Anna Jones Buttimore's Blog, page 13

How to Cheat at your Word Count

You know how it is... you've set yourself a goal to write 2,000 words today, and you've barely managed 200. Here's what I did on my work in progress recently to up my word count without actually having to do any of that difficult creative writing stuff.

Put in the chapter divisions. "Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three..." That's six words right there.Start each chapter with a meaningful relevant quote. I have used quotes from the scriptures, from philosophers, theologians, saints, writers and presidents. The longer, the better.Hymn or song lyrics. I'm writing a religious book, and at various stages my characters sing hymns. So I put in all the words they were singing. (Although I've since taken them all out again due to copyright issues and the fact that it got boring reading through all six verses.)Book club questions. This is one of the most fun things to do when writing a book. Think about the issues your book addresses, the changes your characters go through or the moral dilemmas raised, and compose questions which whole rooms full of people who have bought your book (I love book clubs) might discuss. It really gives you a great insight into your own book, too.Dedication. "To Mum" might only add two words to your word count, but "To my Mother, [full name plus maiden name], who has always believed in me and supported my writing efforts..." really starts to crank out those essential words. Don't forget to thank her for all those early-hours feeds when you were a baby, too.Include text boxes, footnotes and endnotes. Add footnotes or endnotes for anything you think readers might not fully understand. Then. in Microsoft Word on the Review tab click "Word Count" and tick the box. I just added 600 words to my WIP by doing this.Write your author bio. This is fun to do, too, and since it does appear in the book, I think it's a valid contributor to your word count.Acknowledgements. Think about who you'll thank for their help as you wrote the book. Your patient family, alpha and beta readers, proofreaders, line editors, your editor, agent and publisher, supportive friends, cover illustrator and anyone who helped with the research. (I'm terrified of offending someone by leaving them out, so I offend everyone by not ever having any acknowledgements in my books.)Back cover blurb. Actually I tend to write this first. It gives me an idea of what I'm trying to achieve with the book.If, after all this, you're still just two words shy of your goal, here's what to do. Scroll to the very end of your manuscript and type these two very satisfying words: "The End."

What to do about a Bad Review

Here's an admission - I have started tuning to Radio 4 occasionally. I am officially middle-aged. I listened to Radio 1 until I was in my early 20's, and have been devoted to Radio 2 ever since. Growing up, my mother had Radio 4 on constantly (the theme tune to "The Archers" is the soundtrack to my childhood) so I associate it with, erm, slightly older people. But Radio 2 gets very boring in the evenings when it focusses on music genres I don't like, so I tune to Radio 4. Which is where I found this gem from American author Adam Gopnik about how to respond to a bad review. It's well worth a listen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01jxw57/A_Point_of_View_What_to_do_about_a_bad_review/

I'd like to say I've never had a bad review. Unfortunately that wouldn't be entirely true. Maybe I'll just say that I've never had a bad review in print, but on Goodreads a couple of people were unimpressed by my books. One gave Honeymoon Heist one star and said that she had failed to finish it because she didn't like the characters. Another just said that the book didn't grab her but she wasn't sure why.

I send all reviewers of my books a bar of chocolate. British chocolate is the best in the world and I consider it a good investment to spend £1 on a 100g bar of Galaxy or Dairy Milk (plus £5 on postage, if it's going to America) to thank someone for spending their hard-earned money on my book, and taking the time to write a review about it.

OK, so it's probably actually a very poor investment given that I will spend far more on chocolate and postage than I will earn in royalties. But I send the chocolate to all reviewers, whether their review is good or bad, so I feel I'm thanking those who left a good review, encouraging others to leave reviews, and heaping burning coals on the heads of those who give a bad review:

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.
(Proverbs 25:21-22, New International Version)

That's my version of the four-months-later friendly letter. Anyone got any other suggestions about how to handle bad reviews?

No Escape

Here it is - your chance to read the first chapter of my latest book, No Escape.

