Authors Electric

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. One of the ways I fire up my imagination is to use random generators.   I’ve used the following to good effect. Random Noun/Adjective/Verb generators. Random Question generators (good for giving ideas for themes, sometimes titles). Random Number generators (I’ve used a number as a countdown in a story. I’ve also used it as part of an address where the action happened). Random Name generators (where you can generate a first name, surname, or both). Random Picture generator. If I select a landscape I come up with who might live there and what happens to them in this landscape. If I select a picture of a person, I prefer those where they are doing something, such as walking away from the camera at the time the shot was taken. I can rough out a story around that. Who is this person? What or whom are they walking away from? Could they be walking towards something instead? A successful generator makes me ask que...

Writing on an ipad in bed at dawn against the light of the electric heater—the writing life demands that you write wherever you are. I’m supposed to be on vacation, but here I am, typing away.  I’ve written on moving buses, trains. Not boats. Definitely airplanes. I remember tearing apart (physically) an entire manuscript while on a train in Scotland, as stunning views or slow-moving sheep reflected on enormous glass windows.  An entire short story was once written on a flight to the UK from Singapore. I was tired, grumpy, could not sleep, so I thought writing would help me. It did not. I inhaled copious amounts of caffeine, furiously typed a draft that only made half-sense, and alighted a cranky woman—perhaps the only time that finishing a piece gave me a fit of rage and a crick in the neck, instead of the sense of accomplishment that usually follows. I like having written, more often than not. A friend wrote yesterda...

If you've read some of my previous posts you'll know I have a bit of a passion for hedgehogs. Well, some would say it was more of an obsession. Which, I tend to agree with as I run a hedgehog rescue from my back garden. Our brand new logo I do try not to be 'bang' on about them to much on here. However, as it's Hedgehog Awareness Week this week (5th May - 11th May) I felt it was a good week to ignore myself and write a piece about hedgehogs. Meet Doug, who I hand reared from a few days old last year. Now did you know hedgehog numbers have plummeted? In 1995 there were an estimated 1.5 million, now it's believed we have fewer than a million! Scary isn't it? However, there is a little ray of sunshine trying to peek through that thick grey cloud. It was recently discovered that although we are still losing hedgehogs in the countryside our urban population are fairing a little better. The speed of the loss of established populations is slowin...

Exhibit A: exquisite torment provided by programme design I am not a great user of Facebook.   If I post something and it gets a handful of likes and the odd comment, I’m doing well. So I was all the more surprised recently when something I put up sparked a whole host of likes, comments and discussion from a wide range of people, for whom I’d clearly touched a nerve. What can it have been been – political?   No no, stay clear of all such, say I. The dreaded B word? As if. Enough misery about that as it is. Stygian gloom. (Photo by  Damien Petit  on  Unsplash .) No . All I did was upload an example of a blight that has been seeping gradually into the printed world for the past few years, until now it affects every play, opera, concert and musical programme, magazine, brochure, exhibition text, restaurant menu and just about everything printed you can think of. Even websites aren’t immune. It is a kind of exquisite torment dreamt up by designers ...

Several years ago I was working on a story where I had a character reading aloud from a well-known book to an older relative. I wanted to include a few of the lines that were being read out. However I wasn't sure how much of it I could include, if any. I also had no idea how to get the permission I might need. So, when I rewrote it I still had my character reading aloud I just didn't include the words being read.       How many of you have been in a similar position? Wanting to include a quote from someones else's book, feature, article etc. and not knowing how to get consent for that use. Thankfully there's now an easy way to gain the permission you require, PLS Clear. Visit www.PLSclear.com to quickly and easily request permission for use of copyrighted material PLSclear is designed and operated by the PLS ( Publishers' Licensing Services ) who collect revenue generated by people/companies paying to use a publishers copyright  (similar to the ALCS , who...

I have a shameful secret. My bookshelves are full of books I haven’t read. Shocking, isn’t it? You’d think that instead of browsing Blackwell’s and Waterstones for the latest hot reads, I’d get through the stack building up at home first. Good housekeeping, surely. Like eating all the chocolate digestives in the tin before going out to buy 3 new packets. Well, not entirely. For a start, less than half the titles stretching out until the crack of doom across my walls are down to me. When, many years ago, my husband and I united our separate collections of 500 or so each in marriage, I looked forward to throwing out the many duplicates that must occur. There were 6. From which one can only conclude that either we complemented each other nicely, or had absolutely nothing in common. I wish I could remember what those 6 books were, as that might shed some light on the situation, but I can’t . Cider with Rosie , possibly, and The Catcher in the Rye . Certainly not Science Fiction,...

I’m working on a novel and mostly working on understanding what the heck I’ve gotten myself into. Long a nonfiction author, I had believed the shift no more challenging than moving from an essay to a book.  Fiction requirements like plot points, story arcs and character development do exist in nonfiction, I knew, so hard could it be, really? (I will wait for all the fiction writers to wipe the tears from their eyes.) Having written screenplays in the past I understand plotting fairly well and loving mysteries and thrillers as I do makes plotting easier, for me at least. The biggest bugaboo has been character development.  The best thrillers possess great character arcs, too. "Silence of the Lambs" ranks as one of my personal favorites and combes both a great plot and a great character arc.  But again and again character development and character change has left me scratching my head. I’ve written outline upon outline, character sketches, mini-draft...

Recently I tackled the task of My very first tin of buttons rediscovering the floor of the garage (ours is like many - full of 'stuff' that can't be thrown away). During the process I opened a storage box. Laying on the top were two tins (one full of buttons - see right) I'd been given these by my Uncle Albert. You see he'd been given two tins of shortbread biscuits, which he doesn't like. So, he re-gifted to me - I was more than happy with that. Once I'd consumed the contents of both I remembered my nan had had a button tin. I loved to play with the buttons it contained and this in turn brought back loads of fond childhood memories. So I decided it was about time I had my own tin of buttons. So over the next few months, whenever I found a stray button I put it into the tin. I knew I should really be cleaning up the garage but I couldn't help myself, I had to open the tin. When I did memories came flooding back. For example: The zebra button...

                            I recently attended a book signing in Oxford from the other side of the fence, as a reader rather than an author. I now have a whole new appreciation for my readers. I thought it was a tiring day standing in front of my table talking to readers, but life on the other side of the fence is pretty  gruelling , although massively entertaining.    The signing took place in Oxford Town Hall, a grand setting, but  perhaps a  little too small for the number of readers who attended which meant that many signing authors had to be ticketed, and those that weren't still had queues.    The camaraderie that was evident amongst readers was infectious, from friends made in the registration queue outside the venue that began a couple of hours before the doors were due to open to friends made whilst bumping into each other inside. This was only the second...