Authors Electric

 It was a 'sliding doors' moment. If you've seen the film then you'll know it's a 'what if' moment. What if Gywneth Paltrow had caught the train and what if she hadn't. For some, it's incredibly serious - waking up late for work in New York on September 11th 2001 or, more recently, denied boarding an Air India plane.  For me, the 'what if' relates to my grandfather. He emigrated to Canada in 1921, aged 20, to work on the railways. A family member in the UK became very ill so he returned for her. He then stayed, met my grandmother and the rest is history. But what if he hadn't returned? Obviously, I wouldn't have been born. There would have been another wife, other children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. My grandfather died when I was six. I didn't really know him but the desire to go to Canada - to see the land where he had been - has always been strong. This summer, I finally went there with my family. We had a whirlwind to...

When I was a child, I wrote lists. Huge, long lists. I would have been about ten or so and I was the kid who handed in ten pages of story at school, when everybody else had written one or two. I liked writing, even back then. I'd even ask for extra homework if it was story-writing. But those lists. They were names. Made-up girls’ names – class registers for imaginary schools, and I’d painstakingly create all these little girls and then put the list in alphabetical order, miss one out and have to start all over again. I went through a lot of writing paper back then. I don’t know why I did it and I can’t even claim these were story characters as I never did anything else with them other than sort them into lists. But I was obsessed with them. I'd be teacher, reading the class register aloud. My parents used to take my brother and I around stately homes and castles when we were children. Now this did fire my imagination as I could be living there, coming down that staircase, eatin...

I’ve spent the last year or more waiting for heart surgery, and the last couple of months of this time have been particularly frustrating. This is because I got as far as having a pre-operation assessment at the end of May, and felt fairly confident that I would find myself on the operating table within a few weeks of it. Other family members even made their holiday arrangements around that date prediction, and I’m not really getting any better as I wait either! Still, I’ve managed to finish and publish two (or is it three? I’m starting to lose count) novels in the time since I first saw the cardiac surgeon, and I’m working on two more at this very moment, so it isn’t as if I’ve completely wasted the time, though anyone who sees the state of our house might imagine I have. In some ways this reminds me of the wait I had before giving birth to my first child. I was supposed to be resting in bed during the eight weeks before the due date because of raised blood pressure, but the problem...

It’s always fascinating perusing other people’s bookshelves and there is none better than a bookshelf in a holiday cottage – well I say cottage, this holiday let is actually a barn conversation complete with mezzanine reading nook! The reading matter is various, 1970s blockbusters by Jilly Cooper and Jeffrey Archer, more up to date novels by Victoria Hislop and Jacqueline Wilson. Books on British butterflies and birds. A book about the medicinal properties of honey and one about wind, thankfully not the flatulence variety, but a children’s book with picture of wind making mummy’s washing blow on the line - maybe daddy uses the tumble dryer! There is a book called No Dogs on the Bed – a cartoon book for adults and dog owners – a subtle reference to the rules on the property perhaps. The History of Stilton Cheese is wedged between a book discussing the divisions of Brexit and a book about female spirituality written by a man!!!! What can be deduced by such an eclectic collection? A...

                                                                              My Life in Libraries Moving from the junior to the senior library at the age of 13 was for me a rite of passage. I can remember the first book I borrowed from there,  Nancy Wake  by Russell Braddon, pictured. It didn’t have that vivid book jacket illustration, just a black and dusty cover with the title and author at the top of the spine. I had already read Russell Braddon’s  The Naked Island , a memoir about the author's trials in a Japanese POW camp, so I was keen to read more.   Nancy Wake, however, was somewhat different to my usual fare, causing my mother to raise a quizzical eyebrow when she asked to see what I had borrowed - a rite of passage indeed. Garston Library in Liverpool, near my then...