Menai Bridge, Wales. An island, forty miles wide, sits in the Irish Sea. A lush and green gentle quilt of fields divided by walls of large mushroom rocks is knotted with villages bearing names that defy pronunciation by the English-speaking world. Historical home of the Celts and their druidic traditions, the island’s southeast coast is edged by the sparking ribbon of the Menai Straits, spanned by a wide concrete railway and road bridge and a narrow, elegant, steel suspension bridge. The graceful bridge forms part of a 260-mile-long roadway linking the northwest portion of the island with the capital of its ruling neighbouring country, and was built by Thomas Telford in the early nineteenth century, a time when grandeur, elegance, and ostentation mattered more than practicality. At the landing point of the bridge is a town—a narrow high street interlaced with roadways and lanes, with tightly packed stone houses and modern brick constructions jostling for space, their sharp slate roofs overlapping one another. In one of those little houses a man who does not belong there lies sleeping alone.
As the radio alarm burst into sudden life, showering Michael’s tousled head with the melodic and relaxed chatter of a velvet-voiced Englishwoman, he integrated the new noise into his happy dream, nudged contentedly toward the left side of the bed, and pushed out one arm, in his reverie half expecting to encounter her warm presence and her tenderness. His searching hands met only cold emptiness, so he reached a little further and slapped the snooze button as though it were the radio’s fault that his wife was dead.For five minutes he allowed himself to dream of her in the half-life between waking and sleeping, and then the alarm sounded again and the traffic girl announced that the M25 anticlockwise had long delays at Godstone, and the M40 should be avoided altogether. He had never driven on either highway so he didn’t care, and he thumped the snooze button again. A little more alert now, he lay listening to the silence. Two months after his arrival here he still found it strange not to hear the drone of traffic, a distant siren, horns blaring, and workmen swearing. Here there was nothing except the occasional bird chirruping, and sometimes the distant baa-ing of sheet. This was a town—if this higgledy-piggledy hotchpotch of houses could be called a town—and he had yet to hear a car. But it was only 6:10. Round here, only the farmers awoke before 7:00 am.The third time the alarm went off it was a rousing chart song, so this time he rolled out of bed, stood up with his feet planted wide in determination, took a few deep breaths, and headed for the bathroom, ducking his head as he passed through the low doorway into the cramped room. He showered, then dressed quickly in a pair of thick Chinos and a warm sweater, and headed down the steep staircase to the tiny kitchen.Everything about his rented terraced house seemed to be on a miniature scale, but nowhere more so than the kitchen. Michael’s apartment in New York had a large, open-plan living area with a magnificent kitchen and a breakfast island big enough for his whole family to sit at when they came for Thanksgiving. Not that they had sat at the breakfast bar on such occasions of course; the room was also spacious enough to accommodate a glass-topped table seating twelve in comfort. Here, the kitchen had been built as a lean-to on the back of the house, almost as an afterthought, and consisted of an old, freestanding gas cooker that he had to light with a match, three wall cupboards, one base cupboard, a washing machine but no dryer, and an under-the-counter refrigerator, which he had at first thought the quaintest thing he had ever seen in this quaint country, but which he now found a major irritation. A dozen eggs, two pints of milk, a stick of butter, a lump of cheese, and a beer, and the fridge was full. There was no freezer.On the wall above the refrigerator was a large corkboard with a haphazard array of receipts, coupons, and telephone numbers, along with a single photograph. The photograph showed he and Heather on their wedding day, she wearing her most radiant smile and the absolutely plain white dress that showed off her curves so beautifully, and he looking at her with a somewhat glazed expression. The photo had not been taken by the official wedding photographer, but by a friend who had simply captured the perfect moment. Michael knew every detail of that photo, from the wayward flower in Heather’s bouquet to the shadows of the out-of-shot guests. Remembering that happy time comforted him a little, but it was cruelly ironic to remember that they’d thought they had forever, and they actually had barely two years. When the photo was taken, Heather already had cervical cancer, although neither of them knew it.He forced himself to eat a large breakfast of crumpets with strawberry jam—which he had become rather partial to over the last few weeks—whole-wheat cereal, and a glass of fruit juice. Eating gave him too much time to think, so he tried to read the newspaper, thumbing halfheartedly through it looking for anything potentially interesting that might prevent him from dwelling on his loss. Nothing achieved that objective. The tragic stories reminded him of his own tragedy, the glamorous celebrities reminded him of Heather either because they looked like her, in the case of the women, or because she had admired them, in the case of the men. Even the weather report—cold and wet, like every other one of the sixty-five days he had spent in Wales—seemed to sum up his mood. Michael gave up on the paper and tried to remind himself, as he did every day, that he was far away from his old life. This was a new start. Heather had never existed here. He had been unable to continue in the New York apartment they had shared so happily. Everywhere he looked was the memory of her pale and fading face. The bedroom that should have become the nursery became her sick room until she moved to the hospital to die, and then the home they’d had so many plans for felt big and empty and reminded him of his sorrow. Although her death had been expected, he had not anticipated just how overwhelming his grief would be. For the first week he could do nothing but sit in the apartment and cry. It seemed implausible that the world should continue as normal. Children still went to school and their parents still went grocery shopping; people argued, entered competitions, complained about prices, and booked vacations. Didn’t they know nothing was normal anymore? Did they not understand how futile and pointless it all was now? Michael tried to go back to work, but he no longer cared enough about anything. His mind wasn’t on his work, and that made him a liability. He didn’t care much about that, either, except he wanted to work because it gave him an outlet for his frustration and took his mind off his despair. And yet somehow the reality kept breaking through, reminding him time and time again of what he had lost. He and his partner chased a stolen Taurus past the hospital where Heather had died, and all he could think about was her, white and wet with sweat in that uncomfortable bed on the third floor, waiting patiently for it all to be over. A police officer who broke down with grief every time a car chase or call took him anywhere that reminded him of his dead wife, was a problem.So despite his protests that he wanted to work, Michael found himself forced to take more time off. It was no easier. He could no longer go grocery shopping because it brought back memories of Heather squeezing the fruit in the first aisle, or exclaiming over the “most darling” little cakes in the bakery—which she would buy but never eat—and he would break down in an embarrassing public display. He could no longer go to the gym because he remembered the time Heather had playfully slapped his hand when he had tried to reduce her treadmill program. His family was no help. His relationship with his mother had always been strained, and his brother seemed as grief stricken as Michael himself. Heather’s family appeared to have closed ranks, acting as though they somehow blamed Michael for her death, and he no longer felt welcome at their opulent home. He was almost certain that he was imagining their animosity, but the fact remained that they could not offer him any comfort or sympathy. And why should they? They had lost a beautiful, beloved daughter. What consolation could they possibly offer her widowed husband when they couldn’t come to terms with the tragedy themselves? So, with nowhere to go to find peace, he remained