Authors Electric

December is a time for looking back and although I’ve written a few Christmas letters in my time reminiscing about what we have been up to as a family I have never looked back at what I have achieved as a writer in the past 12 months. To be honest I tend to play down many of my writing exploits, but with my memoir about to be published in the New Year it’s time for a change, a time to be bold and update my writing CV. In January I discovered a new opportunity writing for Paddler Press magazine .  My piece based on Silence was accepted on January 6th and the magazine arrived all the way from Canada on the 28th.   According to my diary I was also very busy writing lots of 100-word stories for my memoir. At the beginning of February I wrote a 100 flash for the Retreat West monthly microfiction competition.   By the end of the month, I was crowned the winner and I took home the People’s Prize as voted for by the readers. March was a month where life took on a ne...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.  I’ll be en route to Scotland when this goes out. I’m part of the Brechin/Angus Book Festival (19th - 21st November). I’m running a workshop (on flash fiction) and giving an author talk. It will be lovely to meet up with writing friends, who are also taking part. I love the idea of events to celebrate books whether you read them, write them, or do both. I can’t imagine my life without books. Nor do I wish to! Literacy is to be cherished.   I’ve sometimes gone to medieval weekends and return from those aware, had I lived then, I would most likely have been an illiterate peasant. I probably wouldn’t have reached the age I am now (and it is likely I would have died in childbirth).   I smile when people talk about what or whom they might have been in a previous life. It’s always someone famous, glamorous, or both. Never anyone who was a peasant! Funny that…    For all the horrors...

Margaret Attwood's book about and for writers is tellingly called 'Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing.' For anyone who thinks being or becoming - or even just trying and hoping against hope to one day become - a famous writer is a glamorous pursuit, this book will set them straight. As we all know, the hours are such as would turn any trade unionist worth his/her salt apoplectic; the hourly rate of pay probably below the mini-est minimum; the conditions of service (sick pay, holidays, compassionate leave, expenses, etc) conspicuous by their absence; the uniform unglamorous (of the jogging-pants-and-bedsocks variety); colleagues, support and supervision, training budget, annual appraisals leading to professional development plans - all the stuff I used to implement conscientiously for my staff when I was 'doing a proper job' - nowhere on the horizon. What is a writer's life like? I took up the challenge to write a short satirical piece on that top...

 This year villages in the area where I live, in the lovely Chiltern countryside, laid on the first 'Beacon Literary Festival on Saturday 22nd January.  It was not the sunniest of days so it was just as well there was a lovely marquee awaiting both the authors and visitors.  There were several very heavy showers, but thankfully not enough to deter the visitors. There were several local authors present at the book signing table, and it was lovely to chat with them and with the visitors of course. To my surprise  I sold six books which made the day even more worthwhile. There were also two book panels, chaired by another local author, and member of the Chiltern Writers Group, to which I also belong, and there were some interesting and lively debates in response to some of the visitors' questions. There was a ghost story contest for local children which I was honoured to be asked to judge. Not an easy task except for the First Prize Winner whose story...