Authors Electric

Thanks to a clever company called Slightly Foxed , I find myself reading a lot of memoirs nowadays. For those who haven’t yet discovered it, Slightly Foxed brings out a quarterly magazine  of essays about books - fiction, non-fiction, all genres - particularly prized by the contributors. Not recently published ones, no Booker shortlist here, but ones that have stood the test of time and become personal favourites. Reading these articles have not only reminded me of much-loved titles, but got me tracking down others I’d never heard of before.  Slightly Foxed Editions: pleasingly harmonious. (from foxedquarterly.com)  It was a natural progression, then, for Slightly Foxed to start its own imprint, Slightly Foxed Editions, a delightfully produced series of pocket hardback reprints of classic memoirs, unjacketed, each with a different colour binding, so that a whole shelf of them gives a pleasingly harmonious look. I know this because we have two and half shelves full, and ...

                                                            I am a neurodivergent tutor, businesswoman, performer and writer. I am very successful in all of these areas, even winning awards, yet I mask my very real struggles every day, leading to disbelief and gaslighting. So what are the realities of a ‘hidden disability’ for this ‘Superwoman’?   I know some of you won’t believe me, so maybe I am wasting my ink, but I struggle everyday with some aspect or other of daily life, and what you see in articles, professional life and on social media is only the tip of the iceberg. Yes, I appear to be quite annoyingly successful at everything I do. But the next time you call a person like me ‘Superwoman’, imagine that I am also battling with Kryptonite on a daily basis.   In 2018, I was diagnosed with Autis...

Probably due to my advanced age, assembling a memoir, among my  various writing projects, throws me back to a childhood that I remember in a time that now seems more like history than recollection.   Original "Hollywoodland" sign, 1938 I was a pup before television, computers, the internet, social media, the polio vaccine, jet airliners, the cold war, and nuclear weapons.  My boyhood memories blend with what my parents heard intently on our radio - a sleek, deco, maple-panelled, 1930s Philco cabinet in the living room that broadcast soap operas, the evening news, mysteries, variety shows and Franklin Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats."  My memories span from America's post-WW2 rise to free world leadership to its present, self-immolation, from the Great Depression's end and Allied leadership to being led by a self-destructive, traitorous, sociopathic president who commands the American miliary to forget the Constituion, and turn on fellow citizens. UT & fa...

I love the serendipity of allowing random books to arrive in my life from unexpected sources... this month's offering is a non-fiction title picked up from a stall at our local Apple Pie Fair. I went for a slice of the giant apple pie, and came home with rather more to digest than I'd bargained for! 'Machines That Think' is part of a New Scientist series written by multiple human experts in the field. Subtitled 'Everything you need to know about the coming age of Artificial Intelligence', this book practically jumped into my hands. On checking the copyright page, I was rather disturbed to see that it was published in 2017, which is ancient history where technology and AIs are concerned. However, if you study the dawn of computing, it's clear these clever little programs have been around a lot longer than you'd think. The first chatbot (named Eliza, after Eliza Dolittle in the play 'Pygmalion') was developed in 1966 as an artificial psychoanalyst ...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. I love using a wide variety of writing prompts. They’re great for triggering further ideas. Sometimes they’re enough for me to picture a potential character. Sometimes the prompt gives me a theme. Sometimes, especially with opening line prompts, I have a way into a story and I then create the best character to meet the needs of that prompt. I’m unlikely to have a character with their head in a book taking part in an action story, for example. (It’s not impossible but it’s unlikely I’d do it).  Writing to prompts regularly has helped me get used to writing to prompts set by anyone else. This is useful for competitions with set themes. It’s also handy for responding to writing exercises set by workshop leaders at events such as The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick. I set prompts for the monthly Zoom meeting of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group . I join in with the prompts on the night and, ...

The winner of the nationwide school magazine competition, 1960 I have just read Let’s do It: The authorised biography of Victoria Wood , by Jasper Rees. This is a long book, because it details just about everything she ever wrote and performed. And even though I’d heard and seen so much of it before, I still found myself laughing out loud at her extraordinary inventiveness and wit. Her work ethic was phenomenal – she often wrote all night to fulfil a deadline, but she also expected everyone else to be just as dedicated. Her dialogue had to be spoken exactly as she wrote it, no improvising, and she had a go at most forms of writing. She was a terrific musician, and played the trumpet as well as the piano. I think the most autobiographical sketch of all was the one about Chrissy, the 14-year-old schoolgirl who sets out to swim the channel. Her parents are interviewed about the forthcoming ordeal, and it is assumed they will be in the support boat – however, they’re planning on a day out,...

This has been a crazy week--words I say while knowing that many of you have had weeks as crazy...or worse. In the home stretch of my WIP these were the time crunches life threw me this week: --4-day siege on the phone and in person trying to renew my ADA van transport.  --5-hour trip to my hematologist for labs, a phlebotomy, and a consultation.  --Three trips to the YMCA to keep building my surgical leg strength and flexibility. --2 days sorting through old resumes dating back years, and arranging the relevant experience for positions as a cashier, a bookstore clerk, and a customer service rep. --1 day deciding which online resume builder to try and which template to use, then completing a cashiering resume.  --3 hours attempting to forward that resume to the UPS store that does all my printing and engaging in online chats. --Trip this morning to pick up the results. I don't complain. I bless my lucky stars that I'd completed a beta copy of my WIP's first 200 pages and a...

  On Monday I published “New Beginnings at Rosa’s” my first totally independent venture, when I managed the whole process, from formatting the ebook and paperback to designing the cover and uploading to Amazon myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t have offers from friends to help me along the way but I was determined to show myself that I could do it and one of the phrases that kept me going was   “Granny did it!” This dated from years ago when I used to take my granddaughter Maddy to nursery. She had one of those state of the art buggies with the slot in fastenings that are a total nightmare for any grandparent with even slightly arthritic fingers. The first challenge was always fastening her in, the second was releasing her when we arrived and then when we got home, if I was picking her up as well, there was the struggle to fold up said buggy so it could be put away under the stairs and not have to take up any room in their narrow hallway. Throughout the whole procedure, Mad...

  My sister is staying with me at the moment, and we went to see The Roses the other day, in the movie theater, which people don't seem to do as much, but which we especially like to do. My sister is eight years younger than me, did not go to college, but worked her way up in the field of TV production, chose to not have children, and has a long-time domestic partner because she's not into marriage. I could not wait to get married and have kids almost as much as I couldn't wait to go to college, have gotten a few degrees, in fact, I'd still like to be in college. I have one child through adoption because of infertility, and would love to have a thousand more if I had the means to do so. I put this out there, because our "takes" on life are often very different, and were very different on this film. I should also out myself and say I have a major crush on Benedict Cumberbatch since I first saw the Sherlock series. My sister does not, and she thought the Sherl...