About Anne
Anne McAllister has written nearly 70 romance novels for Tule Publishing and Harlequin Books.
She has won two RITA awards from the Romance Writers of America — for COWBOY PRIDE and THE STARDUST COWBOY — and has had nine other books which were RITA finalists.
Her books have also been finalists for the National Readers’ Choice Award. She was named Midwest Fiction Writers “Writer of the Year” and also received Romantic Times’ Career Achievement Award as “Series Author of the Year.”
But while the awards and sales are wonderful, Anne thinks the best part of writing is telling the story. With every new book she writes, she meets new characters – or gets to know old ones even better – and discovers what makes them and their relationships tick.
It’s the relationships that interest her most and the question about “where do you get your ideas?” has always astonished her as she has more ideas than she knows what to do with!
Anne grew up on the beaches of southern California, and spent summers in Montana and on her grandparents’ small ranch in Colorado. They were formative experiences — not only in providing her settings, but in giving her heroes. She finds herself attracted to lean, dark, honorable men – often lone wolf types – who always get the job done, whatever it might be.
She loves writing romance because she thinks getting people together with their soul mates is the best job in the world. It has allowed her to meet amazing, interesting people and see places she never imagined she would see. Happily, too, it’s a job she can do without having to scrape the ice off the windshield of her car before going to work!
In her ‘spare’ time she takes her dogs for walks and discusses plot problems with them, or she works on family history research and writes articles for genealogical publications. It’s all grist for the mill. You never know when some tidbit of family lore is going to spark off an idea that will solve one of those plot problems. The dogs sometimes show up in books, too.
She finds it handy that her four grown children have such interesting lives that she can pick up the phone and pick their brains – or visit their friends. For her SAVAS’ DEFIANT MISTRESS, one son provided the architect resource, another had connections to houseboat dwellers in Seattle.
Anne and her husband, The Prof, spent years and years in “is this heaven? No, it’s Iowa,” but now live in Montana where Anne is getting back to her roots — and enjoying grandchildren. (and the grandchildren’s interesting parents, too). But wherever they go, Anne will always be writing. There are too many ideas not to!