Anna Jones Buttimore

Sorry about the adverts now appearing on my blog. The recession has bitten, and having spent a month in America, had a new boiler, dishwasher and treadmill, we are now skint. The children all have birthdays before Christmas and then... well, Christmas. So a few pennies from a couple of ads seemed like a good idea. I realised recently that I have three jobs - four if you include motherhood. I work from home five hours a day for a legal charity. I'm an Avon representative, and a writer. The pay I get for each job can also be rated in that order. Writing doesn't pay well. If I really was desparate for money I could give up all my jobs (except motherhood) and take a better paid full time job in an office somewhere. But since I could never give up writing - or the time I spend doing it - I'll settle for some careful budgeting, putting ads on my blog and selling stuff on Ebay. I can live with being poor if it means I get to do what I love.

It's been such a long time since I've blogged that my blog address is no longer stored in my web browser. I need to do something about that. One of the downsides of being a published author is that people assume you love writing (I do) and must be good at it (er...) and therefore you would love to write the roadshow this year. And having written it, obviously you have a vision for how it would look, so you should also direct it. Every Tuesday and Friday night, and Saturday mornings for the month leading up to it. And any problems with a costumes, sound, arguments between actors, are also yours to deal with. I have now written and directed four roadshows, all of them terrible, and I really don't want to do this year's. November is the date written in for our Stake. I'm going to try to protest that I'm really too busy with my latest book, but naturally this will just remind people that I am a published author, and therefore love writing and must be good at it. I...

I love writing. I have only recently come to realise quite how much I love it, and quite how grateful I am that writing is my talent. I used to envy those people who could sing beautifully, or who were musically gifted. If I could sing and play the piano, my party piece would be singing "My Melancholy Blues" by Queen, a beautiful and haunting tune. But I can't sing. Well, not well. My friend, who never says a bad word about anyone and is musically gifted, charitably says I have a good choir voice. In other words, it might sound OK if 100 others were singing along with me to drown me out. I can't dance either. I did ballet as a child but gave up because I didn't like all the French words and was sure I'd never learn them. Languages, you see, are something else I'm not good at. It took mew 17 years of living in Wales to get any kind of fluency in Welsh. I have some artistic ability, but I think artistic ability is something that can be learned to a certain ...

My last post on the V-Formation blog ( www.vformation.blogspot.com ) created quite a bit of controversy, but having now read almost all the Twilight saga, I stand by what I said. They inspire me. Stephenie Meyer, in turn, was inspired (appropriately) by Muse and various other rock bands. I haven't got into Muse yet; I suspect they may be a bit grungy and emo for my tastes. This got me thinking about what inspires us. My books have come from various sources, but strangely, rarely my own head. Haven was suggested to me by my editor at Covenant, Valerie Holladay, who asked for a book set in Wales with a variety of different characters. A B&B was the obvious solution. A World Away was the sequel to Haven. I had never intended writing a sequel, but publishers like sequels to successful books by new authors; apparently they establish the name and the market. Christmas at Haven (as yet unpublished) is the third in the trilogy. More of the same, but with a difference in that Haven bu...

As I have mentioned before, it's not easy or cheap for me to get my hands on LDS fiction, so when I buy a book I choose carefully. I bought Pursued because Lynn is a friend and fellow V-Formation blogger, but also because it is set here in the UK so I thought it might be interesting. Lynn must have either spent a long time travelling round the Cotswolds, or done exhaustive research, because the descriptions are spot on. I've never been to Wells cathedral, but I have been to several others, and she does a great job of conjuring up the gothic architecture and rarefied atmosphere. Her characters are also well constructed, from the tenacious, slightly manic Maggie, to easy-going Rolf who is obviously just along for the ride. What Maggie goes through in the course of the book -not wanting to give any plot spoilers, but the least of her shocks is discovering that her long-lost brother is a terrorist about to blow up half the world - made me very glad she had a tame psychologist in ...

Whilst I decry the poor standards of literacy these days, it also extremely entertaining seeing the mistakes that are made. This morning I received two items in the post which caused me to laugh out loud. The first was a letter from the NHS national blood service telling me about a venue change for my blood donation sessions. It included the sentence, “In order to make this change as inconvenient as possible we have included with this letter a map detailing the new venue.” The second was a Christmas catalogue which had, among the many lovely things advertised, a pair of lighthouse bookends. I considered getting these for my brother-in-law, who is passionate about all things maritime, until I read in the description that “these naïve bookends will look delightful in any room in the house”. I’m sure James would not appreciate bookends which are immature and innocent about the ways of the world.

Anne Bradshaw, a fellow Brit, is so much better at blogging than I am. Not only does she blog every day (cough) but she has some fantastic giveaways on her blog, and she knows how to publicise her book properly using the fabulous tool which is the internet. I'm visiting the USA in April next year. Might have to visit Anne to have a lesson on how to use all this technology to further my efforts as a writer. In the meantime, I've added a link to Anne's Blog. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed I might be the lucky winner of, well, anything really! (But my Mum would love the David Glen Hatch CD).