Authors Electric

Hello everyone, sorry to follow on from Reb yesterday, it's purely coincidence that Reb and I are both hanging up our AE blogging pens, but I think this will be my final blog for Authors Electric. I’ve loved reading everyone’s blogs over the years, but my writing is leading me further away from Indie writing, so it’s difficult for me to write on topics that our blog’s readers will be interested in. Happy to say I’m busy writing for reluctant readers, with about a dozen books published now with educational publisher Badger Learning. These are for teenagers with a lower reading age than their actual age. I’m also writing crime novels for Bloodhound Books; and as always magazine articles on all kinds of topics.   However, something I can write about for this blog, which ties in with Indie publishing and mainstream publishing is that the latest book accepted by Bloodhound is actually a collaboration between me and a good friend. So, two authors and one title. Coll...

My book fairy journey: The stickers arrived, the preparation happened and the six places I left my books in central London on Saturday 16 September 2017. Today, Goodreads turns 10 and they've celebrated by teaming up with The Book Fairies. Authors and readers were invited to order some special stickers, put them on the front of their books and then hide those books in plain sight for people to find. I had visited The Book Fairies website before, and loved the idea (you may have read about actress Emma Watson leaving books on London's underground for people to find, well this is the same thing and she is an official "fairy"). So, when I received an email from Goodreads, telling me about their #hideabookday to celebrate their tenth birthday, I knew I had to get involved. Throughout the year, The Book Fairies website sells stickers, badges, bags and ribbons that you can use with the books you're gifting. I opted for the stickers, as they had a few for Goodre...

Last month, as everyone packed their bags and headed home after another fantastic Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate , I was buzzing. And, as much as I enjoyed the festival, it actually had nothing to do with my feelings of excitement and fear. Sunday 23 July was a big day for me because the third book in my DI Hamilton series, Deadly Friendship, was published. I thought my emotions would be far more contained than they were - not only was this my third book in the series, but, in total, it's the fifth I've published, so I should be used to publication day, right? Wrong! I've realised my nerves build the more I write ... and I'm sure many authors feel this. We're constantly in competition with the last book we've written - if readers loved it, can we match, and even exceed, their expectations? And if they hated it, can we better ourselves and our stories? We all know that we can't please all the people all the time, but gosh,...

Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Fest Over the last few months, there's been something on my mind that's not totally wholesome – crime! No, I'm not about to commit any dastardly deed, I'm talking about crime writing. I know we're Author's Electric, but I hope you'll forgive me for talking about my latest book, a crime thriller published by Bloodhound Books.  I wrote Kill or Die (under a different title) some years ago. I sent it off to a couple of publishers, who rejected it for very different reasons. One said it was too graphic and gory, the other said it wasn't graphic enough for a crime novel. So what did I do? Put it away in a drawer and forgot all about it. A couple of years ago I came across it again, and noticed a handwritten comment on the front page from a reader who had said they liked my style. Encouraged, I read through it again myself, and decided it wasn't too bad. So I re-worked and re-wrote and then eventually sen...

This is me - and it must have been taken after the reading as I'm smiling! I thought I’d use this month’s blog to give you all a quick update about the meet the author event I attended on July 1 st (click here if you want to read my original post) . Well, I’m happy to report that not only did I make it through the door, but I also read the prologue of my second book, No Safe Home. I won’t lie, my hands were trembling – and I had to hold both the book and the microphone in front of me, so there was no hiding the shakes – and my tongue felt ten times too big for my dry mouth. But, despite all of that, I read the chapter. More importantly, and thankfully, the audience listened intently, applauded and one person even purchased the book after the event due to hearing the prologue. Definitely worth the week of jitters leading up to the event, I think. I have to thank the team at Bloodhound Books and my friends and all the supporters who came to the event. I think my pre-...

