I started out working with numbers, first in banking and then accountancy, but my heart always belonged to words! After having twins and taking a few years out from office life, I found my dream day job, working with very young children and their families in libraries and children’s centres, reading them stories, giving out free book packs and organising book-related events. But all the time I was writing as well. – articles and picture book reviews for nursery and parenting magazines, a regular column in Writers Forum, some poetry and lots of fiction You can still find a few funny kids’ poems in old school anthologies written by my alter-ego, Rosie Kent!
My first real commercial success came with short stories, mostly with romantic or family themes, and I have now had around 150 of them published in women’s magazines. I then won the annual Mail on Sunday competition for the best opening to a novel, and even though that particular novel never made it into print, I soon got hooked on writing longer fiction. For a long time I wrote as Vivien Hampshire, and all my earlier work (including two ebook novels, a My Weekly pocket novel and a book about how to solve crosswords) is still out there under that name. When I remarried around five years ago and gave up the day job to write full-time, I decided to ‘re-brand’ myself with a new name and a new genre and became Vivien Brown, writer of ‘domestic drama’ novels.
