Authors Electric

What a year it’s been! A life-changing year. This month, and almost to the day as I write this, it’s been a whole year since I published my first book. A year in which, for the first time, I’ve been able to call myself an author. Not just wish for it, or dream about it, but actually introduce myself as an author. And because I decided to launch my book on the anniversary of the birthday of my leading historical character (2nd October), I was able, courtesy of a totally unexpected, but rather fabulous invitation, to celebrate its first anniversary at the same time as his birthday  –  in his old home, surrounded by other devotees – and with cake! Lots of cake! (More on that later.) Did I think a year ago just where I’d be now? No – not at all. My only aim was to get that book published – to master the labyrinthine processes needed to produce an ebook, and paperbacks via two different suppliers. And to adhere to US, as well as my own UK, tax regulations, becaus...

Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja poses for Matthew Bremner's recent Guardian profile. An article in the Guardian  knocked me on my backside the other day. The feature, How to Be Human  by Matthew Bremner, examined the life of Marcos  Rodríguez  Pantoja, an elderly Spaniard had been abandoned as a child and had survived fifteen years in the Andalusian mountains with wolves as his only companions. L ike a real-life  Romulus and Remus , he owes his life to a she-wolf, who accepted the small boy as part of her litter, sharing food, after he crawled into their den seeking shelter from the cold on the first night or second night of his long ordeal. Deja vu:   My Dog's Name , the novella I've been revising for inclusion in Sometimes Ridiculous , my forthcoming softcover story collection, has a similar, archetypal plot. A boy,  presumed buried by a mudslide, roams  the Hollywood Hills with a family of coyotes.  I wrote it back  2013, havin...

I got a hell of a surprise about two weeks ago. It was just a few days after my 81st birthday. My inamorata Eleanor was downstairs helping the neighbors with a garage sale. I had been brushing my teeth, getting ready to join my youngest daughter, Zoë, for a brunch when it happened.    My latest, soon to be released short story collection. That's me at Bread & Puppets Theater Museum in Glover, VT, opening another fabulous summer season tomorrow. She was on one of her periodic Chicago visits from Indiana University at Bloomington where she is a doctoral candidate in cognitive science. Her birthday falls just after mine and we always celebrate together. I finished brushing and tried to leave the bathroom and - surprise! The door wouldn't open! The doorknob just turned round and round helplessly without moving the latch. I rattled it, wiggled it. turned it again. Nothing. I tried prying the latch with a pair of nail scissors. Nothing. The door was clearly unlocked,...

Spot the deliberate mistake! Over the last few months I've done a lot and I mean lot of proof reading and editing. I also have a lot more to do. However, it doesn't matter how hard you try and how eagle eyed you (and your beta reader plus your editor/proofreader) are, there is always one that gets away. I'll admit I take solace in the fact that every so often I'll spot 'the one that got away' in a book that's been published by one of the large publishers. But that doesn't stop me trying to catch that 'one' by spending time honing my manuscript. Typically I read and edit all of my work at least three times before I let anyone else read it. I'll: Check for words that are similar but not the same e.g. quiet and quite Try to ensure the first line of new sections are justified right and not indented Try to remedy my habit of over using a comma by removing them Remove almost every 'then' I've used (that's one of my 't...

Me, far left, failing to look inconspicuous onstage  with fellow  Chicago Quarterly Review readers Dinner with friends is my limit when it comes to social gatherings. Parties bore me. Conferences terrify me. I turn my name tag around and try for invisibility. Sooner or later, however, somebody asks the question I like least: "What do you do?" "I'm a writer," I respond, my mouth dry, unwillingly, but I can't deny my calling after all. As a 20-something smart-ass, I used to answer: "I sell health insurance for pets." That's a real thing now that veterinaries charge as much as brain surgeons. Then comes the follow-up: "What have you written?" I know it's just making conversation. Nature hates a vacuum. Nonetheless, I break into a neurotic sweat. I imagine the questioner thinking: If you're a writer how come I haven't heard of you? I need a warm-up act. I name some titles, not that any will strike up the band:...

Big books from monthly book-clubs (growing dusty!)  In my childhood everything- even Mallory Towers! -  was in hardback, and in my early married life I indulged in a book club (remember them?) which delivered a chunky novel once a month.           I think I can pin down my change of heart over hardbacks  to when I asked my young teenage daughter for a copy of the newly published Donna Tart ( The Little Friend ) for Christmas, on the basis it wouldn’t be too big a drain on her pocket money. Being out of the book-buying habit at the time, I'd missed that it was only out in hardback and was filled with guilt as I unwrapped the unwieldy and expensive brute.           From then on, I have never chosen to buy fiction in hardback. (Non-fiction, poetry and illustrated books are a different matter). A novel in my mind is either e-book or tree-book, and a tree-book is a paperback. A ...

You know how everything happens at once sometimes? Of course you do. It's Christmas Eve, and if you've five minutes to read blogs, I'm impressed. And Life doesn't stop because it's Christmas. People get ill, babies arrive, kids fall off their bikes, grandmas complain about their knees in the cold. The weather can be kind, or angry, or simply perverse. Central heating breaks down. Many are working their socks off so that others can spend the time with their families. Some young people have exams when they go back to school. You get the idea. So it was a pretty silly time for me to launch a novel. But having spent forever researching and writing and editing and generally faffing about every word, it is now Finished! So why not wait until the New Year to launch it? Because I'm off to Malawi for six weeks in January, and who knows what will fill my hours when I get back. So it was publish now and be damned. Of course you don't have time to fill you...

Recently I spent a couple of days teaching. This wasn't my usual Oxford teaching job. But it involved the same kind of approach - reading students work in advance and then meeting with them to talk it through. As I reached the end of the second day, I was tired and hot, looking forward to heading home. But I was also interested to meet my last student because her work very much impressed me. It was odd, interesting, challenging - and very well written. Our conversation turned out to be as interesting as the work had suggested. This young woman was clever, quirky with an independent mind. I liked her. But then, as our conversation came to an end, she asked that inevitable question. 'Will I get this work published?' Usually when I am asked this question, I say something vaguely encouraging but imprecise. Partly I do that because I'm not teaching publishing, I'm teaching writing. I also do it because I now genuinely can't answer that question. I ...