Four minutes to Save a Life-Anna Stuart-
review and piece by Anna Stuart about how she came to be Anna
review and piece by Anna Stuart about how she came to be Anna
Oh my! One truly stunning read I will remember for a very long time. Anna Stuart has
a talent. I’m only a few pages in as I first write this and already feel enveloped by a
friend. A warmth of writing and characters I’m already taking to. Charlie has just
started a new job. He is a delivery driver for a supermarket. On his first day, he
receives his list of customers and decides that fate has taken a hand. There is a
name on there that he needs to make amends with for something that has happened
in the past. Various chapters are new deliveries to each of three characters. Each
delivery house has its own story. Charlie is allowed four minutes for each one-
long enough for the personal touch and not too long to be inefficient. Clever.
Charlie wants to put things right and he begins just doing the little things that seem
so obvious to him. At the yard however there is a bully and one who has his sights
set on Charlie and has found out his past. I can’t express how much I loved this
(but I’ll try!) I really didn’t want it to end. I loved Charlie and his big yet nervous
heart. Ruth and her mending. Vik and his curries and of course Greg and his talent
with words. anna I salute you. I laughed and yes I cried (a lot). It took me to places
I had long forgotten and they were happy tears - thank you. If you read just one
book to restore your faith in human nature then this would be the one for me.
I award 5** to books that have gone that extra mile- around 10% of the 240 I
read a year make the grade. This one deserves 10*.
For more reviews please see my blog http://nickibookblog.blogspot.co.uk/
or follow me on Twitter@nickisbookblog
How Anna Stuart came into being The writer, Anna Stuart, was born in a rather unusual way. She was sort of always there,
waiting to happen, because as the holder of the pen – real name Joanna Barnden – I’d
wanted to be a writer since I was a very little girl. However, I secured a publishing deal
under the Anna alias in a rather roundabout fashion. As I said, I’d always wanted to write. I was a huge Enid Blyton fan and had written my
own boarding school novel around a heroine called Daisy by the age of ten. I loved
English Literature and ended up reading it at Cambridge but was well aware that,
except for a talented few, being a writer wasn’t a ‘proper job’, and certainly not a
lucrative one. I therefore opted for factory management instead!! Not an obvious
alternative, I’ll admit, but I loved it. I learned loads, made a lot of friends and even
found a husband, so it turned out to be a good job all round but the writing bug still
nibbled away at me. When I stopped work to have kids, therefore, I picked up a pen
and went for it.
I’d like to say I was an instant success but inevitably I wasn’t. What I did do, however,
was to slowly build up a portfolio writing for the women’s magazines whilst also trying
to write that bestselling novel. Eventually, several years down the line, I secured my
lovely agent, Kate Shaw, for a women’s fiction novel and thought I’d cracked it. I was
wrong. This was the mid-2000s and ‘chick lit’, as we called it then, wasn’t doing very well.
We failed to sell that novel and I decided to switch to writing historical fiction.
Perhaps insanely, I opted for 1066 as my year of choice but it paid off as a couple
of years later Kate sold a trilogy, The Queens of the Conquest, to PanMacmillan and
things started to look up. The novels were published under the name Joanna Courtney
(my first and middle names) and for the next three years I was immersed – as half of
me still is - in the medieval world.
Imagine my surprise, then, when, one sunny summer afternoon two years ago whilst
I was happily writing ancient history in the garden, Kate called me. She said she knew
a great editor, Sam Eades at Trapeze, who was looking for someone to pick up on an
idea she’d had for a contemporary novel. The idea was based around a heart-breaking
letter in the New York Times by a dying woman advertising for a new wife for her
husband when she was gone. Kate thought I’d be the perfect person for it; I thought
she was mad! I promised to think about it though – because who turns down such an opportunity?
– and the characters of Bonnie and Stan came to me almost immediately. I went back
to Kate a week later with a synopsis and she went back to Sam and within just two
more weeks I was sat in the Trapeze offices staring at a two-book contract. It was
one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. Having battled for years and years
to find a publisher, I seemed almost to have been handed one overnight. We all agreed that it would be very misleading to readers to write contemporary
fiction under the same name as medieval tales and so I needed a second alias.
As my real name is Joanna and I’ve spent my life as Jo, it seemed like it would be
fun to try the other half and become Anna. As for the surname – that’s my
husband’s name. Let’s just hope I stay in love with him!! And so, before another week was up, I had a second alter ego and Anna Stuart
was born. It was, indeed, an unusual nativity but a fantastic one for me. I love
writing as Anna and hope she’s around for a very long time…
How Anna Stuart came into being The writer, Anna Stuart, was born in a rather unusual way. She was sort of always there,
waiting to happen, because as the holder of the pen – real name Joanna Barnden – I’d
wanted to be a writer since I was a very little girl. However, I secured a publishing deal
under the Anna alias in a rather roundabout fashion. As I said, I’d always wanted to write. I was a huge Enid Blyton fan and had written my
own boarding school novel around a heroine called Daisy by the age of ten. I loved
English Literature and ended up reading it at Cambridge but was well aware that,
except for a talented few, being a writer wasn’t a ‘proper job’, and certainly not a
lucrative one. I therefore opted for factory management instead!! Not an obvious
alternative, I’ll admit, but I loved it. I learned loads, made a lot of friends and even
found a husband, so it turned out to be a good job all round but the writing bug still
nibbled away at me. When I stopped work to have kids, therefore, I picked up a pen
and went for it.
I’d like to say I was an instant success but inevitably I wasn’t. What I did do, however,
was to slowly build up a portfolio writing for the women’s magazines whilst also trying
to write that bestselling novel. Eventually, several years down the line, I secured my
lovely agent, Kate Shaw, for a women’s fiction novel and thought I’d cracked it. I was
wrong. This was the mid-2000s and ‘chick lit’, as we called it then, wasn’t doing very well.
We failed to sell that novel and I decided to switch to writing historical fiction.
Perhaps insanely, I opted for 1066 as my year of choice but it paid off as a couple
of years later Kate sold a trilogy, The Queens of the Conquest, to PanMacmillan and
things started to look up. The novels were published under the name Joanna Courtney
(my first and middle names) and for the next three years I was immersed – as half of
me still is - in the medieval world.
Imagine my surprise, then, when, one sunny summer afternoon two years ago whilst
I was happily writing ancient history in the garden, Kate called me. She said she knew
a great editor, Sam Eades at Trapeze, who was looking for someone to pick up on an
idea she’d had for a contemporary novel. The idea was based around a heart-breaking
letter in the New York Times by a dying woman advertising for a new wife for her
husband when she was gone. Kate thought I’d be the perfect person for it; I thought
she was mad! I promised to think about it though – because who turns down such an opportunity?
– and the characters of Bonnie and Stan came to me almost immediately. I went back
to Kate a week later with a synopsis and she went back to Sam and within just two
more weeks I was sat in the Trapeze offices staring at a two-book contract. It was
one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. Having battled for years and years
to find a publisher, I seemed almost to have been handed one overnight. We all agreed that it would be very misleading to readers to write contemporary
fiction under the same name as medieval tales and so I needed a second alias.
As my real name is Joanna and I’ve spent my life as Jo, it seemed like it would be
fun to try the other half and become Anna. As for the surname – that’s my
husband’s name. Let’s just hope I stay in love with him!! And so, before another week was up, I had a second alter ego and Anna Stuart
was born. It was, indeed, an unusual nativity but a fantastic one for me. I love
writing as Anna and hope she’s around for a very long time…
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