Authors Electric

  2024 has been a somewhat challenging year so far. There have been ups and there have been downs, some of which have been potentially life threatening but here we are Mike and I in September still tottering along. The house has been sold, fingers crossed, the move to Somerset is on the horizon and it is just possible that from now until Christmas there will be fewer bumps along the road. Even if they are, experience has taught me that they will not be the ones I expected. For if there is one thing I have learned this year it is the impossibility of gaging what will happen next and following that the stupidity of trying to pre-empt events. I have spent hours of my time engaged in the art of Whatifery. It’s one I’m very skilled at. Give me any situation and I can riff on the possibilities, mostly dire, for hours. An ambulance going up the hill towards our house? Mike has had a fatal accident. Not only that but he has fallen by the front door which will make access for the ambulance crew

Recipes from My Garden This week author Nadja Maril released her collection of f lash prose, poetry, and essays inspired by her kitchen, garden, and family memories. I sat down with Nadja to ask her some questions about the book, and her process. It's interesting to note that Nadja comes from an artistic background: her late father Herman Maril was an artist, and his painting is the cover of her book. I have enjoyed Nadja's poetry and flash fiction for many years now, and I am very excited for her book! Dianne Pearce (Dianne): What inspired you to combine poetry, short form, gardening, and cooking in one book? How did these different forms of expression come together?   Nadja Maril (Nadja): In January 2020 I’d just completed an MFA (masters in fine arts) in creative writing from the low residency Stonecoast Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine and was in the midst of moving into a 100-year-old house. My husband Peter and I were the General Contractors. Both th

  By the time you read this … Baroness Heather Hallett Chair of the UK COVID INquiry  I’ll be on my way to attend the opening session of module 3 of the COVID Inquiry. Unlike some previous massively long-running public inquiries this one, chaired by Baroness Hallett, is sub-divided into smaller, subject-specific sections called modules. Module 1, 'Resilience and Preparedness', has already been concluded and a report has been published. It will come as little surprise to hear that Baroness Hallett did not consider Britain well-prepared for a pandemic. Hearings for Module 2 – Core UK Decision-making and Political Governance -- have also been completed but there’s no report as yet. John’s Campaign (or Ymgyrch John as we become when we cross the border) was asked to speak for patients / care home residents and their family carers in Wales. This made it just about manageable for a small organisation and it was often unexpectedly interesting to see how the situation in a differe

 September always has that 'back to school' feel. My youngest is about to enter year eleven and my middle child is returning to her final year at university. And I have to return to my writing desk. After a summer of publishing REWIND, watching the football, tennis and the Olympics, going on holiday in Wales and taking in some concerts at the BBC Proms, I really need to get back to writing now. I've spent a lot of the summer thinking about my next MS. I started it earlier this year but had to put it on hold while I finished off REWIND. I'm not continuing my series though (for now) but writing something new instead. Still crime and still police procedural but a new location and new characters. In my head, everything is working but translating that to the page is something else. Will the plot hold together? Will readers like my new characters as much as I do? Will my agent be able to find a publisher who wants to buy it? That's the real question. It's fair to say

Recycling a blog post from way back (because life is really just running away with me right now), I thought I'd revisit my hugely popular advice column and see if the pearls of wisdom from 2013 are still relevant today ... Girls of a certain age – hands up who remembers  Cathy & Claire?  These were the agony aunts of every 70s girl’s favourite teen magazine,  Jackie . Would you believe you can pay nearly thirty pounds now for original back copies of this magazine that told us what to wear on a date and how to tell if a boy liked you? So in the spirit of our lovely 70s aunties, I’m going to use this month’s blog to offer some advice to independent authors. These are things I’ve learned in the two years I’ve been self-publishing on Amazon and elsewhere. Maybe some will resonate with you, maybe not. Maybe I'm just being a grumpy old woman this month... You probably won’t agree with me anyway. Dear Aunty Debbie: I’ve published a book on Amazon and some people don’t like it. Sho

  Having told myself that the novel I’ve just finished would definitely be a standalone, partly because I didn’t think I could face making another foray into the world I had set up for it, and partly because I already have several other series in hand and whenever I write a book in one series I feel guilty for neglecting the others, I began to have second thoughts during the final few chapters. Second thoughts about writing a second novel, that is. This was thanks to a mysterious character who only appeared as a sort of token figure in the earlier chapters, while towards the end he had taken a more distinct shape as a secret agent, who almost seemed to be demanding that his own story be told. Although of course I only have a few sketchy ideas about him and how I could frame a sequel for a story that seemed to me to be self-contained. I wonder if this is one of the usual reasons for writing sequels. And if the sequel then spawns another, which turns the project into a series, is it be

Have you ever wondered how an audiobook is recorded? The processes involved? While I can’t give you a complete step by step guide I can share my own author experiences. Last month, I had the opportunity to record my memoir at a top-notch recording studio – Monkeynut Audiobook and Sound , in Hampshire. It’s not something you get to do every day, unless you work in the industry doing voiceover work. If publishing your words in book form is the icing on the cake, then recording them is the cherry on the top. After a soundcheck to gauge levels, speed and tone you quite simply you read your beautiful words with expression. But it’s not the same as reading aloud to an audience in front of you, occasionally gazing up into appreciative faces hanging on your every word. Or reading a bedtime story snuggled up close to a child. Although these experiences will undoubtedly have helped me develop my voice. You read from an iPad, to stop the sound of rustling pages and scroll at your own spee

  After reading a novel...   I first encountered Sam Mills when I answered an advertisement on Twitter (now X) about a book group that was meeting to discuss the novel,  The Enchanted April  (1922) by Elizabeth von Arnim. As I knew the novel well, I signed up to the Zoom account for “CarersFirst” the name of the organisation that was hosting the event. It was an organisation formed to help people who were looking after partners or relatives, with various degrees of illness and disability.   I myself was not in this position, although my mother had for a long time cared for my father during his struggles with MS which had led up to his death. I had myself suffered years of depression and anxiety which I linked to that event - or these ailments may simply have been a consequence of my own ‘sensitive’ nature as my mother used to call it. This had filled me with a strange anger and fuelled much of the performance poetry that I read in a Bedford pub during the eighties.   At any event I joi