Anna Jones Buttimore

Two people (that I know of) have nominated Honeymoon Heist for a Whitney Award, and I'm thrilled. While it's still a long way from being shortlisted or - dare I dream it - winning, it's still wonderful to know that people enjoyed it enough to think it deserved some sort of recognition. The Whitneys are an awards program for novels by LDS authors. Elder Orson F. Whitney, an early apostle in the LDS church, prophesied “We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.” At an annual gala, the talent of LDS authors is recognised and celebrated. I generally agree with the decisions regarding the winners, especially since Stephanie Black wins the mystery/suspense category each year. The lifetime acheivement award particularly highlights the successful authors who are household names and also happen to be LDS. Orson Scott Card and Shannon Hale have both won in the past, and I wonder whether Stephenie Meyer will be up for this award this year. If you'd like to nomina...

I love fantasy literature. I love it when authors unapologetically create amazingly original worlds and invite us to escape to them for a while. And this is just the sort of book I enjoy most, with fully developed elf and mankind folklores peopled with intriguing characters with wonderful names. It positively oozes romance - between Lathanyl and Katelynn, then Lath and Yasmeen - all set in an ethereal utopia (which I suspect is one big metaphor). Unfortunately the language jarred somewhat for me. The elfs (I had always thought the plural was elves, and so does my spellchecker) sometimes spoke in an approximation of old English, with the occasional "thee" thrown in apparently at random and phrases like "Forget it not, daughter", but were also quite likely to say "For starters" and "It's awesome". I'd have liked it better if they could either speak consistently in old fashioned language or be entirely modern. The book was also extremely d...

I need a new car and writting a book could be a quick way to make money. I've not tried to write a book before, and I don't achally read many books, but I used to be quite good at writing stories when I was at school. If it's too diffacult I could write poems instead. I think lots of people would want to buy my poems. I will spend a couple of weeks writting my novel. It'll be based on my life which has been really intresting. I'll change the names tho so people don't sue me. No need to do any reserch becos I know all about that stuff anyway. It'll be a really amazing book, the best anyone has ever read. _____________________________________ I've writ my book now. It's 30 thousand words long - I've never writ anything so long before! It only took me a month aswell. I'm not going to bother going back through it again because I know what I writ was great. Someone said I should get other people to read it, so I gave it to my mum and she said it ...

WARNING: Contains spoilers. I owe my "Books for Chocolate and Reviews" idea to Julie. A Facebook thread about Canadian chocolate led to my sending her some British chocolate, and, in gratitude, she sent me this book. I think I got the better end of the deal there. I was fascinated by "Time Will Tell" from the outset because the action opens in London, just half-an-hour down the road from where I am sitting right now. I am always interested to read books set in Britain but written by Americans (and Canadians!) because a) it's fascinating to see how they view us and b) it's fun to pick out the bits they got wrong. So I had a lot of fun with this book - sorry Julie! For example, the singular of "pence" is "penny" so you cannot toss "a pence" into the Thames. I have never heard of a house being called a Parish before - a parish is a church geographical district, like a ward. And they seemed at one point to fly from an airport ...

In my last blog I talked about the expense of publicity and why, therefore, it is important to attract readers through other means. Social networking, blogging and and just being "out there" apparently helps people to know your name and have an interest in your work. A gripping, intriguing and well-written back cover blurb is vital, but personally I think you can't beat reviews and recommendations. If someone else has read the book and loved it - especially if they are someone I know and trust - then there's a good chance I'll want to read it too. When a potential buyer is considering the book on Amazon a good review might be the difference between clicking "buy" or not. To this end, I have a proposal. The "Chocolate and Reviews for Books" proposal Here's how it works: You, the author, email me a word document of your book (to anna [at] buttimore [dot] org [dot] uk - and include your postal address in the email). I post you a bar of British...