in the empty apartment, surrounded by furniture Heather had bought, decor she had designed, and photographs of her. He needed to get away. Far away.This opportunity had arisen four months after her death—an exchange program in which one experienced New York cop would trade places with an officer from a rural part of Britain for six months, each bringing the best in the jurisdiction to the other force, and taking back new ideas and approaches. By dint of his widowhood, Michael was one of only three officers in the precinct who didn’t have family ties keeping them in New York, and of the other two, Officer Calhoun was nearing retirement and didn’t want to be “running off to foreign places,” and Officer Chavez was less than keen on the idea. For Michael it had been the ideal chance to escape, take stock, and flee the horrors New York held for him, and his colleagues and family encouraged him to make the most of the opportunity.His normal self might have been either excited at the prospect or concerned about the pressures of leaving home to live somewhere so very different, but Michael didn’t remember enough of his pre-grieving personality to care. He felt neutral and empty. When his police partner pressed him about what most worried him about taking part in the exchange, Michael was nonplussed. What was there to worry about? He had already lost his wife; what could be worse than that? But he replied that he didn’t think he’d look good in a navy blue uniform with shiny brass buttons and a hard-domed hat. His partner had laughed and told him that police officers of his rank in the North Wales force wore plain clothes. Something that really did worry Michael following that conversation was what he would not be wearing—his weapon. British cops did not carry guns.He flew into Manchester Airport on a dismal day in mid January. The sky was overcast, there was a light drizzle of rain, and the weather seemed to echo his inexorable grief. His spirits were low as he stepped into the arrivals hall, the realisation dawning on him that he could not really escape his misery; even here he was widowed, and he missed Heather. This escape plan was an exercise in futility.Expecting a driver carrying a cardboard sign to be waiting at the rail, his gaze at first passed over Emyr Roberts. But then something registered in his subconscious, and he returned his eyes to the rotund, besuited character before him. The officer had ruddy cheeks and deep-set, puffy eyes, but his most marked feature was the big, rounded policeman’s hard hat on his head, from the very top of which protruded two flags—one the star-spangled banner, and the other green and white with a red dragon across the centre. Michael stared at the man for a moment, unsure of how to respond, but finally stuck out his hand and ventured, “Michael Boyd.”“No,” boomed the man, “I’m Emyr Roberts.”Embarrassed, Michael tried to explain. “No, I’m Michael Boyd. I just wondered if you were waiting for me.”“Not at all, not at all,” the man declared, his voice almost singing with its delightful, lilting accent. “I’m waiting for the queen. Was she on your flight?”Michael had actually smiled at that, and the firm and enthusiastic grip with which Emyr Roberts had shaken his hand had cheered him almost as much as the joke, even if it had been at his expense. Not that it would be difficult to raise his spirits from rock bottom. He had at least arrived safely in England, and he had met up with the officer who was to be his partner for the next six months. During the two-hour journey from Manchester Airport to Bangor Police Station, Michael had discovered that Emyr was a master of cynicism and sarcasm and could, with a completely convincing poker face and authoritative tone, inform him that the television set his parents had owned when he was a child was coal-fired. Michael had heard all about the wry British humour and realised his colleague would enjoy taking every advantage of his American candour. He hoped he would be able to identify when the officer was pulling his leg, but as they approached the Welsh border Emyr asked him to have his passport ready and hooted with laughter as he saw him reaching into his jacket pocket for it. Apparently, Michael realised, it was not necessary to show a passport when crossing from England to Wales. In fact, he discovered, there was nothing to mark the border but a sign that read, “Welcome to Wales—Croeso i Gymru.” As they passed it, Emyr told him that “Croeso i Gymru” (which sounded nothing like it did in Michael’s mind) meant “Foreigners go home.” This time, Michael was on to him. Despite Emyr’s strange sense of humour, Michael could not help but like his new partner, and he began to feel hopeful that this exchange would prove beneficial to him.Bangor Police Station could not have been more different from his New York precinct office. It was an ugly, square building, small, cramped, and grey, with peeling paint inside and out. But there was a warm greeting from uniformed and non-uniformed officers inside, who all clapped him on the back, shook his hand, and welcomed him wholeheartedly. Once they had all met the new American officer and teased him gently about shooting first and asking questions later, Emyr brought him a mug of steaming tea, which Michael apologetically declined. Then he was given his badge and documents, the forms he needed to fill in for the exchange, and a thick book of rules and guidelines. Of most interest to Michael, however, was the key to his new home. After his long flight he was tired, and while it was morning here, his body clock told him it was way past midnight. He just wanted to go to bed.He spent the following two weeks at the divisional headquarters building in Caernarfon, ten miles away, learning about the British law and North Wales Police Force’s procedures, conventions, and rules. Outside office hours he was learning to get used to driving on the left side on narrow roads, to say “excuse me” when he meant “pardon me,” and “pardon me” when he meant “excuse me,” and to say “sorry” to just about anything, even when it wasn’t his fault that the person had run over his foot with a shopping “trolley.” Following his crash course at Maesincla, as the divisional HQ was nicknamed, he returned to the station at Bangor and discovered his first impressions of his Welsh colleagues had been correct. They were a great bunch of guys, as warm and funny and unpretentious as the weather was cold and depressing. They approached even the most hardened crooks without any aggression and somehow brought humour and respect into every arrest. Michael thought he would never tire of hearing Emyr murmur in his melodic voice, “What have we got here then, mate? Is someone being a naughty boy?” as he approached a stolen car and looked at the driver, who was known to have a stash of cocaine in the “boot.” Michael’s partner back in New York would have drawn his weapon and roughly ordered the druggie to come out with his hands up, and yet Emyr habitually addressed every dangerous criminal as though he or she were a puppy chewing a slipper.It had taken Michael perhaps a month to get used to the different culture, but the language would take a little longer, not only because he regularly discovered differences in American and British usage of English words, but because most people here spoke Welsh as their first language. Emyr had warned him to stay close so he would have a translator with him at all times, but it hadn’t been a problem yet. Most people seemed to speak perfectly good English.The terraced cottage in which he lived belonged to Officer Jones, who was now enjoying Michael’s New York apartment, and despite its small dimensions, which seemed typical of Welsh homes, it was delightful. It was situated on the island of Anglesey, just across the Menai Bridge in the town named after the beautiful Victorian suspension bridge, and backed onto fields with a distant glimpse of the sea from the front window. Michael loved the countryside and wandered off into it at every opportunity. It was impossible to get lost; he soon realised if he walked in the same direction for more than ten minutes he would soon find himself on a road, at the seashore, or in a village. He planned to drive out to Snowdonia, the national park just a little further down the mainland coast, to see its stunning mountain ranges and take some of its challenging walks and climbs.One day about five weeks after moving to Wales, he found himself in a graveyard during one of his long country walks. It brought him up short to realise it was five months to the day since Heather’s