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The Bloodcurdling Antics of Two Soulless Egomaniacs--by Reb MacRath

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i Meet Tweedledum and Tweedledee--aka The MeMe's--two egomaniacal blowhards joined at the lip on Facebook. I have in mind a particular pair, so extreme and so relentless, that I've had to Mute one and completely Block the other. For the daily ego swaggering and endless self-promotion wore me down and bored me. As a writer, I'm appalled, for the authors I admire have lives apart from their work or the natural hunger for fame. As a reader, I doubt that anyone who sees FB Friends only as cash cows or tickets to one more award can write a word worth reading.  But on and on and on they go, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, without pausing to think even once about the question of all questions: Was that good for you too? For your consideration, I submit four modest proposals for keeping the bombast and bullshit in check. i 1) Writers' groups such as MWA and HWA should put a cap on the number of awards any author can receive. Three would seem reasonable; after that, let them work tow
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Wasted Journeys to Westminster? Julia Jones

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Campaigners & friends March 9th 2022 On March 9th last year (2022)  I travelled to Westminster with friends and fellow-campaigners, lobbying for the legal right to a care supporter -- caregiver, care partner... The terminology doesn't matter too much. It's the right to have someone who we love to be with us in a time of need. This might be when we're in a hospital, a care home, a mental health unit or anywhere else in our fragmented health and care system where we're likely to feel powerless and afraid. I wrote a blog before I left  home , listing just a few of the unseen people who would be travelling to London with me.  I mentioned Daniel, repeatedly put into ‘seclusion’ in a mental health unit when he cried out for his wife. I remembered Riya, a woman younger than me, struggling to recover from a stroke among people who didn’t speak her language or understand the ritual dimension of her food needs. Riya was lucky to be alive but her doctors found her apathetic an
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A Few Discreet Words About Caesar's Penis--Reb MacRath

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Veni, vidi...Wiki! Not long ago I had the all-time greatest Great Idea: one, born of total ignorance, that nearly tanked a novel. As you may have guessed from my opening line, my subject is Julius Caesar. But you might not have guessed from the title that my Great Idea entailed his being reborn as a penis. Don't laugh, please, I beg you. I saw no way around this, even though showing JC as a 'dick' might lead some to think that I've written a spoof. In fact, it's a serious thriller. Without giving the plot away, I can say this: I needed JC's ghost, today, remembering his nights with Cleopatra on her fabled golden barge. There  was the heart of my book--a ghost trying for 2000 years to relive that lost boogie with Liz. And I'd begun to run with this when my memory corrected me: Mark Anthony, not JC, was on the barge with Cleo. And this was after JC's death. What the hell was I to do, lacking the good sense to check memory's 'facts
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My New Bloody-Good Good-Blooded Book -- Reb MacRath

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  Books don't come more suspenseful than this red-blooded actioner. And not since Virgil has an author committed to writing daily only a couple of lines. Moreover, not even Virgil wrote a book with no words-- only numbers. More Reb MacRathian nonsense? Only if you don't believe in the amazing maze comprised of our writing, our lives, and our health. This new book resulted from a recent annual wellness exam in which my grades were mostly good-- except for my blood pressure. In the mid-170s, it was alarmingly high. The doctor showed me the following chart: His immediate goal was to get my BP down to 130, which would still leave me in danger as you can see from the chart. Ultimately, we must reach the green zone:  "Less than 120." For God's sake! How the hell was I to live to write the great books I might still have within me? I'd already abandoned alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, red meat, white bread; and I'd greatly reduced my intake  dairy, sugar, and sodium.
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What a Difference Two Years and a Month Make…

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  ….. wrote  nobody, ever. Even Dinah Washington couldn’t have made that scan. But sometimes it’s good to look back and that’s what I’m doing with this, my last ever blog for Authors Electric.   Back in January 2021, I’d just published my first novel, the diary of Isabella M Smugge and I was riding high on adrenaline and the joy of realising a lifelong dream. That same month, the redoubtable Wendy H Jones asked me if I’d like to start contributing to Authors Electric.   “Would I?” I replied jauntily, flexing my fingers and cracking out a new ink cartridge. “I love a blog.”   And so I do. Writing for the More Than Writers blog (thanks again Wendy) is what got me my start in publishing fiction and the discipline of turning out 600-800 engaging words once a month honed my style no end. The enormous header tank of ideas sloshing around in my head was ready to be plundered and I loved the freedom Authors Electric gave me to write about anything I fancied. Knowing that other great writer
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