Authors Electric

 Having had very few book events this year, I had two in the space of two days! I had the great honour of interviewing Sophie Hannah at Basingstoke Discovery Centre for Only Murders in the Library on Saturday 25th October. Sophie has two books out at the moment - No One Would Do What The Lamberts Have Done  and her sixth Poirot novel, The Last Death of the Year .  We were all thoroughly entertained as Sophie told us how she began writing the Lamberts book by dictating 400 words into her phone whilst still in bed in the morning – I think this is a writing tip worth copying! Also, she explained how she created village life in Cambridgeshire for the Lamberts, including an Agatha Christie book club who fall out over whether they can read Mary Westmacott or not. Here's the blurb for  No One Would Do What The Lamberts Have Done : You think it will never happen to you: the ring of the bell, the policeman on the doorstep. What he says traps you in a nightmare that starts...

Stage Struck I recently went to the theatre for the first time for months. Unfortunately this scheduled outing happened to coincide with yet another development in my medical recovery, which reminded me of my October post about the gas man in that the latest complaint was a bad back, apparently caused by excessive coughing during an asthma attack which itself had been the legacy of a collapsed lung I suffered during heart surgery. I was slightly apprehensive about going to the theatre, but I reasoned that it wasn't going to be as much like hard work as my trip to one of several hospitals in Edinburgh for a chest x-ray the other week. The corridors at the theatre aren't nearly as long as those in most hospitals, and I know my way around this particular theatre so well that I could picture myself getting to my reserved seat, and I knew I could do it. Also there would be ice-cream, which immediately made the excursion worthwhile. Anyway, I was determined to see this particular pla...

A surreal memoir in Catamaran I get melancholy on Halloween. I love its makebelieve and mockery of darkness and death. In my parental days I loved taking the kids trick-or-treating, earnest in their costumes, carried on by my grandchildren and great grandchildren today, carried when my eldest daughter Alicia Sammons builds an alter and does herself up for La Dia de Los Muertos, November 2.  At the same time, I relive sad memories of the real thing - my mother dying in a San Francisco hospital the morning before Halloween some thirty years ago.  I remember taking a granddaughter and my youngest daughter, both age 7, trick-or-treating, giggling in their costumes the following evening as if nothing had happened, as my mother - a perpetual prankster - would have insisted.  The experience culminated months of watching my mother slip away. It cut deep. She had raised me in fiercely loving, but inconsistent ways. She hadn't been perfect, but done her damn best.  Nevertheles...

'All this world is but a play...   Alan, an old friend from Liverpool who featured in a piece I wrote for AuthorsElectric in 2023, took this photograph at The Queen Elizabeth Hall in September this year. Yet when I asked more recent acquaintances, do you remember The Incredible String Band ?   I was met with blank looks, and I found that nobody did remember them much at all. I think that on reflection they were a musical phenomenon which happened in the late sixties, appearing as if from nowhere, making a few cherished albums, and then disappearing like shooting stars, their force all spent. Or was it? At the  Celebration of the Incredible String Band  last month, I met up with Alan at the performance and we sat together afterwards discussing the concert and old times. I then thought I would put together my own retrospective of what they meant to me at the time and in some respects still do today.    I’ll start with Alan’s comments about the 'Celebration' w...

That time of year again. Mwouhahahahaha it’s that time of year again. (Ghostly laugh, in case you didn’t realise. Please be chilled.) Death’s heads and giant spiders’ webs festooning perfectly respectable garden walls, glow-in-the-dark stickers and beetles lighting up ceilings, shops groaning with a sugar fest the Like of Witch No Sane Adult Would Deem Suitable for their Little Darlings, and everywhere, everywhere, orange. Pumpkins, masks, tee shirts, costumes, all in the ghastly colour combination of dayglo orange and midnight black. Spiders' webs festoon garden walls. follow link for licence  You may glean from this – and from my odd previous mention of the subject – that I’m not a fan of Halloween.  When I was young, ooh, I dunno, a couple of centuries ago, Halloween in Britain barely existed. We made toffee apples and played apple bobbing, and my mother did something clever with apple peel, throwing it over my 5 year old shoulder to see the letter shape it made where it f...

  I recently read a post on Facebook about someone’s much-loved childhood book, and I couldn’t help but wonder – how many of us bookish people, both writers and readers began their love affair with the written word at an early age, and how many of us still have those cherished books on their shelves? I know I do!   I don’t remember how I learned to read – in fact I don’t remember ‘learning’ at all – one day it seemed I could do it as if by magic. I think my mum had something to do with it, because I was a fluent reader way before I went to school, and I don’t recall spending that much time in school when I was very young – I missed loads of days off sick – measles, mumps, rubella struck me at least twice each and I seem to remember lying on my ‘bed on the sofa’ drinking Lucozade a lot. Mum used to set up school style ‘lessons’ for me if I was able to do them – I never missed a thing at home. I’d also watch the schools tv Crown Court, Pebble Mill and Sons and Daughters! I was a...