funeral. It wasn’t that he missed her any less here, but with so much to learn and so little to remind him of her, it was easier being in Wales. Perhaps he had even managed to subconsciously persuade himself that she wasn’t dead after all; she was back home in New York, spending his entire paycheck on Madison Avenue. But before him again was the reminder he really didn’t need.The cemetery was an old one in the grounds of a centuries-old and little-used stone church, and it was overgrown and neglected. Michael bent down to read some of the headstones. Many were worn down too much to read, but he could still make out those that were less than a hundred years old. It seemed as though a person’s entire life history appeared on his headstone. Even the one slate stone engraved in English bore the deceased’s address, maiden name, birth and death dates, and details of the family whose beloved wife, mother, sister, and grandmother she was. Welsh headstones ended with two lines of specially written cynghanedd—highly stylized Welsh poetry. In comparison, Heather’s grave back in the public cemetery in New York bore only a simple wooden cross on which was an engraved plaque with her name, Heather Anne Boyd, the date of her death, and those sad words, “Age 25.”It was so easy to get lost thinking of her. Every morning Michael thought of her from the moment he awoke to find his arms empty until work forced her face from his mind. He tried to remind himself they would be together again, that he had only to wait and somehow, in some unknown spiritual plane, he hoped, he would see her beautiful face once more. But at the lowest times he did not want to wait; he wanted to join her there and then.He had met Heather quite by accident when she arrived at his apartment carrying flowers and chocolates intended for one of his neighbours. Struck by her beauty and the way she laughed with genuine amusement at her own mistake, he abandoned his favourite computer game in order to take her to the correct apartment—and get her phone number. He had returned to find his character had been killed and resurrected several times and his game was now over, but it had been worth it. Heather had agreed to a date when he called her the next day, and he had fallen in love with her as they tucked into ice cream sundaes at a quaint café. How, he had wondered, could anyone not love her? She had an outgoing and adventurous personality, she laughed easily at anything and everything, and she was open and lively and fearless. She had loved to try new things, liked nothing more than to be surrounded by people, and exuded a self-confidence that seemed to rub off on those around her. Everyone had admired her, and Michael had never been able to understand how he had been lucky enough to marry her. He finished his breakfast, brushed his teeth, pulled on his worn, brown leather jacket, and let himself out of the house, locking the door behind him. It was a ten-minute drive to the police station, and there was little traffic at this time of the morning. He crossed the bridge to the mainland without seeing another car and was thankful to have partly missed the daily trial of nerves of seeing busses hurtling towards him in the narrow opposite lane. Despite the empty car park, he stopped the car in his usual space and let himself into the station by the back door. Nearby, a stray dog in one of the holding cages barked continuously as it had done throughout the previous day and, presumably, that night.Emyr Roberts and Aled Evans were waiting for Michael, slumped in their soft, padded swivel chairs nursing steaming plastic cups of tea, their bloodshot eyes and pale faces testifying that they had not adequately prepared for this early start. Michael took his place behind his desk in a corner of the room and warily eyed the printed reports and list of emails that awaited his attention.“So how come you get to look so perky first thing in the morning?” Evans quipped by way of greeting.“Good American coffee,” he replied pleasantly. “Anything to report?”Emyr shook his head slowly. “All go, as per plan. Backup are standing by, but I don’t foresee any trouble. But let’s keep it clean, shall we?” He drawled the last part in a curious accent that might have been a misguided attempt to mimic his American colleague.“Meaning what, exactly?” Aled responded edgily.Emyr sighed dramatically and raised his eyebrows at Michael as though indicating that his colleague stretched his patience. “Meaning that the girl doesn’t want all the neighbours or her child knowing, and she doesn’t want the suspect to know that she was the informant.”“Oh,” Aled said. “That clean. Honest, Emyr, I thought you were picking up some strange foreign language from Officer Boyd here.” He sipped his tea as Michael tried to suppress a laugh, realising that Emyr Roberts had indeed taken to slipping American phrases into conversation at times since his arrival. Michael often thought his colleagues would make a good double act with their incessant banter and lighthearted mockery. Detective Constable Roberts was overweight, middle aged, and constantly complaining about his wife’s peccadilloes. In comparison Detective Inspector Evans looked much more like a cop should: tall, broad shouldered, and with his blond hair trimmed so short that he looked menacingly bald from a distance. He was the senior officer not because of his age, but because he was a career cop and had put in the hours, the study, and the effort to advance in the ranks. Emyr pretended to be troubled at the younger man having authority over him, and generally referred to him as “Bach.” Michael had wondered at first why Roberts would compare his boss to a German composer, but having learned a few Welsh words, Michael now knew that bach meant “little.”They finished their drinks, added their cups to the mouldy pile in the sink, and left through the back door of the station to their unmarked car. Michael reviewed the case in his mind as they drove back into Upper Bangor and out along the coast to the bridge leading onto Anglesey. He remembered the quiet voice on the telephone yesterday evening. It was not a frightened voice, not uncertain, but had merely asked matter-of-factly whether its owner might be assured anonymity in reporting a crime.He had told her yes, no one would know the source.As calmly as though she were reporting a cat stuck up a tree, the faceless woman had then informed him, clearly and with all necessary detail, that she had discovered a cache of what she believed to be illegal drugs hidden on her property, and that she believed her brother, who lived in her house, might be selling them.Just as confidently Michael had asked her to say nothing to her brother, taken some details, and told her that they would call to question him, probably early in the morning when they could be sure of finding him home. It was only at this point that she had displayed uneasiness. “Not before 8:30, please. I have a young daughter, and I’d rather she didn’t know. He will be here. He rarely wakes up before noon.”Michael had reassured her and replaced the receiver, wondering what sort of a woman reported her own brother’s illegal activities with such unruffled detachment.“So, what more do we know about them?” Michael asked now as he watched the road, inclining his head slightly to indicate he was addressing Roberts.“Seth Pritchard, twenty-seven, born in Cardiff, currently a student at the university but has been for the last five years, as far as we can tell. The university office was a bit vague as to what course he was taking. No fixed abode—the university has a pigeonhole in the Student Union as his address. He’s had a caution before for smoking dope, but that’s not so unusual for a student. His sister is Catrin Pritchard, twenty-four, also a student. She rents the house he’s living in from the Council and lives with her daughter, who is five years old. Catrin has a completely clean record, although she did come up as a witness to a couple of domestic abuse incidents in Cardiff ten years ago. That’s all we’ve got on them for now, but she says she found the drugs behind the freezer in her shed on Wednesday night.”“Funny place to keep a freezer,” Evans put in. Michael and Roberts ignored him.“Why did she wait so long before reporting it?” Michael asked.Roberts shrugged. “Not an easy thing to do, I suppose, grassing up your own brother.”“Do we suspect her of being involved?”