Authors Electric

Why do we tell stories?  That’s easy – to entertain. To lull our children to sleep. To give people a way of occupying their minds on long plane journeys. And, of course, to make a living, if you happen to be the writer of that novel picked up in the airport bookshop. It’s not as simple as that, though, is it? Because if you’re a writer, you can’t help writing, whether or not your stories ever get published. The urge to tell and listen to stories goes deep into our psyche and is common to all human societies, no matter how ancient. This was brought home to me forcefully – and wonderfully – on a recent visit to Arnhemland in the Northern Territories of Australia, a region of 37,000 square miles which has been returned by the Australian Government to its Aboriginal owners, the Yolngu. To visit this beautiful, wild (and very humid) landscape you need a special permit; or you book, as we did, with the only safari company allowed to operate there.  Our guide took us ...

When I started writing  Shambala Junction  in Amsterdam in 2009, I had no idea that there was a traumatised young man named Saroo Brierley. Oceans away from me in Australia, he was desperately searching satellite images on Google Earth, trying to find a way from Howrah railway station to the home he lost as a child in India.  I had angrily started to write my novel, tentatively titled  Finding Piya , after reading a short news article in an Indian community newspaper about babies for sale in India. The article described a flourishing trade in unscrupulous international adoptions operating out of India. Shambala Junctio n was published in 2016, after winning the Virginia Prize for Fiction in the UK. Also in 2016, the much-feted movie  Lion  opened in movie theaters worldwide   starring scene-stealer Sunny Pawar, as well as Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman.  Lion  is based on Brierley’s memoir ( A Long Way Home , 2013).  ...

Being a writer is at best for most of us, a part-time job. Really, it’s true. Let’s be honest. We’d love it to be full-time but the reality is that for all of us, life intervenes. It might be that the dogs need walking, a family member needs to be cared for, or we have doctor’s appointments, grocery shopping to be done, or maybe the lawns need mowing or the toilet needs cleaning! Or – we have to go to work. To the job that pays the bulk of the bills. At least that’s what happens in my life. I’m a writer to be sure. I’ve written six books and last year won a silver medal for fantasy in the USA. I currently have two books as finalists in another USA award and that’s affirming. The books, bless them, have had their share of success on Amazon globally, ranking in Top 100 Paid in various categories over the years. Last week, a new historical fiction was published  (Book Two of The Gisborne Saga – Gisborne: Book of Knights ). And in between life’s demands, I’m working on shorts fo...

Knock knock … can I come in?             I’ve been invited, so I think you are expecting me. What an erudite lot these electric authors are. I Bombs and Butterflies by Jo Carroll feel a bit of an interloper beside writers of such experience.             Shall I tell you a bit about myself? Well, I didn’t set out to be a writer. I spent years working in Child Protection, which is important, and I’m proud of all I achieved. I wrote numerous articles, and a book, and did some Serious Research; and then – on a bit of a whim – gave it all up to go travelling, on my own. Well, thirty years protecting children is a long time. I came home from trotting round the world (in my mid-50s, just to make it more difficult) with boxes of notebooks and more stories than I had people to listen to them. Write a book, someone said. Well, there were worse ways to fill my time, n...