Ally Blake

Ally is a hopeless romantic. She had no choice; it was in the blood, as she was born into a family of romance reading women. She remembers bagloads of books being passed on at family gatherings from her mother, her cousins, her aunt, even her grandmother. She also remembers slithering under the spare bed at her grandmother's house and finding an ever evolving treasure trove of Mills & Boon books. Still today, when staying over at her folks place, there are always a couple of Mills & Boon must-reads left waiting by her bed.

Ally's first real job after completing her Bachelor of Arts degree was as a professional cheerleader. And, yes, that's a real job! For three years she danced for a grand final winning rugby league football team, a basketball team and on a weekly television show. After dancing came acting. What an unusual progression, you may say with more than a hint of sarcasm. Ally was quite happily roped into acting in friends' short films. She even wrote numerous scripts herself to try to give herself a better angle at becoming a rich and famous Academy Award–winning actress. And that was how she met her husband. He was the big new thing at a local television station and Ally was a bright-eyed and bushy tailed newcomer who fell for his big talk and his big heart.

Ally married her hubby, Mark, in Las Vegas, and it was a blast! Their families and a couple of close friends came along for the ride. They travelled around California (where she developed an unhealthy addiction to Starbucks Frappuccinos) together before going to Nevada for the wedding. They met Hugh Hefner at Disneyland and Tony Curtis in Las Vegas. After being told on the Sunday before Ally's wedding that she was getting married on the Wednesday, Tony Curtis leaned in and said, "There's plenty of time between now and Wednesday." Can that guy deliver a line, or what? After the gorgeous ceremony (which was organized that morning) and dinner in the Brown Derby restaurant in the Mirage (the day after Tiger Woods ate there) and after having Frank Sinatra (Ally swears it was him!) serenade them, they travelled the length and breadth of the United States.

But at the end of the happy trails she had a light bulb moment. She loved the writing side of the biz a heck of a lot more than the acting! So she took a deep breath, opened a new Word file, and for the first time wrote "Chapter One" instead of "Scene One." And it felt all warm and cosy, like slipping on her favorite pair of slippers. She is an Australian bestselling, multi-award winning novelist who has been published in more than thirty countries with over two million books sold world-wide. Her fun, fresh, flirty books are published by Mills & Boon. When a young chook, Ally's folks took her to an ear, nose and throat specialist, as they thought she was partially deaf. The doctor diagnosed her as having perfect hearing, whilst being simply "off with the fairies" a good portion of the time. Now as a grown up, she gets to sit at the laptop with a title, a couple of beautiful characters in mind and wait for the fairies to take flight. Constant coffee and bowls full of M&M's make her job that much more pleasurable!

Ally and her family, including three boisterous toddlers, share a property in the leafy western suburbs of Brisbane, Australia, with kookaburras, cockatoos, lorikeets and the occasional creepy crawly. When not writing she loves watching The West Wing reruns, playing hide and seek, and barracking til hoarse for the Collingwood Magpies AFL team.