“Not really. We have to find the goods first before we’ve got any crime at all, but she is assumed to be a law-abiding and concerned member of the public for now. We’ll question her too, of course. It’s possible she knew all along but was worried we were on to her and decided to grass him up to appear in the clear, but we’ll figure that out later. It’s left here, and up the lane.”The narrow road was poorly surfaced and potholed, the nettles and weeds growing high and tapping at the windows of the car. The few passing places were muddy and sunken, but the officers saw no other vehicles until they found themselves behind a rusty tractor that wobbled steadily along shedding hay.“Your car’s going to be a mess,” Evans said as mud splattered across the windscreen. Michael just shrugged, unconcerned. It wasn’t his car; it belonged to the force. His Saturn had once been his pride and joy—he had spent every Saturday afternoon waxing the paintwork until it shone—but he had lost interest in it and sold it before he moved to Wales.The tractor turned off, the close hedgerows skewed away from the lane, and instead low, drystone walls bordered the tarmac, beyond them acres of fields dotted with sheep. Michael drove carefully now as the paved part of the lane gave way to an unpaved section with its attendant bumps, potholes, and puddles. He could see the cottage ahead at the end of a small row of stout, squat, dark grey stone structures under overlapping slate roofs. The chimney was smoking in enthusiastic little puffs, and the tiny garden to the front was a blaze of carefully tended colourful flowers despite the cold season. The stone wall continued across the front of the property and then around it, a hedge again taking its place as the lane continued on to the farm. Michael parked the car in front of the house close to the wall to allow any traffic that might happen along to pass.“Right,” Roberts said as soon as the handbrake creaked. “Boyd, round the back. Evans and I will take the front. I don’t foresee much trouble but keep your radios on, and any problems at all, remember backup are standing by in Beaumaris.”They nodded. They knew their jobs by now. Michael opened the gate and skirted around the small cottage to the back. Besides the shed, which he had expected to see and mentally noted for his report, there was perhaps half an acre of garden here, and not an inch of it wasted. A large vegetable patch covered almost half the garden and sprouted promisingly, the fruit trees were already laden with small apples and plums, and five brown and white chickens clucked softly as they scratched the ground in their wire run. What probably amounted to three good-sized trees were stacked up in neatly chopped logs against the back wall, and what little space remained was cluttered with toys—a child’s old bike, a makeshift tent, and a large, shallow plastic crate that served as a sandpit. A length of washing line was stretched from the gutter pipe to the top of the shed, already neatly pegged with upside-down clothes, and Michael parted pillowcases and socks as he crossed to the back door. Peering through the glass he saw that Evans and Roberts were already stepping into the house, and he quietly opened the door to join them from his assigned position.The kitchen was tiny and clean, tiled in plain white with cheap but sturdy cabinets. A stunning old Aga range provided a focal point, offset by attractive flower prints in wooden frames randomly placed on the walls. There was a stable door to the lounge, and Michael stepped through with a nod to his colleagues. The cottage was attractive—small but homey with warm yellow walls, bare floorboards, and a heavy Indian rug insulating the main room. The beamed ceiling was higher here than it was in the kitchen, and Michael saw that steep wooden stairs—almost a ladder—led up to an open loft room with a carved wooden balustrade. The child’s room, he guessed, since the low ceiling would prevent an adult from standing up there.Set into the far wall of the main room was a large inglenook fireplace, within which was a cast-iron log-burning stove. The heavy stone wall into which the fireplace was set had been left exposed, and bunches of dried flowers had been carefully hung in an attempt to conceal nooks and crannies and the random pattern a child had added to a low grey stone with a felt-tip pen. The ancient ship’s beam that served as a mantel was narrow and uneven, but the owner of the cottage had managed to stand small photographs in silver frames along its length—a baby dressed in a frilly pink dress, a young child on a tricycle, a woman smartly dressed at a wedding, and a faded and stained depiction of a large, wiry-coated dog with a thick, blue collar. Above the mantel in a heavy gold frame was a stunning painting, a sweeping Cumbrian mountain landscape in incredible detail, the brush strokes adding perfect texture and interest to the beautiful scene depicted. The perfection of it took Michael’s breath away for a moment, and he temporarily forgot why he was there. He’d have happily paid a fair entrance fee to a gallery displaying such a magnificent painting; he was surprised to see it in this otherwise humbly furnished home.Old panelled doors with iron latches led to the bedroom and bathroom, and in the recess below the stairs was a small desk of black ash that did not fit in with the rustic charm of the other furnishings in the little room and had probably been salvaged from some bankrupt office, along with the red spot lamp that rose from the chaos of books on the desk’s surface. There was a very faint musty smell about the cottage inherent with age, but it was clean and fresh, and while the old curtains clearly needed mending, probably for the umpteenth time, the large, cream-coloured couch and armchair looked relatively new and were the only luxuries.On the couch a man grunted and turned over carefully. He was fully dressed as he slept, his coat laid over him and a woollen hat pulled down over his ears. The couch could not be comfortable for such a big man, but his eyes were flickering under their lids, and Michael knew he was in the deepest sleep. Alcohol induced, he decided as he picked up the familiar odour on the man’s clothes. In sleep the man had a pleasant, youthful face with big black brows and a long, straight nose. His ears stuck out slightly; he had let his hair grow over them, but it had flopped back when he lay down. He dressed sloppily, probably deliberately, for “shabby chic” seemed to be part of the student ethic.The sleeper was the focus of Michael’s attentions, so he took little notice of the woman who stood, as though trying to hide behind the open front door, which was painted red. She was small, plainly dressed in chain-store jeans and a shapeless, colourless sweater, and her dark, wiry hair was cut in a sharp, short, and simple style. She had a thin figure, wore no makeup, and although her face bloomed with the healthy glow of someone who spends much time in the open air, there was no disguising the lack of vitality in those emotionless brown eyes. Glancing briefly at her, Michael reflected that a palette of powders could work wonders when correctly used, but even they couldn’t bring joy to a countenance where there was none, and the woman was probably right to eschew cosmetics. Heather had always been perfectly made up, and with her natural optimism and boundless enthusiasm to complete the effect she had always looked radiant. Before him now was the opposite extreme in the form of Catrin Pritchard, their informant and the sister of the man they had come to take into custody.“Would you mind if I were to take a look in the shed while your brother is still sleeping?” he asked her. In reply she took a key from her pocket and held it out. He had to walk to her to take it; she seemed reluctant to move.“So who are you, then?” she said curtly the moment he had turned his back on her to return to the garden. Realising that while Roberts and Evans had doubtless introduced themselves correctly on arrival and that he had missed this protocol, Michael looked back and took out his badge to show her.“DC Boyd, North Wales Police.” He tried to smile, but she did not seem to want to see that.“Detective Constable,” he explained in case she hadn’t understood.“I’d figured that out,” she said. “But you don’t sound very Welsh.”“I’m on exchange from New York.”She nodded. “Go on then—go out and check.” Then as he retreated she said to Evans, “I suppose I’d better wake him up.”As he walked back into the crisp air of the unusually practical garden, Michael found that, as poorly as she compared to the wife he had lost, he had to admire the courage of the shrewish little woman as she awoke her brother tenderly with the news that the police had come to arrest him.

