Authors Electric

Image Credits:- Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Photos of The Hayes, Swanwick were taken by me, Allison Symes.   I will still be at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School when this goes live. This event is my big writing event of the year. It is a joy to get together with other writers, enjoy a range of workshops, and convivial company. I come back inspired, refreshed, and tired! All that creative energy takes it out of me  but in a good way.  That made me wonder about holiday reading and writing. Do you read and/or write more or less during the summer? That answer may depend I suspect on whether you have school age children or other commitments. For me, the writing dips as I take much needed time off but the blessings of being a flash fiction writer is if I only write a couple of hundred words a day, I’ve probably completed a story in that word count. I also prepare and schedule blogs in advance including this one. I love scheduling! It means I can take ...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.  I have a soft spot for animals in fiction. I was a huge fan of Timmy in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five . I always thought he was the most intelligent of the lot but then I’m a dog owner so am probably biased. The childhood book that meant to a lot to me was Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty . I found out much later it was written to encourage sympathy and kindness towards horses (though I hope it did also encourage people to develop those traits for other creatures too). I was moved to tears by the sacrifice scene of Aslan in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. The film adaptation was pretty good too. I have occasionally written from an animal’s viewpoint in my flash fiction. One story was told from the viewpoint of a mother dragon and was fun to write. But I generally focus on writing human/humanoid characters, despite my having loved animals portrayed in fiction for so long. Animals can, of course, be s...

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...

Image Credit:  Mainly via Book Brush using Pixabay photos. One image from me. I remember years ago being at a Book Fair when someone walked past, looked at my table and said loudly to their friend, “I don’t like books”.  I so wanted to say “what are you doing here then” but judged it best not to! But it did throw up an attitude problem which worried me.  Why is it, in some circles, considered a good thing to boast about not reading? What are they hoping to achieve?    I know reading has never been “cool”. I was the typical girly swot at school. Always had my head in a book but I’ve never seen that as a problem. (I always associated myself with Velma from the cartoon series Scooby Doo rather than Daphne, and with Jo March from Little Women rather than, say, Meg March. I’ve always had a soft spot for the girls with glasses and the ones who love to write. Can’t imagine why that is - possibly the fact I am still a girl, albeit an older one now, with glasses who lo...

Image Credit:  All images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. I like reviews. I write them reasonably regularly (mainly on books) and I use them as an indicator of whether I’m likely to enjoy a “product” or not for everything from groceries to books I’ve been recommended to read. It doesn’t mean reviews are always right of course but I find them a useful general guide. If everybody loathes something, there is usually a good reason for it. Now with my writing hat on, I find obtaining reviews difficult as most authors do and I refuse to go down the paid-for review route. Not very ethical to my mind. I want a review to be honest and not to be “bought”. (Also smacks of desperation to me but that’s another matter. I would far rather have fewer reviews honestly obtained). I recently received a one star review for my second flash fiction collection, Tripping the Flash Fantastic . Now ironically part of me is pleased about this. Every author gets these. It kind of shows you have p...

 Hi, I thought for my first post here I’d share some of my life changing books. They all show the power of stories! The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey Tey’s Inspector Grant is confined to a hospital bed after  a nasty fall (and it was set some time ago! They’d have him on his feet and out now!). Grant is renowned amongst his colleagues for having an eye for criminal faces and he is brought a picture of someone he discovers is Richard III.  The only thing Grant knows is what everyone thinks - Richard killed The Princes in the Tower to take the throne. Grant decides, with the help of a research assistant going to the British Library for him, to investigate. Whatever your views on Richard III, this is a great detective story. (Colin Dexter uses the same  premise when his Inspector Morse is confined to hospital - see The Wench Is Dead ).  The book made me change my views on Richard III. It is renowned for being the catalyst for many joining the Richard III Societ...