Authors Electric

On the first day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me A large mast in a fir tree. On the second day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Two service texts, and a large mast in a fir tree. On the third day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Three whats-apps, two service texts, and a large mast in a fir tree. On the fourth day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Four calling mates, three whats-apps, two service texts, and a large mast in a fir tree, On the fifth day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Five ri-i-ng tones... On the sixth day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Six apps alerting... On the seventh day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Seven sites a-scrolling... On the eighth day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Eight friends a-liking... On the ninth day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Nine e-cards playing... On the tenth day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Ten orders pending... On the eleventh day of Christmas my smartphone sent to me Eleven s...

Yellowhammer The other day - maybe due to my advanced age, or upon hearing that I've been writing a memoir - a friend asked me how I would choose to come back in the next life, if there is one.  "As a busker," I responded. I didn't give my answer much thought, except that I've always liked street performers. "Maybe as a great orchestra conductor, like Toscanini, maybe a pianist too, or Arthur Fiedler . My mother took me to see the legendary Fiedler lead the Boston Pops at the Shell in the summer of 1941 beside the Charles River. I recall the outdoor spectacle vividly though the mists of early memories. After that, I took to conducting radio music with a yellow pencil. One of my aunts gave me a baton, real or perhaps a toy one.  Beethoven  That began my childhood busking career. Housing was scarce. For a while, my parents and I lived at the house of my paternal grandparents in the then toney, Boston district of Brighton. It was a spacious three-floor affair fo...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images. I don’t write many seasonal stories. One exception is now when I write festive flash fiction. Sometimes I get ideas for festive tales during the summer so will write them up ready to send later. Festive flash is lighthearted and I’ve had some broadcast on an internet radio station. I usually finish my weekly column for an online magazine with a festive flash roundup and share a story. All fun to do (and I hope for others to read).  On the reading side, I ensure I watch and/or read Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather, Discworld’s equivalent to Christmas.   Naturally Dickens’ fabulous work, A Christmas Carol , is on the agenda though usually in the form of the best film version ever made - The Muppet Christmas Carol . Yes!   Michael Caine plays it straight as Scrooge and genuinely comes across as sinister. The Muppets are true to the book - they’ve just added some songs (good ones too, I’m fond of the...

 Fifteen years ago, on the 20 th December, Vera Rich died. Among her many other incarnations she was the founder of  Manifold , "the magazine of new poetry" which was started in 1962 and appeared regularly until 1969, when it was suspended owing to her taking a job as Soviet and East European Correspondent for the scientific weekly  Nature . It was only in 1998 that it proved possible to relaunch  Manifold . It published original poetry and had two quarterly competitions, one written in a particular form, and the other on a particular topic. Many poets loved these challenges, as being given a specific task narrows the mind wonderfully. I’m going to reproduce a few of the ones I had published here, and also some more recent poems which, although unpublished, have received honourable mentions in other magazines – also in response to a particular requirement. What I want to do is to show how an exercise can really stimulate the imagination, which is often preferable t...

Three great passions conjoined this month in an odd and unexpected way. Who could have guessed that swimming lessons late in life could splash over into my study of Latin and the writing mojo beached for months after surgery and rehab?  To begin at the end, or what seemed like The End, Five months of PT after my June TKR seemed to have reached an impasse. My knee flexion was shy of what we'd hoped. Though I was getting around reasonably well, odds were I'd never run again or even ride a bike. I felt I'd failed not just my knee but my sense of myself as a a warrior. And with that dual loss I'd begun to question the point--or possibility--of getting back to the WIP that I hadn't touched in months. Enough of all that. though. It's time to get wet. My surgeon had suggested that I try working out in a pool. Water relaxed the muscles, he said, and countered gravity, which might increase my range of movement. Why not, I thought, with no burning flame of either hope of ...

  One of the things I do is publish the online magazine, Instant Noodles Lit Mag . In fact, it just ended its fourth year of existence. And my goal for every end of year is that it go out, not with a bang, or with a whimper, but with a giggle. This, it seems, is a huge, massive, gigantic ask. Presumably, if you read this blog, you are either an author or an aspiring author, and so I ask you, why so hard to make funny? I have just ended my thirty-third geez, thirty-third? Thirty-third and final year as a college teacher. That's right! I'm officially done with all of that. In any case, in all those years I taught many things, among them reading, essay writing, critical thinking, survey of British literature, film studies, the usual things college English teachers teach. And in all of those classes, whenever remotely possible, I snuck in some humor writing for my students to read because, IMHO (in my humble opinion) there is nothing more difficult to read or write than humor. And ...

  +Helen-Ann Hartley I suppose it was inevitable that media interest in the BBC’s removal of Masterchef presenter Gregg Wallace should so quickly supersede the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. About 5.4 million people tune in watch a Masterchef final whereas only 2 million are likely to attend Church of England Christmas services. And then Gregg gave that extra headline-grabbing gift with his outburst against the Middle-Class Women of a Certain Age who he blamed for bringing him down.   Kelly Webb-Lamb, founder and chief executive of Mothership Productions, wrote in Broadcast magazine, ‘ Can we all just think for a minute about what it means - in this industry - to be a “woman of a certain age”. If you’re still around, it means, that you had years, if not decades, of putting up with “banter”, lewd comments, and often much worse, and didn’t ever say anything because you wanted a good reputation and that next job.’ She goes on to list the difficulties encounte...

As we're in December, I suppose now would be a good time to look back at my writing year. I started off with a first draft of the fourth book in my DI Bernie series called Rewind . It took a lot of hard work to get it published and I'm indebted to my editor, copy editor/proofreader and cover designer/formatter. I'd love to say that it reached the top of the Kindle charts but sadly, that's not the case. It's currently on a Kindle Countdown though so it's available for 99p in the UK and 0.99$ in the US. But hurry - this ends early on Sunday 8th December! Click  here for UK Click  here for US I was finally able to have a book launch! My other books came out during Covid so it wasn't possible to celebrate. I'm so glad I finally got a chance to thank my family and friends and to do so in my local library was extra special. I also published a short story that links books three and four in my DI Bernie Noel series, called Last Bus Home . It was part of a promot...