Riding high
In a floaty blue dress, in her divine apartment that overlooks the lapping waves of Auckland’s central city coastline, Stacy Gregg is doing very little to overturn the notion that being an author is a deeply glamorous profession. As a former fashion journalist turned bestselling novelist, Stacy, 51, is frank about the fact that it’s not all champagne and caviar.
“If I’d known how little authors made overall – you know, that the average UK author made £2000 a year – I might have re-evaluated,” she says drily, of giving up journalism for writing books. “I’d just assumed I was going to be JK Rowling and get my own private helicopter within a week. I have been very, very lucky that it worked out… minus the helicopter.”
It was after the birth of her daughter Isadora, now 19, that Stacy decided to have a crack at writing a book. “I always found it really hard to juggle parenting and journalism – every time I was trying to breastfeed, I was due in a meeting.”
She started working on her first manuscript while at home with Issie and completed it in three months. She cautions against thinking of this as some kind of Superwoman task. “It was quite a practical thing; every time she went for
