Welcome to my world of romance writing - 

the wonderful world of love, honour and adventure. I hope you'll browse a while.

A little bit about me: I live 'down-under' in New Zealand, a land also known as Aotearoa. I'm a mother to two daughters (teenagers!!) and wife to Neil. My life, apart from scraping every moment I can at the computer, is a round of playing mum's taxi service…and hoping I can conjure up a gourmet delight for the evening meal, all the while wondering what my hero and heroine are up to behind my back!

I love reading. Books bring so much colour, humour, adventure and of course romance to our lives. They are a way to sit back and forget the day, forget that dinner has to be cooked; the kids' school projects need to be finished.

The first 'real' book I can remember reading was The Island of the Blue Dolphin by Scott O'Dell. I read it twice. Some books are like that, they get to you and no matter that you know how it ends you have to read it again.

I can't say I was born to write, but I am driven to write and it sure beats housework. It's an addictive craft. One that once you're hooked, no matter how many rejection slips you get, no matter how much you are wracked by self-doubt in the small hours of the morning or when you're staring at a blank page, you just can't give up. Many a night I've tossed and turned, to my husband's complaints, when I've been hit by a story idea, a character, or simply a title. I know that here comes another story.

A chance meeting with Ellen Ben-Sefer on a writing loop on the internet pushed me further towards a career in writing. Ellen is a transplanted American living in Sydney. We have a lot in common. We'd both loved reading time travel romance and had both lived in Israel.

We mumbled something about…wouldn't it be good to do a time travel set in Israel together and the next day Ellen surprised me with chapter 1.  Woman of Valor was born. At the time of writing Ellen and I hadn't met, we merely wrote via the internet under the pen name of Janelle Benham.

My desire to write has been intense, and in January this year (2008) I contracted my 7^th and 8^th books.  

I'm a lucky girl. I've been married to Neil for nearly 25 years this year and have two lovely daughters, Yana and Anzhela whom we adopted in 1996 from Russia. So parenthood after thirteen years as a couple was definitely an interesting and eventful challenge!

I think writing must be in the family genes. Since beginning this writing journey I have found that my mother who will be 84 soon was a 'closet' writer in her youth and her brother a published author. Now, a third generation, my nephew, has begun writing children's stories. I wonder what the next generation will bring.

I hope you've enjoyed visiting my web site. I'd love to hear from you. email.

Bye for now

Jane Beckenham

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