Meet Josie

I’m Josie Lloyd and I also write as Joanna Rees and Jo.  I live in Brighton with my husband and writing partner, Emlyn Rees.  We have three daughters and a beloved dog, Ziggy (pictured), who keeps us sane and makes us walk and run by the sea every day.

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Growing up in Essex in the 80’s, there wasn’t that much to do for entertainment (apart from Dallas on the TV, obviously) so as a teen I quickly became hooked on books.  Lace, by Shirley Conran, Flowers In The Attic, by Virginia Andrews and Jane Austen soon had me captivated too.  It was my love of reading that made me dream of one day becoming a writer.

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Fast forward a few years and, after a degree in English and Drama at Goldsmiths’ College in London, I was working in a sales promotion agency, writing copy for posters that destined for staff toilet doors, when I had an epiphany moment and thought: I’m twenty-five.  If I don’t write a novel now, I’ll never do it.  So I jacked in my job, sold the car, dumped my then boyfriend, moved out of my flat, got a cheap computer and a box room in a friend’s attic and wrote my first novel, It Could Be You.

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And, as I always suspected it might, by following my destiny and my great dream to be a writer, I met the man I would later marry. Emlyn and I were both writing our second novels and trying to scrape a living together in London and so we had lots in common.  We came up with the idea of writing a novel together about our single lives.  Emlyn would write one chapter from the boy’s point of view and I would write the next from the girl’s.  We wrote two chapters of what became Come Together, a rom-com about Jack and Amy and their single life in London, and to our shock and delight it then went on to become a Number 1 Sunday Times best seller, was translated into 27 languages and made into a film by Working Title. And, as a result of writing a ‘wart’s ‘n’ all’ romance about dating, we got together ourselves and got married.

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We wrote seven more novels together and then, as new parents, turned our attention to writing parodies of our favourite kids books. After extensive personal research, we came up with We’re Going On A Bar Hunt, a take on We’re Going On A Bear Hunt, which we must have read to the kids thousands of times.  We followed it up with The Very Hungover Caterpillar and The Teenager Who Came To Tea. 

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In recent years, my Joanna Rees novels have been the kind of sweeping, dramatic books I love to read myself. I’m a bit of a magpie when it comes to plotting and so always include a bit of romance and jeopardy in my stories.  My latest books are part of my Stitch In Time trilogy, which starts in London in 1926 with The Runaway Daughter, then goes to Paris in 1928 for The Hidden Wife and to New York and Hollywood in 1930 in The Sister Returns. It’s such a wonderful period to research and I’ve found writing Vita and her friend Nancy absolutely captivating.