Authors Electric

 Alicia Sammons I worked as an editor for the better part of my too long professional career. Editing can be demanding, but I never thought of it as a particularly glamourous or creative calling. Over the years I climbed my way up from proofreader to senior editorial positions on magazine, major metropolitan newspapers, and editing for independent publisher.  I always felt in awe of writers and aspired to their magic with words, an assessment shared in popular culture. We see a lot of juicy movies about authors like The Hours and Midnight in Paris. On the other hand, editors can't get much respect even from their writers, including a few authors with whom I've worked.  Vladimir Nabokov  sneered at them as ‘pompous avuncular brutes.’  Robert Gottlieb edited books of  Joseph Heller ,  John Le Carré ,  John Cheever , and  Toni Morrison . The legendary Maxwell Perkins  edited and famously mentored Lost Generation icons F. Scott Fitzgerald through his most powerful works, includin

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. I love writing prompts. I use a wide variety ranging from the various random generators to story cubes to picking a proverb or phrase from books and then writing a tale around this saying. They are excellent as themes. I also use books of prompts and have contributed to some too. As I write a lot of flash fiction and short stories, I always need ways of coming up with ideas. I focus on getting the characters outlined because for me characters make or break a story. But I’ve found the prompts have been brilliant in giving me my themes (and these often trigger the ideas for the characters to service said themes well). I enter competitions regularly too. Some have open themes but the majority I go in for have a set theme. I’ve found writing to prompts is useful practice for writing to competition themes set by someone else.  I also like mixing up the prompts I use as this (a) keeps me on my creative toes and (b) means I nev

  The sheer beauty of the underwater world is amazing I taught myself to read in secret whilst sitting on the lavatory. The girl next door was six months older than me, and started school six months earlier. She lorded it over me, saying she could read but I wouldn’t be able to until I went to school, so I felt I wasn’t allowed to tackle books yet although I really wanted to. I would struggle through a sentence of Brer Rabbit until it made sense, and then the next time I locked myself away in the only room in which that was permitted I would read my practised sentence, and then struggle through the next one. Consequently, I could read before I went to school but I kept it very quiet. The very first book that I couldn’t stop reading was The Deep Sea Horse , by Primrose Cumming. I don’t know how old I was, probably about six or seven, but I remember my mother saying “Put that book down now Elizabeth, it’s tea time”, and my father (noticing how engrossed I was) shaking his head at her and

  Due to circumstances beyond my control, this is going to be a rather late and very short post. It may also be a salutary one for anyone who is self-publishing through KDP. “Vladimir the Vampire’s Cat,” is a picture book for kids, written by me and illustrated by Duncan Bourne. It’s a project we’ve been working on for over a year and since neither of us had ever done anything like this before it’s been somewhat of a learning curve. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Duncan’s wife, the wonderful Michelle then I don’t think we’d have ever got to this stage. I write and Duncan draws but she has the expertise in formatting, which is what we needed. A few of weeks ago, we spent an afternoon pooling our talents and produced what we thought was going to be the final version of our book.   It looked great and we were all pleased with the results so we scheduled publication day and then, almost as an afterthought sent away for proof copies. When they arrived it seemed, at first glance, that

The author's eyewear collection. Congratulations on your membership in the exclusive worldwide club of those who are blessed to wear glasses.  Worldwide, the club's membership has over four billion people.  In the UK alone, 77% of women and 68% of men wear specs. In t he US those percentages are 50% and 42%. The club has a long history. Far longer than many might think. Some credit Salvino D'Armate with the invention of eyewear in 1317. Others find references to eyewear as far back as 1000 BC. The evolution continued for hundreds more years for reasons of function, not fashion: Ben Franklin's bifocals...monocles...pince-nez. But all iterations of 'glasses' expressed their own bifocal vision: those who wore them were weak physically and bookish. ( A recent study by the College of Optometrists confirms that today 33% of adults think those in glasses look more professional and 43% think they look smarter.) And no survey was needed to tell that a boy growing up in t

I suppose if you've read posts by me here, or on my own blog, before, you know I am not fond of NaNoWriMo. First of all, the pressure! Second, the competition! Third, at least in the USA, the month! In the USA we're finishng our semesters; we're, if we're gig workers in a creative industry, often times closing down a job or a show; we're getting ready for the massive holiday extravaganza that is the USA from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, and that kinda starts, now, before Halloween! MADNESS! It's a frenetic time when I never have enough time to myself, so much so that I often get really run down. Have you, in general, because life is just too busy, white-knuckled it through a holiday season? I have, and I think all of that torque I experience at that time of the year has often lead to family disagreements as well. Now... let me get a novel done too! SIDE NOTE: If the holidays are slanted from pleasure and connection into obligation and work for you, please