My late mother was a marvellous raconteur (or raconteuse, to be correct). She’d regale a whole room with her funny stories of life as a diplomat’s wife, or – cringemaking for us – the hilarious things her children had said and done. Growing up, I began to spot embellishments in these anecdotes, not to say downright twisting of the truth; but whenever I pointed this out (with a doubtless annoying puritanism), I’d be silenced. ‘So what?’ she’d roar. ‘It makes a far better story this way.’ Cue uproarious laughter from her audience.  It didn’t matter, of course it didn’t. Or not very much. But over the years I found myself increasingly treating her accounts of her early life, family history, relationships, discussions and quarrels with a large pinch of salt, to the point when I would doubt her version of a certain important event, only to find out later that it was true. The problem was, how could I tell? Knowing her talent for spinning dull, factual straw into exciting, gleaming, semi...

                                                      I recently read an article in the Guardian where it ‘admits’ it had ‘massively exaggerated’ the number of students who had access arrangements in examinations this year. They had apparently double-counted and wrongly reported. They seemed to feel they needed to apologise for this ‘mistake’ in case some people thought it would be offensive to suggest that students who needed help to get through exams should get it. The idea that some students receive extra time, scribes, laptops or other additional support seems to stir up controversy – even in 2025, and the comment I read on the article predictably brought out the loonies and extremists – but also worrying comments from apparent educational professionals and psychologists. The attitude amazed me, and may explain why it is stil...

Nuts and Bolts by Roma Agrawal  I could say this book is 'interesting', 'fascinating', 'absorbing'... It is all of those things. It's also an absolute delight.  I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and it's not only taught me a lot, but also made me think a lot-- Oh, about history, and the gob-smacking ingenuity of all people, everywhere, at all times. How, from the Stone-Age (and before), they've observed, applied, invented... I mean, how did anyone come up with the idea of melting metal out of rocks? Or of using the power contained in a bendy branch to make a bow and arrow? If I think about it for too long at a time, it makes me dizzy. The author, Roma Agrawal, studied engineering at Imperial College, London, and physics at Oxford. She worked on the Shard. So, she knows what she's talking about. And her love for her subject is evident in every word. The subtitle is 'How Tiny Inventions Make Our World Work' and her first chapter is on...

Non fiction this month, and to celebrate summer we have two different books about walking the UK's South West Coast Path. This scenic 630-mile coastal route winds its way from Minehead in Somerset around the edges of Devon and Cornwall and finally along the Jurassic coast to Poole in Dorset. Despite living in a seaside town on the route, I confess I've walked very little of it, just a few miles of local footpath on my way to somewhere else. But, of course, books about walking the 'Salt Path' are rarely just about the walking. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn Raynor Winn's The Salt Path has recently hit the big screen, although the book is worth seeking out too as the film version only covers part of the whole. This is the story of Raynor and Moth, who become homeless when they have to leave their family farm. With their children grown, and Moth having had a life-changing diagnosis with advice to "be careful on the stairs", they decide to pack up their belongi...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images. It is the 250th anniversary of the birth of one of my favourite authors, Jane Austen, later this year (16th December to be precise). I’m fortunate enough to be able to easily get to Winchester Cathedral where she is buried and they have had exhibitions celebrating her life and work.   Indeed there is an exhibition running there from 23rd May until 19th October 2025 called the Jane Austen Poetry Exhibition which looks at the friendship between her and Anne Lefoy, who was a mentor to Jane. (I find it encouraging mentors are nothing new for writers). Jane wrote a poem regarding the death of her friend and that poem is one of the objects on display here. I discovered the joy of Austen’s work, especially Pride and Prejudice, thanks to it being one of the books I had to read at secondary school. I would say its impact was to show me irony was a thing in fiction.  I’ve had good cause to appreciate that since...

    When I started my MA in creative writing, I was asked who I wanted to write like. I was immediately indignant – I didn’t want to write like anyone else, I wanted to write like me. Then the question was rephrased – if you wanted to write like a piece of music, what would you choose? There were a number of different responses from the rest of the group. Smoky basement jazz, a clarinet maybe, or a trombone or a saxophone. Someone else wanted a piece by Corelli, there was Ravel’s Bolero and Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. I chose Danse Macabre, by Saint Saens, long before it was popularised by Jonathan Creek. This quickly established me as someone who went for something a bit different, due to the necessity to retune the E string on the violin to E flat, which gives the whole piece its unique flavour. So the lines I wish I’d written are always a bit off-beat, and I am still in awe of the lateral thinking that creates them.         ...