Authors Electric

  The 11-year-old girl who inspired the book concerned I am no stranger to scams. There are two I would like to mention, both telephone calls. The first was in the 1980s by a man who wanted to know what underwear I was wearing. I hung up, but he was persistent. This was a landline, and I was waiting for a phone call, so I couldn’t just leave the phone off the hook. I tried everything, blowing a whistle down the phone, saying nothing for as long as I felt I could before I hung up. I think it was the eleventh call when I decided to take a different approach. I listened carefully to what he wanted to do to me, then I said, “I don’t think you’d like that very much. You see, I have this disease…” and I went on to describe some imaginary condition which had every disgusting visual manifestation and smell I could think of. He hung upon me, and never rang back. The object was to destroy the picture he had in his head, and it was very successful. I wrote and article about it, and had it pub...

  Have you ever had so many irons in the fire that you couldn't decide where to start? A strategy I've used before is now being tested like never before as my move-in date to a ground-floor studio has been bumped up by a month...while I try to downsize my possessions for a less cluttered place...while staying on track with my new WIP and looking for a new job. The move became necessary because of a broken elevator forcing me to man two steep flights of steps, sometimes several times a day, with a strained back and lame knee. I'd lined up a ground-floor studio in the same building, one of several. The move date was September 10. Well and good. But I learned of an opening now for a spacious 1BR ADA apartment in the main back building. I'd get this for the same price I've paid for my studio. But I'd need to move in by July 30. How? I could handle the financing and the usual change of address steps. My mover could handle the new date. But how could I arrange for j...

  In the ninety-nineties, Mike got a job in Jamaica and I came along as his “trailing spouse.”   This was a term for ex-pat wives who accompanied their husbands on a posting and who were not there to work, or pursue their own career but purely to be supportive. It might be a very old fashioned, pre-feminist position but I took it as an opportunity to take a break from teaching in a very challenging school and also as a chance to do some writing. Working as a consultant for Grace Kennedy, the largest firm on the island, meant that we had to live in Kingston, a very different experience from the sand, sea and pina coladas that family and friends might have envisaged. Because of security issues our apartment was in a gated community with guards who kept an eye on anyone who came in or out. Going into town was discouraged, apart from to the supermarket and as for Down Town, or the local markets, no middle class Jamaican ever went there. No one walked anywhere either because it...

Writers sometimes talk about poems as though longer automatically means deeper. We admire ambitious epics, book-length projects, and intricate sequences. There is certainly a place for all of those things. But every now and then a tiny poem arrives and quietly reminds us that a few words can carry an astonishing amount of weight. Take this poem, "Second Grade," by Merilee Johnson: That's it. Three lines. Eight words. And yet, the poem opens an entire world. I immediately find myself wondering about the child in the poem. Was she shy? Outgoing? Did she look forward to hearing her name each morning? Was the bus driver teasing, greeting, or celebrating her? Was it a song repeated every day, becoming part of the rhythm of childhood? The poem never tells us. Instead, it trusts us. One of the remarkable things about very short poems is how much they rely on the reader. Longer works often have room to explain, develop, and elaborate. A poem like this succeeds because it provides...

  'Sula' in Scotland ‘There’s little point keeping old boats alive if their stories are forgotten,’ said Robert Armstrong, when I apologised for my eagerness in inviting myself to visit him. Robert is a boatbuilder working on the west coast of Scotland. His home is Sula , a 24’ 5-ton Bermudan sloop, built in 1939 by David Hillyard in Littlehampton, Sussex (as Mistrale ). She’s his home, his mobile workshop and his transport.  When I invited Francis and I to visit them, Robert was immediately welcoming though he couldn’t be specific as to where they might be: ‘Everything I do is weather and tide dependant so planning beyond a few days never works out for me […] but wherever Sula is moored you're welcome.’ For me, Sula is Barnacle Goose, ‘Barney’, the yacht my parents owned 1951-1957, in the first years of their marriage.   They’d bought her in Rye, fitted her out in a mud berth, then sailed her home to the River Deben in Suffolk. My father was building up his business ...

'Sula' in Scotland  ‘There’s little point keeping old boats alive if their stories are forgotten,’ said Robert Armstrong, when I apologised for my eagerness inviting myself to visit him. Robert is a boatbuilder working on the west coast of Scotland. His home is  Sula , a 24’ 5-ton Bermudan sloop, built in 1939 by David Hillyard in Littlehampton, Sussex (as  Mistrale ). She’s also his mobile workshop and his transport.  When I invited Francis and I to visit them, Robert was immediately welcoming though he couldn’t be specific as to where they might be: ‘Everything I do is weather and tide dependant so planning beyond a few days never works out for me […] but wherever  Sula  is moored you're welcome.’ For me,  Sula  is  Barnacle Goose,  ‘Barney’, the yacht my parents owned 1951-1957, in the first years of their marriage.  They’d bought her in Rye, fitted her out in a mud berth, then sailed her home to the River Deben ...