From the couch - bloggers share an intimate peek into their lives. Today I welcome Ann Carbine Best.

Hello everyone!

I'm starting a new series incorporating some of my favourite people, bloggers! I've sent out some random questions, hoping to receive some interesting/inspiring/funny/poignant answers. 

The first blogger guest who agreed to recline on the couch and come up with answers to my questions is a long-term blogging friend, well known to many, Ann Best. It's her birthday today, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY Ann! Here's your present from me!!

I first hosted Ann just before she got her publishing contract with WiDo Publishing. Her memoir, In the Mirror...met with high, followed by steady, sales. In Ann's words, "I find it amazing that this is its 4th year anniversary. It recently dropped in the Amazon ratings from Page 2 to Page 5 (out of 400+ pages) on memoirs..." Ann believes the success of her memoir has a lot to do with timing, but really the ongoing success amounts to more than good timing I think.

So it is with great pleasure I say thanks Ann for agreeing to tell it like it is from your couch!

FROM THE COUCH WITH… Ann Carbine Best, Author of In theMirror: A Memoir of Shattered Secrets.

A vivid childhood memory is… 

As a teenager in Salt Lake City in the 1950s, I and my late beloved sister would ride our bicycles up and down the streets in the eastern part of the city. These were second-hand bicycles our father found for us, the kind with tires that had inner tubes you had to keep pumping air into. When he brought them home, I talked my easy-going sister into taking the bicycle that I knew was the most difficult to pump. She was a good sport, and we laughed about this in our later years.

My most treasured possession is …

Ancestral stories from both of my parents’ lines that my mother first laboriously typed on an old Underwood typewriter for my first family history book.

The word that best describes me is …

Persistent. Maybe tough.

My favourite smell is…

Lilacs. They were first to bloom in my parents’ backyard those long-ago summers.

A song that gives me goosebumps is… All the dramatic songs from Les Miserables as performed at Prince Albert Hall.

My favourite movie of all time is…

Casablanca.

My first job was… After-school typist of invoices for an insurance agent (using not a computer but a typewriter in 1957-58).

I began writing…

...stories when I was in first grade (1946). Poems when I was in high school (1956-58).

Books I loved as a child… Nancy Drew mysteries. Anne of Green Gables. I also liked whatever was current in murder mysteries. I’d have to look up their titles online as I can’t remember any of them now, over fifty years later.

Books I couldn’t put down recently… Flying with a Broken Wing by Laura Best, and The Catacombs by Jeremy Bates.

Books that I enjoy are… Memoirs. Thrillers. Murder mysteries. But at this time in my life, I’m interested in non-fiction, especially ancient history which includes anything Jewish and Biblical, and an ancient record called The Book of Mormon.

If you are a writer, tell us about your latest project…

I thought I might write or try to write a second memoir aimed at publication. This one would be based on my life as a caregiver to my disabled daughter. It would be about our “spiritual” experiences together, experiences that are the center of everything we are and have become. But I’ve discovered that trying to write this for a wider (possible) audience is very frustrating, so I’m just going to relax and write it for family and close friends.  

What is your writing plan?

I’ve got many, many scenes already written, and the others wriggle in my head. I just have to discipline myself to write something each day. Will see how that goes J

Where do you do most of your writing?

In front of a computer, usually the one in the corner of the living room in the small duplex that I share with my daughter Jen.

I relax by…

Watching movies and series that stream through Netflix. Jen and I have watched all the Leverage episodes, and now we’re working through the modern remake of Hawaii Five-O. It’s fun.

The point of life is…

For me, one of the points of life is to gain knowledge, especially knowledge of God.

Thanks so much for sharing with us today Ann. Hi to Jen! 

• I hope you enjoyed spending time with Ann. If you're burning to recline on the couch and answer my questions, please email me: den.covey@gmail.com or drop a few answers in the comments below!