Bump number one - Just when Taz Norton's life is on a smooth upward glide - youngest sales manager at a flagship department store, own flat, cat and vintage motorbike - her lover leaves her for her ex-best friend. Bump number two - is finding out she is pregnant the same day she is asked to handle the biggest store promotion in the company's history. Bump number three - is the one in front of her. Goodbye toes and glamour, hello heartburn, morning sickness and support tights. Typically, Taz decides to be Superwoman. No one is going to tell her she can't get to the top and be a single mum as well. But no one told her it was going to be so damned hard...
I think I decided that I wanted to be a writer at the age of five, while queueing in the freezing rain for the school outside loos. Perhaps it was all down to the romance of the location... But by the time I went home that night, I'd come to the conclusion that it wasn't a very realistic ambition, and I considered being a pixie instead.
Yet even when reality struck and I had to start earning money, the old dream died hard. And when I won 'Secretary of the Year' in 1987 and was asked to co-write a book about secretaries, it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me (yes, even better than the Blue Peter competition badge I won when I was seven).
As time went on, I did everything I could to dig myself a foothold in the writing world, doing everything from writing jokes for greetings cards to articles about sewer-cleaning machines for 'Construction News'. I started translating French erotic novels, then began writing my own; and from there, I worked my way into more ... er ... mainstream fiction, first as Sue Dyson and then as Zoe Barnes. I still use the name Sue Dyson when I translate and when I sing professionally.
I'm married to Simon, and my dad, Jack, lives with us - along with five cats known locally as The Furry Horde. Please go out and buy a Zoe Barnes novel (or three) and ensure that they're a happy, well-fed Horde!
Zoe
xx
