What's Hot

What's hot - on the shelves as opposed to the rails!

Annie Waller

We have met some amazing people on our cyber travels and we thought you'd like to meet one of them.......

Authoress (and member of our community!), Annie Waller wrote her first book 'Married to Albert' while her husband, who serves in the Royal Air Force, was on active service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Her undiscovered and fantastically witty talent was soon published - it became an instant best-seller and 'Married to Albert' is now enjoying even more success following it's second run on the printing press.

We were naturally thrilled when Annie joined our community here at Clothes Agency and never one to miss a trick, we thought it might be fun to ask our favourite author to pen us her thoughts on how she views fashion as an author, Mum and wife - and to our delight she agreed.

We hope you enjoy her fashion musings - written exclusively for us (we think that many will certainly empathise!) and we also hope that you will rush out immediately to your nearest bookshop and buy (or order, if it's sold out) her wonderfully warm, witty and funny first novel - we LOVED the story and recommend it highly as a good bed-time/snuggle-up-on-sofa read... (10% goes straight to The RAF Benevolent Fund).

Here's Annie's thoughts..

CLOTHES… Courage or Camouflage?

I think I’m quite a shy person but then I open my wardrobe and ‘become’ mother, wife or author…

As a mother of young children I aim for colours that hide varying shades of snot but try to promote some sort of body shape (which is difficult for a six foot tall size ‘large’ Yorkshire girl).

As a wife I still wear snot shades however, if darling husband is home from abroad I dig out the makeup (only to convince him he did not marry the Bearded Lady of Buckingham).

As a best selling author appearing at high street bookshops I transform into the woman I want to be. I hardly recognise her – beautiful and confident in soft colours.

What most don’t see are the hours of hard graft spent in my ‘camouflage clothes’ discovering and developing characters for my books. Long after hubby and babies have gone to bed I sit at my kitchen table (wearing industrial headphones) tapping away on a knackered old laptop. Then I ring bookshops and beg them to stock my first paperback (small publisher – it’s all about selling…)

For six years I jumped from mother, wife and ‘sometimes’ author. My clothes gave me the courage to be ‘happy achiever’ or ‘invisible from society’ – even when pushing a pram and dragging a screaming toddler.

Only when Waterstone’s and Borders went nationwide with my book MARRIED TO ALBERT just three weeks after a small launch did I realise I had talent and the woman I wanted to become moved in to take a more prominent role in my life.

Clothes make or break your day – you choose!

Please see my website – www.anniewaller.com to laugh at the crazy situations I have endured throughout my crawl to success. Such as wearing my wedding dress and husband’s flying helmet to address The London Book Fair!

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