Penelope Janu

Welcome! And thank you for finding my tiny place in cyber space. I hope you have time to look around, and find out a little about me and my writing life.

Author Biography

Penelope Janu lives on a property in the Southern Highlands of NSW with a distracting husband, a very large dog and, now they're fully grown, six delightful children who come and go. A former lawyer, Penelope has a passion for creating stories that explore social and environmental issues, but her novels are fundamentally a celebration of Australian characters and communities. Her first novel, In at the Deep End, came out with HarperCollins/ HQ in 2017. Since then, she’s had two novellas and eight novels published, the most recent being her December 2023 release, Sunshine through the Rain. Her next novel, The Summerfield Saddler, will be released on 4 December 2024. Penelope enjoys riding horses, exploring the Australian countryside and dreaming up challenging hiking adventures. Nothing makes her happier as a writer than readers falling in love with her clever, complex and adventurous characters. She loves to hear from readers, and can be contacted via her website, penelopejanu.com.

Some more about me …

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I worked full time as a lawyer and legal academic for many years, but as my children grew up, I thought it was about time to start writing the kinds of stories I'd always thought up but never written down. Not coincidentally, they were also the stories that I loved to read. Stories with little to do with corporations law or conveyancing contracts, and more to do with strong women, admirable men and happily ever afters. Not to mention a plot that keeps readers up until late! My first novel, In at the Deep End, was published by HarperCollins/ HQ and released in February, 2017. My second novel, On the Right Track, was published in June 2018, and won the prestigious Romance Writers of Australia RuBY award (Romance Book of the Year in the contemporary category) in 2019. This novel, set in a rural area in NSW, was an absolute joy to write, taking me back to my formative years where I was rarely seen out of riding boots. Since then, I’ve written quite a few rural fiction novels, including Clouds on the Horizon, winner of the Australian Romance Readers Award for 2022 Favourite Romantic Suspense.

In early 2018, I won the XO Romance prize, and a publishing contract with Brio Books. This meant that my third novel, the romantic comedy On the Same Page, joined the first two books on the shelves. Also in 2018, a novella, The Six Rules of Christmas, was published as part of a HarperCollins/ HQ Anthology, My Country Christmas. This title is now also available as a standalone. The release date for my fourth full length novel, Up on Horseshoe Hill, was November 2019. This was followed by Starting From Scratch, published in January 2021 and Clouds on the Horizon, published in January 2022. On the Same Page was re-released with HarperCollins/Escape in 2022. Shelter from the Storm was published in January 2023 and Sunshine through the Rain was published in December 2023. My second novella, The Countdown to Christmas, was published in an anthology, A Country Vet Christmas, and is now available as a stand alone. My third novella, A Fairytale for Christmas, will be published on 1 October 2024 in the A Country Farm Christmas anthology.

When I'm not writing or thinking about writing, I happily embrace (most of the time) the chaos of a busy household, work, a much loved garden, caring for a herd of cattle (and two trusty sheep), and travel. I met my husband when we were teenagers at the University of Sydney Law School. It wasn’t at all ‘cool’ to get married at twenty-three, but I’d met my Mr Darcy. Thirty-nine years, six children and five grandchildren later, I’m so glad he walked out of that lake …

What do I do for a break? I love a road trip, and spend as much time as I can exploring regional towns in Australia. I also like to walk and ride horses. The mountain scene above was taken at Mont Blanc, where our party hiked around the mountain (literally) for ten days in 2018 - over 200 kms through Switzerland, Italy and France. Walking 320 kilometres across England in 2017 was another wonderful adventure. We walked over 200km in the Scottish Highlands in 2022, and walked a similar distance in the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland in 2023. While I’d love to complete extended walks at home, there are such great distances between pubs in our beautiful country, there are very few long distance options!