Want to read more? Buy my book by clicking here in the UK or clicking here in the US. It's also available on Kindle.

To Be Me, or Not to Be Me?

I mentioned about a month ago that I had decided that my current work-in-progress, a challenging and controversial religious exposition, would be published anonymously and I wouldn't therefore be talking about it again. But after further debate and discussion, my co-author and I find we're not sure whether this is the right choice. At some point we need to make the decision. But what are the pros and cons of using a pen-name?

Advantages of Using a Pseudonym

On the offchance that your book becomes a rip-roaring success, you can retain your normal life (albeit with more money) and not get pursued by obsessive fans. (Because, like, that happens to writers all the time.)If you've written anything, (say, a challenging and controversial religious exposition) which is likely annoy crazy folk then they won't be able to come after you with an axe.If you happen to be a woman (or two women) and want men to buy your book, you can pull a JK Rowling and have your name mask your gender.If you've already published books in another genre, or hope to do so in future, then using a different name means you don't confuse your readers.If you don't really have the right expert knowledge or background to write your book, then your fake self can have a fake bio to make them look entirely qualified.You can talk to friends, go to online groups, email people as yourself to recommend the book without it looking like shameless self-promotion.Disadvantages of Using a PseudonymYou can't be interviewed on the radio, or do book signings, (or speak at Greenbelt) or do any other type of publicity which involves actually being a person.Your fake self will need a blog, and a website, and a Facebook page, and Goodreads, Shelfari and any number of online presences which all have to be set up and maintained, and that's a lot of work, especially if you have already done it all with your actual real self.If you've written something likely to lead to debate or differing opinions,  (say, a challenging and controversial religious exposition), it seems cowardly not to put your name on it and own it. If you believe in your position enough to write the book, you should be ready to stand by it.On the offchance that your book becomes a rip-roaring success you can tell potential future agents and publishers that you are already the author of a bestseller - and when they check it on Amazon, they will actually believe you.You can't use your existing friends, online contacts and other networks to publicise your book without looking like a troll and being ignored.So, what do you think? Any other pros and cons I need to consider? Should I put my name on this book?

Losing my Voice

At present I'm writing a deeply spiritual and complex novel about how religious issues destroy a loving relationship. There are two first-person narrators, and the tone is intended to be one of analytical thoughtfulness with only the occasional light moment for relief from the heavy themes.

I am also reading a particularly delightful chick-lit romance written in a whimsical tone with many hilarious asides and lively moments.

Unfortunately the two don't really go well together. I'm finding that my serious and challenging book is taking on a certain lightness, that my characters are having rather too many comic asides, generally in italics, and that I am someone losing the gravity of my original narrative voice and replacing it with that of the book I am reading.

One of the reasons would-be writers are encouraged to read a great deal is because that's a great way to pick up on the tone, talent and tricks of a skilled writer, and subconsciously as well as deliberately emulate their style. And apparently that's what I'm doing, entirely unintentionally.

So I think that for now I had better stick to reading serious and scholarly treatises. That is, until I go back to writing my chick-lit novel, Finders Keepers, at which point I plan to immerse myself in Marian Keyes.

Who Am I?

