Never a Dull Moment by Ann Evans

Me in an army helicopter

Like lots of authors, I sometimes get asked to give talks on what I do, so I've put together a talk which I call The Perils and Pitfalls of Being a Writer. As the name suggests its full of little stories and anecdotes of the fun, adventures and misadventures  you can get up to when you're a writer. In my case it's mainly when I'm out and about doing magazine articles.

Because I write about anything and everything, the topics range from antiques to animals and from collectors to celebrities - and all things in between. 

Quite a lot of the stories revolve around writing for Dogs Monthly, such as interviewing the couple with a nine stone puppy which didn't just chew my pencil as I sat taking notes, it devoured my entire hand. “Excuse me but you dog is eating my hand!” isn't a phrase I often come out with.

Off out with the Thames
Police

Then there was the time we went out with the Thames Police on their launch way out in the Thames Estuary where we bounced along at a tremendous rate of knots to catch up to a huge departing ship that they wanted to search. Very exciting and dramatic and I was absolutely fine until sea-sickness hit me on the way back. I'm just glad I was clipped onto the actual launch as I said goodbye to my breakfast over the side.

Another fun event was being in the same field as a heard of Asian buffalo - which are very large animals with big horns! But even more scary was being in a cage with a pack of webbed-feet fishing cats – not your average moggy I can assure you.

But to make up for those jobs, there's been tours of chocolate factories, and champagne houses, restaurant reviews and cream tea reviews. Behind the scenes at exhibitions, stately homes and posh gardens.

Incredible work of dog handler
 and sniffer dog

So, where is all this leading? Well I've been doing all these articles with good friend, photographer Rob Tysall for many years, and it's always been Tysall's Photography and Ann Evans writer, but after more than 23 years of working together we've finally given our working partnership a name – Words and Images UK.

And since we've given it it's own identity, it seems to have taken over our lives a bit. Over the last 10 days alone, we've covered a toy fair in Droitwich, zoomed down to Swansea to interview a man with a wonderful tin plate toy collection, visited a dog trainer and puppy socialiser in Sheerness and have been to the NEC twice, once for a Miniatura Show, and again for the Destination Star Trek Europe show. 

I've got a backlog of other articles to write up, along with websites to bring up to date. So far we've got our business cards sorted, our Facebook Page up and running – if you would like to 'Like' it that would be very much appreciated:

https://www.facebook.com/wordsandimagesuk 

We also have a blog: wordsandimagesuk.blogspot.co.uk which we plan on using to write the back story to our articles, so, in effect an extended version of Perils & Pitfalls, simply for the amusement of anyone who cares to read it.

Rob and Ann writing about the Swiss St Bernard

Our aim is to continue to be a team of writer/photographer finding interesting stories to write about for publication, as well as Rob continuing his wedding/business/family photography, and me doing that other thing that I sometimes get time for... now what was it? Oh yes, writing books!