Rowena Summers

Jean Innes was born on 8 February 1932 in London, England, but she lived in the West Country almost all her life. She was educated in Weston-Super-Mare, Avon. She married with Geoff Saunders, her childhood sweetheart, and they had three children. She lived in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, where she wrote full time. Afther the publication of her first novel, Jean began a career as a magazine writer and had published around 600 short stories. She started to publish gothic romance novels under her married and maiden name in the 1970s. In the 1980s, to write historical romances, she created two pseudonyms, her most popular, Rowena Summers and Sally James. In 1991 her novel, "The Bannister Girls," was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of Year award. In 2004, she began to used the penname Rachel Moore. She was an active member and enthusiast of Swanwick, the Writers' Summer School in Derbyshire, England, every August. She was a committee member several times, and also Vice-Chairman. She was elected the seventeenth Chairman (1993-1995) of the Romantic Novelists' Association. As a member of the Romance Writers of America she gave talks at conferences in various venues of the USA. She was a member of the Crime Writers' Association. She also was a member and past committee member of the West Country Writers' Association. She died on Wednesday 3 August 2011, after contracting an illness on a holiday earlier that year.