Authors Electric

The Audio Version The first choice was only partly mine. Publisher Adlard Coles was planning an audio version of Stars to Steer By . Who would read it? They suggested three professional narrators which I put to the family vote. One, whose voice was rather light (and pleasant, I thought) was rejected by all except for myself and my oldest granddaughter. The other two -- stronger, more assured, more (or less?) flexible -- split the voters entirely: Francis, who listens to a lot of audio books and who spent a generous amount of time researching samples beyond  the clips we had been sent, headed one faction but the Adlard Coles editorial office AND an equal number of family voters, preferred the other. I began to feel both protective and shy. Stars to Steer By is non-fiction, it’s historical, it’s researched but it’s also, occasionally, personal. My thoughts, my history, my words. I discovered that I wanted to speak them, some of them anyway… the opening for instance: ‘One early eve...

Claudia Myatt's new cover for A Ravelled Flag I knew it was going to be a successful outing as soon as I got the teacher's response to the weather forecast. It was mid-October and we'd planned to take her class of ten-year olds exploring alongside the River Stour in Suffolk. I'd warned her already that they might get wet feet by the end of the day but now I needed to tell her that we were also likely to encounter rain and strong winds. Not a hurricane, you understand, but gusts that might reach 40mph and possible heavy showers.She'll cancel, I thought to myself gloomily. I was part of the way through a project for the Essex Book Festival, working with schools in the Tendring Hundred area of Essex. My job was to talk about the stories in my Strong Winds series, then encourage the children to write adventures of their own. Each school wanted something slightly different. The headteacher of this school (herself a sailing enthusiast) suggested that the Y6 ...

In memoriam HMS Bounty, Claudene Christian, Robin Walbridge, Dave Harris, Dick Cronin, Cassandra Jardine, Tom Carter, Richard Morris, Patricia Moran HMS Bounty, caught by Hurricane Sandy My family and the Mayan calender tell me that the world is going to end at this winter's solstice so perhaps it's time to say some farewells. The ship was HMS Bounty , built in Nova Scotia in 1960 for the film starring Marlon Brando. I wish I could describe the thrill it was in the summer of 2011 when I received a message from Doug Faunt, a deckhand on the Bounty , telling me that he was reading The Salt-Stained Book, volume one of the Strong Winds tri logy .  I met Doug later when he took some time away from the Bounty and visited Peter Duck . He was one of the first people to convince me that it was worth publishing the Strong Winds trilogy in electronic format so the stories would pack easily into a sailor's kitbag. Thank you for that advice, Doug. Doug and I kept i...