Authors Electric

Now THIS is what I should have posted last month, just ahead of the 80th anniversary of VE Day on 8th May, and if I’d been more switched on (and less distracted by the disturbingly named Mandela effect ), I would have done. Still, we’re only a few days away from celebrating the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings on 5th June, 1944, so very much still in the remembering mode, in which eye witness accounts have increasing value as that generation passes away altogether. Going through the papers left by my late mother, Ruth Heppel, I found all the letters she wrote to her elder brother and sister-in-law in India during the Second World War. As a portrait of a teenager living through the Blitz (her home was bombed twice and the family had to be rehoused), they make a fascinating record; but what stands out is the one dated 10th May 1945, in which Ruth, by then a 19 year-old art student, gives an astonishingly vivid account of the VE Day celebrations in London. The joyous uproar she d...

  I recently watched an online clip of Robbie Williams making an acceptance speech for an award. He’d ‘like to thank drugs, alcohol, ADHD, anxiety, addiction, body dysmorphia’ – (and a whole host of other crippling conditions) ‘without which none of this would have been possible’, he tells us. Yes, it was funny, but as an author who is also a performer, I found myself relating to that strange dichotomy between self-deprecation and loud obnoxious drama-queen. You may think that we lie when we describe ourselves as socially awkward and shy – after all, we jump up to show off with the most massive egos at every opportunity. We can’t wait to grab the limelight in a blaze of ridiculous costumes and glitter – and in my case giant gold wings! But I’m here to tell you that underneath every mammoth motor-mouth is a quieter, sensible and often anxious human being. Just consider how many people in show-biz are addicts, alcoholics, reclusive, exercise junkies, dysfunctional, depressed – or use...

The British Library just posted me a book. The Dead of Summer I won’t lie: it makes me feel sort of special to have a large, hard-backed and very handsome book posted to me by Britain’s National Library, the book-branch of the British Museum. And what a gorgeous book! A glowing scarlet with gilt illustrations. As the sub-title says, it’s a collection of, ‘strange tales of May Eve and Midsummer.’ There is something eerie about those days, sunny though they might be. They’re two of the year’s great ‘turning days,’ linked to superstition, magic and myth for centuries beyond memory. The barriers between the worlds grows thin as smoke in mid-summer dusk as much as in mid-winter dark— and the hyacinth scent of massed bluebells is a dangerous thing. Never fall asleep in a bluebell wood, it's said. If you do, you won't wake in your own world or time. The Dead of Summer ’s editor, Johnny Mains, chose the stories from books in the British Library’s collection. The first story is ...

My May offering is a children's title aimed at readers aged 9+ (or 'middle grade' as it is known in the US). As a fantasy title aimed at younger readers, this one is much closer to my own territory than the books I've reviewed so far this year. But the gorgeous cover complete with golden highlights on the paperback edition caught my adult eye, while the mermaid-themed plot subtly blends fantasy with our real world, making it accessible to readers who might struggle with completely fantasy worlds. Stormswept by Helen Dunmore The island off the coast of Cornwall where our heroine Morveren lives is connected at low tide to the mainland, where she and her twin sister Jenna and their younger brother Digory attend a normal school - no lessons in wizardry or riding broomsticks here! The fantasy happens on their island in a quiet, understated way, when they find a strange boy called Malin injured on the beach after a storm and try to help him. This is complicated because, inste...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images. When this post appears, I should have just returned from a fabulous break in stunning Northumberland. It led me to think about how getting out and about can inspire ideas. Grab your phone, take pictures. They can be random or specific images. I’ve used photos to give me ideas for how, for example, a landscape would look for my characters. I can also use that background to visualise who might live there. You could also use your images to write non-fiction pieces (were there historical events associated with that landscape?). Photos can be great for triggering ideas. I take far more than I normally do when away so try to make use of these for writing purposes later.   I love postcards and send some home. But why not use a typically sized card to create a story? It will be flash fiction because you won’t get more than a couple of hundred words on there at most. Indeed flash has been known as postcard fiction. Writ...

How embarrassing. I was interviewed for a podcast in the US recently, and it quickly became apparent that my interviewer knew my books better than I did. Admittedly, the last book in the Divide trilogy was written twenty years ago, but nevertheless… I had to re-read all three books, to find out what happened to whom, and why. It was actually rather interesting, because it was like reading something someone else had written. I used to tell my students always to put something lengthy to one side and write something else before they went back and re-read what they’d written, as the time-lapse gave the reader some objectivity. I’m not sure I ever suggested leaving something for twenty years though! I had forgotten on whom I had based some of my characters. Some of the original inspirations had grown up, and become very different people. Others had died. Yet more rang no bells at all, and I had no idea what person inspired them – if anyone. Most people don’t recognise themselves, and it’s o...

  You could have knocked me over with a feather when the doctor's nurse told me my weight, I won't even write it here. But despite trips to the gym 5 days a weeks, daily walks, stretching, and a diet consisting of fruit smoothies and one main meal a day, I'd gained about 20 pounds. And I couldn't blame this on a stiff surgical knee that kept me from cycling or jogging.  No, on reflection the culprit came clear: the snacks and treats I relied on to finish my abandoned WIP: dark chocolate, peach scones, turkey breakfast sandwiches, popcorn, unsalted pretzels. I was getting the work done daily, yes. But the calories and the high cost were taking their toll. To reverse the sad situation without losing steam on the WIP, I devised a dual attack. 1) Want not, waist not. Right off, I needed to rewire the part of my brain that linked expensive and fattening treats with my writing mojo. Wanted: something simple and delicious that wouldn't teeter my blood sugar or bore me like...

  Waiting for the Rain. April 2025 was apparently the driest month on record in the UK. Or so the ever smiling, always cheerful weather presenters keep telling us. Day after day they stand in front of picture of an idyllic scene and forecast more of the same in the expectation that viewers will share their joy.   Well this one won’t for a start. Much as I love a warm sunny day, there comes a point when I long for rain. The garden is parched. It’s May and I have to water the pots and containers every evening as well as the herbaceous border I am in the process of planting. Plants put out to harden droop by late afternoon and the sweet peas, which are water hungry, are refusing to climb up their supports. Luckily here at Bridge Leap, we have a hose so watering is not the chore it was in our old house where I had to lug watering cans up to the top of the garden and then gradually work my way down to the outside tap for a refill. It was the relentlessness of the task that I ...

  In her newest book, A WITCH AWAKENS , poet and author Ellis Elliott writes a cozy mystery with unusual characters in it, namely "granny women." So I sat down with Ellis to ask her to tell me exactly what granny women are. Dianne: Ellis, it's so nice to talk again. I so enjoyed your latest book, A WITCH AWAKENS . I was really drawn to the occult and spells and such when I was a young adult, which, apparently, was a while ago now. Your book took me back to that, and made me enjoy it all over again. So, on your book, let’s start with the origin—what first drew you to the idea of the Granny Woman, and how did they find their way into A WITCH AWAKENS ? Ellis: The sparks of an idea for my first cozy mystery novel flew from the unlikely source of the Civil War memoir of my great-great-grandfather. The novel, appropriately titled THE THRILLING ADVENTURES OF DANIEL ELLIS, was published in 1867. Ellis served as a “pilot” guiding Union soldiers, runaway slaves, deserting Confedera...