Authors Electric

 I have been teaching again. I talk a lot about brevity. I go on (at some length) about being succinct, getting to the point, not getting bogged down in needless waffle, unnecessarily verbose syntactical constructions and mindless repetition.   I am not someone who has ever found myself hidebound by my own advice, but lately I have been writing poetry and I now discover that I find a thirty two line sestina too prolix. When I move on to writing a story, I am hacking back so much that I think I am in negative word counts. Perhaps if I carry on this way I may dispense with words altogether and simply write: '?'  I am sure it is temporary and I will recover my appetite for verbosity shortly. In the meantime: '?'

  What a strange and interesting world we in the media have created for ourselves, as we pick up characters and stories, some real, some fictional, and then exaggerate and distort them in order to hold the interest of our readers and viewers - or sometimes perhaps to amuse ourselves. One upon a time it was Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, then Princess Diana, Katie Price, the Beckhams, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, the Kardashians and all the others who took their turns in the media mincing machine, sometimes as heroes, sometimes as villains. At the moment, it is Harry and Meghan who have had their pretty interesting personal story twisted, inflated and turned into an intellectual property which will, no doubt, generate billions of dollars for the global media barons, before it has been sucked dry of all possible new angles, and the public has grown tired of them. (Some of us are old enough to remember a time when both Prince Charles and Prince Andrew were depicted in the media ...

Wikimedia: Daniel Schwen My Dad was always drawing. I remember, when I was around fifteen, sighing heavily as I lowered the newspaper and saying to him, "I don't mind when you draw aeroplanes or herds of horses in the margins or over the adverts. In fact, I like it. But I wish you wouldn't draw, in thick biro, dog-fights and jousts over the articles. " He promised to try and do better. I drew too, all the time. I drew things I saw and things I imagined. I illustrated scenes from favourite books. (When I first collided with the Greek Myths, at the age of about nine, I spent a year drawing scenes from them.) Both my brothers drew. The house was littered with opened-out envelopes, pages from sketch pads, paper bags, pieces of old wallpaper, all drawn or painted on. My mother didn't draw but she was a cause of drawing in others. As soon as we could sit up, literally, she put a crayon in our hands and a sheet of paper in front of us. She did everything she could t...

 I paid a visit to Auchmithie Pebble Beach. This was an event organised by the Scottish Geology Trust. We gathered on the beach to look at the pebbles and the local geologists helped us to identify them. You can see from the photograph that this beach has a vast array of pebbles of all sizes and colours.  I enjoy walking on a beach and collecting and looking at pebbles. I was interested in the different stones here. There is Garnet, which is a stone I love, Jasper, Quartz, and Calcite. There is also Rhombo Porphyry which is a beautiful speckled stone. Also, Schist which is characterised by its sparkle. often the stones are dull to look at but when they are collected and polished their real beauty is revealed.  As you can see the Village Hall was set up and decorated to provide a welcoming space for the talks.There was also old photographs of the village which were of real interest to me as an amateur photographer.  There was also tea and coffee and biscuits. On a dul...

  I had the absolute thrill to be asked by Wendy H Jones to contribute a chapter to ‘Creativity Matters : Find Your Passion for Writing’ *, a wonderful new anthology that published earlier this month.   My chapter is entitled ‘Why write historical fact-based fiction?’ and it was easy for me to write enthusiastically about a genre that I have a passion for. I love history and I love fiction, so when a fiction book has a good amount of historic fact included, I enjoy it immensely. For me facts add authenticity to the setting of the story but also inevitably set me off on my own research and reading. (I particularly like checking out the author’s sources!) My debut novel was inspired by historic facts – the Cistercians choosing to build abbeys in remote and beautiful parts of Wales, the life and times of the de Braose family, and the rule of Llewellyn the Great, first Prince of all Wales. Inspiration for my historical writing comes easy as I spend much of any free time that I g...

                            Peacock Butterflies Contemplate Love on White                             Buddliea   (author's photo)            Writing is a process. That’s kind of obvious: but the interesting thing about writing, (or any creative process), is the inevitable interaction between the work, and us, the creatives, as we move through that process.      Here’s a blog based on one I wrote earlier (in 2013). Paragraph 2 began: Yesterday, I completed my second editing of the draft of Baby, Baby’s follow-up: a sequel which takes Max and Jenny into the stormy waters of modern marriage, parenthood, and professional careers. I had one last scene to write, and I knew I’d been putting it off. Well, yesterday was the day ...

When I was recovering from the dreaded lurgy last year, about the only place I could breathe properly was in our local woods beside the stream. I could barely walk up the slightest gradient in town, and cycling was only possible very slowly on the flat. But I'd stagger as far as the woods on my bike, push it a short way off the path, and sit among the bluebells surrounded by green leaves and mossy tree trunks. Before I left, I would hug a tree in thanks for the comfort and healing they'd given me that day. Unintentionally, I was doing what now has an official name in Japan - Shinrin-yoku,  or "forest bathing" .  During lockdown, it seems many more people discovered the benefits of a woodland walk, and there is now scientific research to back up what we instinctively feel. Being among trees has been shown to lower blood pressure, slow the pulse rate, and help stabilise blood sugar. It can also boost self-esteem, reduce negative emotions, and benefit children with ADHD....

Recently, my daughter sent me the link to an article about the women of Greenham. I had never camped there, but had visited a few times for demonstrations and to show solidarity. I had three small children at the time and a husband working somewhat more than full-time, and would not have dreamed of leaving them. I remember an elderly Friend saying words to the effect that clean clothes and brushing teeth wouldn’t matter when the bomb went off. True, but until then, the small mundanities of life must go on, I thought. There were women at the camp who had left families behind; there was also some talk of women who had fled unhappy relationships. I don’t know about that. I just know that they were all much braver then I was, to uproot themselves and live in challenging (to say the least of it) conditions in order to bear witness to the evil of the base and protest against it loudly, disruptively and consistently. I honour them. I have one caveat: a young father took his children to the ...