The Whore Next Door – An Illustrated Memoir by Annie Campbell

The Whore Next Door
349 Pages
ISBN B00Y423ZNO

More than a decade ago, I spent many wonderful guilt-free days just sitting in our sun-room letting my mind wander while I was recovering from cancer. (I have been cancer free since then.) One afternoon, all those years ago when I mulled over my past adventures, I decided to write down an event from my life that particularly amused me. I had never written a long paper or story in my life, but I discovered I enjoyed writing so much, that after three months I had typed 450 pages, and then realized it was a memoir.

When I was little, I felt sorry for grownups because their books didn't have pictures, so I knew I'd do a painting for each chapter. It took me ten years, pecking away at my huge project, to complete The Whore Next Door, which consists of 106 short chapters in basically chronological order accompanied by a full-color painting for each chapter. The book covers my “wild years” - age 18 to 35 with a few flashbacks to earlier times.

I am not the "whore" in the book. The title comes from the name of the first chapter in which I leave my hometown of Ithaca NY, and move into a small apartment in Lansing Michigan. My kind friendly neighbor on the same floor happens to be a whore and she tells me ALL about her escapades. My book is not pornographic. There are no graphic details of my sexual encounters, but I am extremely honest and open about my crazy adventures and what my life was like in late 1965 -1981.

Annie Campbell

About Annie Campbell (Ithaca, New York Author)

Annie Campbell

I was born in Swansea, Wales. When I was three, my parents moved to Ithaca, NY where my father became a professor in the math department at Cornell University. I was a wild, rebellious child from the beginning. My formal education ended with high school, but my parents were always supportive and encouraged me to paint and draw, starting at the age of two.

When I was 16, I received my first commission—to paint an erotic mural with a friend on a bathroom wall in Keene, NH. Sporadic art jobs and commissions followed, including other murals. Then, from Boston to San Francisco and places in between, I worked many jobs—waiting tables, repairing antiques, milking cows, and painting houses. Since 1989, when I painted the carousel horses on a merry-go-round at Stewart Park in Ithaca, I have been working exclusively as a painter and illustrator.

My work includes illustrations for children’s books, the artwork for six award-winning card games published by Gamewright during the1990s, greeting cards for Bottman Design, teaching painting for adult education and children’s after school-programs, private commissions, many group and solo art shows, and a published, illustrated memoir called, The Whore Next Door.