Earlier in the year I, foolishly some might say, raised my hand to join an author event next month. Back then, mid-writing my work in progress, July felt like a million miles away. Well, it wasn’t, obviously, and the countdown is now against me. What’s wrong with attending an author event, you might ask? For me, loads. Especially when you’re fourth in line to stand up and read a chapter from your book. Some writers relish in this time and it comes naturally to them to read aloud the words they silently typed on their keyboard. To share a moment with your readers, when they hear your voice and are given the opportunity to ask you questions about the book, or your writing journey. All of this fills me with dread. It takes me back to my first year of university and a creative writing module I was studying. Part of our final grade, I think twenty or thirty per cent of it, was marked on each of us standing in front of the class (no more than twenty people, I’d guess) and read alou...

I come to you today from the depths of my editing cave. I've been here for two weeks now, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel - and therefore the reason you're having any contact from me at all. Before writing my books, I worked for an in-house magazine as assistant editor for eight years. A weekly magazine, and a team of two, we designed the layout, interviewed the staff, wrote and edited the articles. What I do now has a very similar set-up, and that's what I had in mind when I started this process in 2015: I can handle all aspects of my writing career, after all, I've done it for many years. How wrong could I have been? And yes, editing, I'm looking at you. What I didn't appreciate was the amount of editing I'd have to do in one hit. Gone are the few hundred word articles, replaced by the hundreds of pages and thousands of words. The paragraphs are no longer factual events, coloured with interesting quotes from employees, but are the inner ...

Getting the work/life balance right during the school holidays can be difficult for everyone So, today – Tuesday 18 th April – marks the end of the Easter holidays and my son returns to pre-school. Although I’ve just written the date, I have no real clue what day it is, why I’m sitting at my laptop and who the characters in my current work in progress are. You see, I think I’m a very lucky person to be able to work from home. It means a can choose the hours that suit me and I can work around my son’s part-time school rota. However, the downside to that is, I’ve found I’ve just had two weeks off work… two weeks I didn’t actually want off, and I’m feeling extremely guilty. Before my son finished nursery, I had just hit the half-way mark with my work in progress. My protagonist, DI Hamilton, was talking to me and telling me where he wanted the story to go and another influential character was coming up against some deadly threats. I was in a good place with the story. I’m ...

Today is something of a Red Letter Day for me, as it sees the release of my first adult crime novel. It's called Kill or Die , and while it's not self published, I hope you will indulge me giving it a little mention here. It's being published by Bloodhound Books, who have been a real pleasure to work with. I think we've all had bad experiences at some time or other with some publishers, but I'm feeling really fortunate to be working with two publishers who are just brilliant. My other one is Badger Learning who I write hi-lo books for reluctant teenagers. I'm not exactly new to writing crime, as my children's books for Scholastic back in the 1990's featured murder mysteries - but murder in the best possible taste! No blood or gore. Whereas in Kill or Die there's definitely bit of the sticky red stuff! It's funny though, how it's okay to write about murder – unless it's involving animals. When I was just starting to wr...

Yes, nail-biting takes place in the run up to publication I never appreciated how frightening publishing book two in a series could be. If I thought the days and weeks leading up to the book birthday of In the Shadows was nerve-racking… No Safe Home has trumped it. It’s a strange feeling, because I know an author cannot please everyone, or cater to all reader’s tastes, or might miss a hook for a blogger. As a reader, I’m fully aware I’m not going to enjoy every book I read, or relate with every character I meet. Yet, despite this knowledge, I still found myself in author limbo – and it’s a scary place to be. I’m the kind of person who needs to know. I like answers and reasons and feedback (I was called nosey as a teenager, but I prefer the word inquisitive). I love to know why. I love hearing people’s thoughts and reactions to things and, no surprise, this includes my books. At the end of last year, In the Shadows received a one star review on Amazon.com, and ...

Ghosts Electric was the first published anthology I wrote a short story for, and I had my reservations. While I love to read novellas or a two-page story spread in magazines, I never thought it was something I’d be able to successfully master. A collage of promotional images put together by the authors involved with the second anthology I have a short story published in      During my youth, I wrote untold amounts of small stories in notepads and colourfully designed  hardback books and treasured them for many years. But they were just for me. A collection of ideas that one day I hoped would evolve and grow and become a full-length novel. Those stories have never managed to make it out of the dusty drawer – and that’s probably a good thing – but I do finally have the ideas I need to make those novels. And, regardless of age and my state of imagination, the basic premise of writing is that the story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. But, when ...