Anna Jones Buttimore

At the beginning of this month two feet of snow fell and we were stranded. The snow very quickly thawed just enough to refreeze into ice, and it became too dangerous to drive anywhere (I know; I tried) and pretty hazardous to walk. Our usual fifteen-minute walk to school (once the school reopened after being closed for the first week) took around twice that as we shuffled carefully across the uneven ice-sheet, with much comic flailing and many spectacular falls. On the plus side, though, the children made a great snowman, two igloos, and put the snow they didn't use on these magnificent creations down each other's backs, into each other's wellies, and all over my lounge carpet. They took photographs of themselves clutching five-foot icicles, and insisted on putting said icicles in the chest freezer. (Not a problem, since the freezer was empty.) It thawed; we and the rest of the population of our village (15,900 people) went to Sainsbury's and replaced all the things we

This year I am really looking forward to having a holiday over Christmas. The charity I work for closes between Christmas and New Year, and this gives me a whole week off work. I'm very excited to have all that extra time to enjoy with my family and various visitors (including friends from Wyoming). But I'm even more excited to have a whole week free to finish writing the epic fantasy novel I've been working on all year. I love the writing process and can't wait to get stuck in to the creative part. Not every aspect of writing a book is quite as exciting. This past weekend I have been very busy proofreading the "galleys" (they're not called that any more, but I don't know what they are called now) of my forthcoming book. It's been hard work. The problem with writing a book is that you don't just do it once. You write the first draft, then read through it and change it, several times. Honeymoon Heist then went to a professional freelance editor

I recently overheard a conversation about one of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchett, who has been very public about the fact that he has Alzheimer's Disease, including doing a documentary about the illness. The comment that particularly troubled me was, "He's had to collaborate on his latest book, so obviously it's the beginning of the end now." Should I be worrying about that view, I wondered? You see, I am collaborating on my latest book, and as far as I know I don't have Alzheimer's. If co-authoring a book with someone else is a sign that it's the beginning of the end for your writing career, then I might as well hang up my laptop now. This is the first time I've had help with writing a book, and I'm loving it and wonder why I didn't do it before. Writing comes fairly easily to me, but coming up with workable ideas is more difficult. So for my current book, a fantasy epic called Emon and the Empire , I'm collaborating with two fri