I'd like to formally introduce myself. My name is Anna Buttimore. However, the name I write under is Anna Jones Buttimore, since my first two books were published in the name of Anna Jones and my publishers wanted to hang on to those readers. So now I have an "author identity", and that's quite useful - it helps me keep my personal and writerly endeavours separate.

I am soon going to be creating a new author identity, however. A book I am working on is going to be quite controversial. I hope it is going to help a lot of people, but it is also going to be challenging and upsetting to many. My co-author and I anticipate it causing quite a stir in certain circles, and there will be many people who will be extremely upset and angry at us. Some of those people could get somewhat vocal and may feel the need to confront us in unpleasant ways. As peace-loving folk, we're not too keen on that possibility.

We have therefore decided that this book will not be published under our own names, but using pseudonyms. We've already picked the names we will use and it's quite fun dreaming up a new identity and making plans to set up a new blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts for the sole purpose of anonymously promoting this book.

However, it is going to be difficult to publicise a book when I can't be "me". No book signings, no radio interviews, no badgering established readers and friends to buy it, not even talking publicly about the book. I'm probably going to self publish this book (it's the first time I'll have self published, but my usual publishers have said that they can't touch something so controversial) so publicity is even more important since it's only me (and my co-author) doing the promotional work.

Any and all ideas are welcome!

I have mentioned this particular book on here before, and on my Facebook page, but no more. I anticipate it being published around a year from now, so it's time for me to "go dark". This is the last time I will connect myself with what is shaping up to be quite an eye-opening and exciting story. But I hope you'll read it, enjoy it, think about it and maybe, just maybe, wonder whether I wrote it.

The Buttimore & Jones Family Christmas Covenant 2012

[Sorry, another post that's not about books or writing. Normal service will be resumed next week.]

[image error] We love buying presents for our friends and family for Christmas. We love taking time to carefully choose gifts which will both surprise and delight. But it's not always easy to choose the right present, and it's always expensive. Apparently during January about £3.2 million worth of unwanted Christmas presents are returned to stores each year, because sometimes gifts aren't things which surprise and delight, but pointless tokens which obligate people to buy equally pointless tokens for others, even when they can ill afford them. 
So this year we want to take a completely different approach.  We've seen websites like The Advent Conspiracy and blogs like Is it time to ban Christmas presents, and we've thought about how we might make Christmas 2012 a little more special, less commercialised, more focussed on the Saviour, and much less likely to leave us worrying about the family budget in January.
If you're a child don't worry. We will still buy presents for the children as usual.  If you're an adult, however, we'd like to make a pact with you. We will give you gifts which we have made, or which otherwise have cost us very little. And we'd like you do agree to do the same for us. In fact, we're going to set a maximum budget of £2 per gift per person. Alternatively, if you're a family with children, we could buy you all a family gift – a board game, a DVD, or something the whole family can enjoy together.
To make this even easier, below you'll see two gift lists. The first list is items you might ask us for – things which we can make or do for you. Feel free to choose, and let us know what you'd most enjoy. But get your orders in early – especially for craft items, since these can take months to make. That's why we're making public our Christmas Covenant now – I can't sew five Family Trees in December!
The second list is things that we need. Many of them can be bought from your local pound shop, charity shop or even dug out of your attic. We don't mind "regifted" items, and we'll even be happy with something you got free, such as a McDonald's Coke glass. Many cost nothing more than time.
Thank you so much for joining in this covenant with us, and we look forward to having a wonderful, meaningful , and inexpensive, Christmas 2012.
Anna and Roderic
GIFTS WE CAN GIVE TO YOU:A book of our best family recipes, including the ever-popular Tatws Pum MunudA basket of home-made fudge, mint crèmes and chocolate trufflesA cross-stitch picture. Choose from a Family Tree, birth sampler, London Temple, or suggest your own design.A basket of ironing doneA home-made Christmas Yule log delivered to your door on Christmas Eve 
GIFTS WE WOULD LIKEToaster bags (available in Pound shops)An Amazon and Goodreads review of one of Anna's books (I can lend you the book)A couple of car washesA bookshelf built to fit our alcove (we will supply the materials – this has to be from the Humphrey family!)A week's dogsittingDecorating/mending services

Leave McDonald's Alone!

This post is nothing to do with books or writing. Sorry about that. Once in a while I wander off topic.

You've probably seen the picture circulating round Facebook and elsewhere on the net of some gooey grey-pink sludge coming out of a factory pipe. The tag line asks us to guess what McDonald's food product it is. Strawberry milkshake, we hope, until told that it's actually the mechanically recovered bits of chicken, including feet and eyeballs, used to make McNuggets. There are probably several comments below along the lines of, "I would never stoop so low as to eat at that dreadful place, the food is terrible, and the staff are little more than brainless slaves."

So there.Well, bully for you, you great hoity-toity food snob commenters. The picture of the pink slime is a hoax, of course. (McNuggets are made only of chicken breast meat.) Many other malicious rumours circulate. A friend recently informed me, in all gullible conviction, that McDonald's milkshakes are made from the used oil from frying the chips.

I wish people would stop using McDonald's as a whipping-boy and thinking that it's somehow fashionable or popular to be disparaging about it. Here's why I love McDonald's.

