JessicaHart.co.uk
Title
Jessica Hart Home Page
Description
This is how I like to think of myself, at ease on a boat under a wide blue Australian sky, but as you can probably tell, I’m a total fraud. I would love to say that I knew how to sail, but the glass in my hand is a clue: I’m only useful for pouring the drinks and putting together the canapés.
I can’t say that I always wanted to be a writer. My earliest dreams were about sitting on a sand dune in the Sahara, working in the Outback, hacking my way through a jungle or bouncing along a dusty track in a battered old Land Rover rather than writing a book. My itchy feet took me from Afghanistan to Australia, from Algeria to Belize, and Cameroon to Indonesia, with various stops en route, and I loved it all.
Because I was always thinking about where I wanted to go next, I never quite managed a proper career. Instead I had a haphazard series of jobs around the world. My last ‘proper’ job was on the foreign newsdesk of a national newspaper. Before that, I was on expedition in West Africa, cooked on an outback cattle station, taught English as a foreign language, was production assistant for a theatre company and research assistant for a publisher of restaurant guides and filled in the gaps between by working as a secretary, waitress, chambermaid and dishwasher. Regular readers will probably recognize how often I have drawn on my wide but lowly working experience for inspiration when it comes to setting and plot!
