Anne Weale

Jay Blakeney (20 June 1929 – 24 October 2007) was a British writer and newspaper reporter, well known as a romance novelist under the pen names Anne Weale and Andrea Blake. She wrote over 88 books for Mills & Boon from 1955 to 2002. She died on 24 October 2007; at the time of her death she was writing her autobiography, 88 Heroes…1 Mr Right.

Biography Anne Weale was a journalist and writer who lived mainly in Europe. She was best known for her romance novels of the 1980s. She published her first romance novel as Anne Weale in 1955 and her last novel in 2002.

Weale attended Norwich High School for Girls. She began her writing career while she was still at school, selling short stories to a women's magazine. Later, she worked as a journalist to further her career and hone her writing. She worked as reporter for three different British papers until she decided to focus more exclusively on her novels.

Weale was a passionate traveller, which is reflected in her stories featuring many different exotic locations as the setting. When not travelling, Weale and her husband, who had a son who leads adventure expeditions, spent winters in Spain and summers on the island of Guernsey.

Weale published numerous books, including numerous romance novels which have appeared in various series through the 1980s and 90s. Anne considered her longer novels her greatest works. These books were written in the 1980s and are now out of print. Nevertheless, readers all over the world continue to find her books in second-hand bookshops and libraries. The majority of these titles focus on a fictional English country manor, Longwarden, and its inhabitants throughout time.

From 1998 to 2004, Anne wrote a website review column, called Bookworm on the Net, for The Bookseller, the UK's leading weekly book trade magazine read by 80,000 people in 96 countries. In May 2005 she began a book-blog of the same name, and at the time of her death she was working on an autobiography called 88 Heroes...1 Mr. Right.