Authors Electric

Do authors need a website is a question I have been pondering for a while. More specifically do I need a website now I am a published author. I already have an online presence. I’ve been on Facebook for many years, just a personal account, mainly to keep in touch with friends but I tend to make my writing related posts public and shareable. Many years ago, I started on Twitter to connect with other writers. After a while my writing bubble burst so I deleted my account. A few years later, my username was still free so I started again   – things had changed a lot, then the changes went too far and I quit for good earlier this year. I’m on Instagram – a fellow writing friend told me I need an online presence there, and now I’m on Threads too, which I am enjoying but I’m not sure if being there is helping with book sales or even general recognition. It takes time to grow an audience, but how do some people’s innocuous posts garner viral status - if I try to be funny, there is n...

                                                                                                                  Sefton Park, Liverpool 1970 Looking Forward, Looking Back   As you may know I am a frequent Twitter user and now that it has changed to X, despite some misgivings, I have continued to interact the with the site. So it was that during December I became the follower of another Twitter user, Beci, who had posted there a recording of a poem by Charles Lamb, poet and essayist, who had lived from 1775-1834. I knew very little about Lamb apart from the fact that he had written  Tales from Shakespeare together with his sister, a book designed to make the plays more accessible to children - I h...

Happy new year!  2024 brought much rejoicing to my wider family, as five new babies were born, beginning in January and culminating in twins in December. Babies bring hope and joy and also a little trepidation. We can’t tell what the future will bring for them; the best we can hope is that whatever it is, they will cope.  In his Christmas broadcast of 1939, King George VI quoted these lines from a poem:  And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:  "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown".  And he replied:  "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way". So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.  And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.   It's a truism that the world in which Minnie Louise Haskins wrote her poem (originally called God Knows ) in 1908 was very differen...

It’s that post-Christmas period and as I sit on my sick-bed suffering from a bout of seasonal tonsilitis (or should that be TINSEListis?), one eye on  Call the Midwife  and docu-telly provoking fancy hotel envy, I reflect on the past month.   In my previous instalment of Author’s Electric, I was just about to go to Amsterdam, having got Christmas all wrapped up, along with all my last minute jobs preceding the launch of my fourth book and debut novel. And I had promised to share the aftermath of both. So firstly, I thought I’d share with you some fun facts about ‘going Dutch’.   You probably don’t know, but I spent a good deal of time in Holland when I was younger and I still understand and speak reasonable Dutch. I am particularly proud of my pronunciation, which is quite tricky for an English person. The last time I was in Amsterdam was relatively recent, when I took my son there in March 2019 for his 18 th  birthday. We got do pack in some amazing things, and...

 Sol Invictus. The Sun Invincible. The Unconquerable Sun. However cold and grey our winters... However dense, depressing and thick the darkness that enfolds us by afternoon... Sol Invictus will return. Today is Yule. The Mid-Winter Feast. Today we celebrate that, however dark, however cold and however long the darkness of each night, each day will now be an eye-blink longer. And brighter. The Earth now turns towards mid-summer.   The leaves, the flowers, warm sunshine and long, light midsummer nights will come again. Sol Invictus.       All images from Wikimedia Commons   First Image: French stained glass   This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art . See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy   Second Image: Rochester Cathedral, Kent, UK Green Man, roof boss, Rochester Cathedral, Kent https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RochesterCathedral_Boss1.JPG Third Imag...