Authors Electric

 I was at the pub in late August with some poet friends berating my lack of creative direction, as I am inclined to do when one of them told me about his personal project to post a 'triadic couplet' a day to social media. Any hint of a challenge and I'm hooked, so I've been writing a six line poem a day ever since. The form is simple, but flexible. There have to be three couplets and rhyme, rhythm, line length is entirely up to you. They are horribly addictive. It’s something I would recommend to anyone in the creative doldrums. Six lines isn’t very much and, as I have imposed no quality control, there is no real pressure to write anything ‘good': I have no poetry reputation to trash.  That said, I’ve been both embarrassed and pleasantly surprised when friends  have told me they are enjoying them. Part of me thinks I would have spent more time on them, if I'd thought people would read them, the more grown up part  reminds myself that no one forced me to foist ha...

  " Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion " by Louise Willder is the most entertaining book on writing I have read since William Goldman's "Adventures in the Screentrade" , and it must be nearly forty years since I read that. We all know that actually writing books is a piece of cake compared with trying to persuade people to buy and read them, and Louise Willder is a world-class expert when it comes to that part of the business. She is wildly enthusiastic about books of all types, and her enthusiasm is highly infectious. She is also a very funny writer, and this book has the same charm as Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", which I'm guessing I read about twenty years ago. Books of this standard don't come along very often, so if reading and writing are your thing, don't miss it!

Thanks. Obliged. Hallowe’en, yeah? Going to hang up your furry spiders and plastic skulls, eh? ‘Cos tonight’s the night graves open and give forth their dead. Ghosts on Hallowe’en? Get off. You can see ghosts any night of the week. Oooh, it’s behind you! And in front of you, and alongside you and following you up the stairs. Never seen a ghost? Well, you’ve never been homeless, have you? Never slept in a nice, comfy doorway. Except you don’t sleep. Too cold. Too dangerous. You doze, off and on, all night. Wake up with a jump every few minutes. Half-sleep is the best you get. A few nights like that strips something away. And you see the ghosts. They walk past you, walk around you, walk up and down the street, across the street, in and out of doors... They stop by your doorway and stand there and stare at you. And then walk on. No wonder they say ghosts ‘walk.’ They walk all right. Day and night. Go sleepless for a few nights and you see ‘em. You see ‘em in broad dayligh...

  All of my books are historical fiction, and they are fiction based on fact, as all good historical fiction is (in my view anyway!) Some historical fiction is based on real events, or on real people. Facts that, however loosely, can be woven into the fiction, to give the piece authenticity. For me those facts aren’t events or people, rather places. Actual places that existed in the 13 th Century, and the remains of which still exist today. Abbey ruins, castle ruins, holy sites and shrines. The legacy of the Normans and the Romans, the Celtic Christians and the Cistercians, these are what inspired me to write. Both of my novels and my novella have been published since Covid disrupted life as we knew it. When I began to write I knew some of the places I was writing about well enough to describe them accurately. I had visited them often, taken photos, done my research. I soon discovered however, that I was having to write about places that I hadn’t visited, or not for a long tim...

Ritual -- what does this mean to you? Rituals can be traditional, religious, political: think of all the rituals we love (maybe the family time-honoured way to do Passover or Christmas -- those little add-ones which are especially ‘ours’ woven into or onto our religious or traditional festival practice. Our favourite way to celebrate family achievements such as anniversaries or graduations -- even publishing a first book.)   Rituals have honoured the arriving, mating, passing, process as far   back as -- well, as far back as human life can be traced. In ritual, we as humans find satisfaction, celebration, closure. In a known ritual, we find satisfaction or comfort. So when locked down by the pandemic, or even beyond that, for those of us who need to be a bit more careful as we move back into the ‘normal’ world again, ritual is much missed. We haven’t celebrated, or honoured, important life events of family and friends along with our circle of family and friends.   In the ...

A new exhibition starts today at the British Library:  Alexander the Great: the Making of a Myth . From now until 19th February 2023, you can explore the blurred lines between history and myth to discover how the young prince of Macedonia, who tamed a horse grown men were afraid to ride, became known across the ancient world as 'Great' Alexander. I'm delighted that my novel straight from that untamed horse's mouth -  I am the Great Horse (Chicken House, 2007) - is included as one of the exhibits. This book re-tells history through the eyes of Alexander the Great's faithful horse Bucephalas, aiming to be true to the known facts about his life while incorporating some of the myths that grew up around his name, such as his encounter with the legendary Amazon queen. Although published originally for a young audience on the Chicken House/Scholastic list, this novel has since found a readership across all generations of horse and history fans and is now available in both ...

  We encountered our first mists of the season last weekend on our way back from a jaunt to Dorset, we’ve been eating the new damson jelly, and the russet apples are ripe so there’s your mellow fruitfulness. In a couple of weeks we’ll be heading upcountry to the North Lakes, and if we’re lucky, we’ll be driving towards more and more glorious leaf colour. Autumn.   If I could roll back almost 70 years, I’d be getting up before it was quite light and taken to Nan’s house to get the hoppers’ bus out to Mas’ Bishop’s hop gardens between Boars Head and Eridge. Mr Bishop would have arrived at the house some weeks before and addressed Great Gran: ‘Will you pick this year, Missus?’   ‘Yes, we’ll pick.’ ‘How many?’ Great Gran would tot us up – everyone, except the working men and small babies. The box with the primus stove, tea, slab of fruit cake and cups would have been sent on beforehand and we had the bread and cheese with us. We arrived to the first cutting of the bines...