You can take three small children out for dinner as a treat, and still have change from a tenner. (Can't beat a 35p ice cream cone.)The food is delicious. It just really is. The breakfasts are particularly good, and the Big Tasty is well named. But for my money (all £3.49 of it) you can't beat a quarter-pounder with cheese, regular fries with extra salt and barbecue sauce, and diet coke. The kids get a toy! It was Roald Dahl books that came free with a Happy Meal not long ago. How fabulous is that!I love randomly winning stuff in McDonald's Monopoly.Students get a free cheeseburger or McFlurry with every meal.It's varied. Wraps, fish, salads - it doesn't have to be a burger. I did three months as a vegetarian a couple of years ago (as an experiment) and discovered that McDonald's vegetarian offerings are excellent too.It's healthy. Yes, I did say that. Read it again. McDonald's were one of the first restaurants in the UK to include the calorie content on the menu, so I can make healthy choices when I want to. Their salads are generous, delicious, and under 300 calories. Perfect with a fruit bag and diet drink. Yes, many of their foods are high in fat and calories, but McDonald's is a restaurant, it's meant to be an occasional treat, not a replacement kitchen. And it's not McDonald's job to care for our health, it's ours.I have two friends who work at McDonald's and they are far from brainless (in fact, they are both college students) and are reasonably paid and have good perks, starting with a free meal each shift.McDonald's do a lot to support the local community, including sponsoring local football teams. I particularly admire their charity which provides Ronald McDonald Houses for parents and siblings to stay in when children are in hospital. Having stayed in hospital with two of my children I know how important it is that families can remain together at these times of crisis.It's fun and relaxed for families. It is lovely to go to a restaurant where it doesn't matter if the children are a little noisy or get up and run around. Some even have play areas, and even those that don't provide colouring pictures and crayons. A visit to McDonald's is always a happy occasion.Go on, mention Morgan Spurlock. He had two very stupid rules in his "Supersize Me" documentary. The first one was in the title. Every time the staff asked whether he wanted to supersize his order, he had to say "yes". Well, they always asked, and he always ended up consuming twice the fat and calories he otherwise would have done. He also decided to do no exercise at all. He was trying to show why Americans are so fat and unhealthy, but that didn't need to be done. It's because they eat far too much fast food, make poor menu choices when they do, and don't do exercise.
I would dearly like to repeat Mr. Spurlock's experiment but with my own rules. I would, like him, have to eat all my meals at McDonald's. Unlike him, however, I have no car, so I would have to walk or cycle there three times a day. I would have to have everything on the menu at least once, but, unlike him, I wouldn't have to bow to everything the staff suggest. I bet that if I did this for an entire month, I could be shown at the end of the month to have lost weight, and be healthier than when I started.
Anyone want to sponsor me to do that documentary so that I can once and for all silence all the annoying and petty naysayers?

The Books that Mean the Most

A few days ago I re-read a book I had first picked up as a fourteen-year-old and which had completely stunned me at the time. If anything it was more powerful almost thirty years later and I am still reeling from it. We all have books we enjoy and that have meant a lot to us over the years, but I suspect we have just three or four which have had a great impact on us or changed our lives and outlook. Restricting myself to fiction, I'm going to tell you about the books which mean the most to me.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham is that book my sister bought home from Southend High School for girls in 1982 and which evidently never went back. Although you have to pick it up from the clues because it doesn't state it outright, it's set in a dystopian future of post-nuclear winter and tells the story of a boy, David Strorm, who is different in a world which doesn't tolerate "mutants, blasphemies and abominations" including David's little friend, Sophie, who has six toes. It is chilling and absorbing, and firmly fixed my love of science fiction. It has dated only slightly (compared to much of John Wyndham's other work written in the 1950s) and I recommend it to everyone.

I read Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy at University and it took me a week to recover from the shock and the injustice. I loved all of Hardy's books, but this was the one which most moved me. Vanity Fair by WM Thackeray was another book which showed me exactly why the classics are classics, and just how unsurpassed they are.

The next book to take me by surprise was The Heart has its Reasons by Kerry Blair. I had read two LDS novels prior to writing my first, intending to get a feel for the market. My overwhelming impression after reading them (and I won't name them) was "I can do much better than this!" I decided that the LDS market was easy to break into because the standard wasn't very high, and lo and behold, Haven was published. I had a 40% author's discount with my publisher, so I bought some other books published around the same time and was blown away by the quality of Kerry's writing. It made me realise how lucky I was to have broken into the market at all and how very good fiction by LDS writers could be. And as an added bonus, I got to make a wonderful new friend, and Kerry in turn introduced me to many other supportive, talented and lovely LDS writers.

Finally, as as much as it may make you wince, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer sucked me in and captured my imagination just as it has for so many other people. Like them, I have a hard time explaining why it is so very compelling. The writing is good but not brilliant, and yet somehow it is completely absorbing and enthralling.

There are other books I love, of course. Pride and Prejudice, The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency, Harry Potter and a great many more. But I think that these five books are the ones which had the most profound effect on me, and most shaped my enjoyment of reading and my view of the world.

Book Review: Rearview Mirror by Stephanie Black

I'm a big fan of all Stephanie's books, and this one didn't disappoint. In part, however, it was because it included so many elements I'm familiar with, and appreciate, in her work.

She usually has a large cast of characters, and on this case there were so many that I had to keep flipping back to remind myself who they were and how they were connected together. But it means that she can use them to full advantage to place plenty of red herrings, and it sets the scene and breaks up the action extremely well. (It's something I struggle with in my own books, so I admire the way she can juggle so many different personalities and voices.) The heroine was a little too self-effacing and saccharine sweet for me to warm to her particularly, and my favourite character was Carrissa who was flawed, and yet somehow still very likeable.

Another thing I appreciate about Stephanie's work is that the people who are murdered are usually bad types, so I don't waste my sympathy on them. Not evil, nasty criminals, necessarily, but overbearing and controlling mothers, obsessive psycho-stalker types, and guys who flirt with married women with no thought to the sanctity of marriage. I like my murder-mystery-thrillers light rather than heart-rending, and every little helps. Yes, I know that's a little odd.

Although, to my mind, this isn't Stephanie's best (I think that honour goes to Methods of Madness) that's only because she sets her own bar so very high. It remains one of the best LDS novels currently on bookshelves, and her writing is effortless and perfect. Highly recommended, and I won't be surprised if Stephanie wins yet another Whitney award.