography, short fiction and poetry. Her most recent publications are Katherine Mansfield: The Story-teller, published by Penguin and Edinburgh University Press, and a collection of poetry, 'Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21' which won the 2011 Straid Award. She has tutored creative writing at a number of British universities and is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. She is also an enthusiastic blogger - writing her own and contributing to several others including The Tuesday Poem and the book review site Book Munch. Kathleen is a specialist in E-publishing and a member of the E-book group Authors Electric. At a time when the internet is one of the major sources of publishing/publicity for a writer, Kathleen offers valuable advice on going it alone and using platforms such as blogs, facebook and twitter.

www.kathleenjones.co.uk Kathleen’s blog: www.kathleenjonesauthor.blogspot.com