Alison Stuart - historical fiction author

I attribute my love of history and my love of books to my father who would read aloud to my brother and I on Sunday afternoons. Not childrens’ books, but the books he loved and it was Daphne Du Maurier’s The King's General, that first caught the fuse that lit my passion for the English Civil War.

We moved from Kenya, where I had been born, to Australia in the late 1960s. I had imagined a place where kangaroos roamed the streets, but the inner suburbs of Perth seemed remarkably short of the marsupials. From Perth we settled in Melbourne where I finished my schooling and studied Law and Arts at the University of Melbourne. I have worked all my life as a lawyer, both in private practice and in corporations. As a student I had joined the Australian Army Reserve ("the weekend warriors"), where I met my husband. In the twenty years we served in the reserve, we both rose to the dizzying rank of Major, I in the Legal Corps and my husband in the Infantry. Perhaps this is why I lean towards soldier heroes! We have two sons, both now young adults and making their own way in the world

In 2000 we moved the family to Singapore for three wonderful years, where unconstrained by work commitments and struggling to come to terms with being “just an expat wife”, I pursued my uncertain writing career. Fortunately I fell in with a like minded group of scribblers and in my short time in Singapore, the ANZA Writers Group had two volumes of short stories published by one of Singapore’s leading publishers, Angsana Press. Both volumes were launched in style by the Australian High Commissioner and the first book, In The Shadow of the Merlion, topped the Kinokuniya best seller list for a week!

Back home in Melbourne, the reality of returning to work and other commitments of every day life threatened to swamp me again. However I enjoyed two wonderful years as President of the Romance Writers of Australia which kept my feet still firmly rooted in the writing world and has given me some of the best friends I could ever ask for.

In the long years since that fortunate skiing accident, writing became my passion, my dream and my goal. I firmly believe if you are determined to achieve a goal you will succeed. The question of how soon is dependent on luck and your own perseverance.

I have always wanted to write. As a teenager I scribbled turgid historical novels in shorthand notebooks (which I am embarrassed to say are probably still in existence somewhere in the loft). As a young adult, writing took second place to university, work and children. It was only when I dislocated a shoulder in a skiing accident, which left me stranded in a snow bound chalet in the Australian Alps with nothing for company but a notebook computer, did I dare to write the story that had been tugging at my sleeve for so long.