In the 1950s, my father was stationed in Helston and our family lived in Cornwall until I was about seven. After that, all my childhood holidays were spent on the north Cornwall coast, mostly at Harlyn. In 1975, my parents retired to Cornwall and I lived in Pensilva for a couple of years in the late 1970s. In 1984, I bought a static caravan at Harlyn and many holidays were enjoyed by myself and my two children. Although I now live in Thurlestone, Devon, with my artist husband, Stephen Thomas, I have many ties to Cornwall, with relatives in Bodmin and Penzance, and close friends in Truro and elsewhere.
After decades of working in IT and Education and textbook publishing, I turned my mind to fiction. In 2009, I took part in NaNoWriMo and became ML for Devon and Cornwall in 2010. Truro was one of my ‘centres’ and I encouraged writers to meet throughout the year, not just during November. I was delighted that Tracey Dockree not only took on the role of ML from me when I stepped down but also set up the Cornwall Writers group.
In theory, I am long since retired but my days are still spent encouraging other writers to achieve their publication dreams, while advocating they use Scrivener for all their writing and apply my RedPen Editing strategy. I also spend a lot of time editing my many NaNo novels and writing plays, so it’s a novelty for me to have a short story appearing in an anthology. That hasn’t happened since 2007!
In 2024, Anne started hosting “Artists on Air’ on SoundArt Radio (102FM) and, via her RainbowOnTheRadio FB group promotes artist dates. Another Cornwall Writer, Stephen Baird is on her guest list for 2024 and due to appear live on Monday 9 September 10am-12noon.
