Authors Electric

All good things come to an end, but endings can be hard to bear. Turning over the last page of a favourite novel can tear your heart in two, particularly if you have invested so much time getting to know the characters. Maybe that is why sequels are so popular, you can pick up where you left off and continue the story, with a new adventure, because let’s face it no one’s story really ends. Even when some people die, they can leave behind a legacy and the circle of life continues. I’ve just started reading a Dr Ruth Galloway book. The Locked Room is, I think, the penultimate one in the series. I could have devoured them all in one go, but I’ve spaced them out through the years. Elly Griffiths’ writing has kept me coming back for more but even she has now moved on. I must read her Brighton series and the Harbinder Kaur books before I investigate her brand-new series. There is so much I have to look forward to. The joy of new books – shiny with uncracked spines, unread but just wa...

Who can put a value on a star? stars with numbers for a quiz You can buy a star from the internet – the standard star package is just £19.99. It doesn’t take much googling to find it. But I’m not talking about celestial beings but rather star ratings given freely, which especially delight an indie author. I’m fortunate to have picked up quite a few for my memoir and I love how they twinkle but for some reason I find it harder to give them away. star stickers from a writing workshop “You’ve never left me a review?” said a writing friend at the weekend. She was quite shocked when I told her. “Um no! I don’t mind writing about a book explaining what I enjoyed but I find the star rating difficult.” I probably tied myself in knots trying to explain my reasoning, so I thought I’d write a blog about it and see if I can untangle my thoughts and see what is going on in my head. Firstly, I HATE filling in any forms that require rating something – so often I plump for the middle answe...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Do you review how many books you’ve read/listened to this year? I don’t. This is because while I’ve read plenty of books, I always feel I should be reading more. I remind myself I only have so many hours in the day and the better question to ask is did I enjoy the books I read? The answer to that is a definite yes. Life is too short to waste on a boring book. I like to mix reading fiction and non-fiction. I also mix up forms of writing so will read novels, then go on to short story and flash collections, before resuming novel reading again. I mix up reading between formats - hardback, paperback, Kindle. Plus I ensure I read the writing magazines I find most helpful. Within fiction, I like to mix genres too. I try to have a good all-round reading “diet” then. I was fascinated by Churchill’s Wizards (read on Kindle ) which looked at how artists, amongst others, deceived the Nazis using sleight of hand, camouflage, ma...

  Murder in the Highlands: a Sophie Sayers Cozy Mystery by Debbie Young. p/b Boldwood 9.99 / Kindle 2023   A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale p/b 4th Estate 2012 It’s said that writers should read widely. Over Easter, I’ve been reading in two very different genres, but both stories are set in a village and take advantage of the resulting restricted cast of characters. Cosy mystery, often, if not always, takes place in a lovely quiet village, and is solved by a female protagonist, who is an amateur sleuth. For a writer who has lived in a beautiful Cotswold village for at least half her life, it’s the obvious choice. Author Debbie Young has created a wonderfully wide-eyed young female sleuth, Sophie, a new arrival in her cottage home, and a complete contrast to Miss Marple. And this village boasts something rare – a real bookshop! Quite how Hector, the young man who owns and runs it, made ends meet before Sophie arrived is unclear, but nowadays, she’s not only his shop assis...

  Yesterday my second full length novel was finally published. It has been a busy and exciting time in the run-up. The writing of the book was finished a long time ago - I long for those days! Now I am in the throes of the far less appealing marketing stage. Wouldn’t it be fun if we could just spend all our time writing, and not worry about getting our books sold and read? Sadly, that is not the way of things. My first book came out during lockdown. I was vaguely aware at the time of something called a book tour – where authors travel from place to place and talk to enthusiastic gatherings about their new release. I was frankly grateful that Covid just made all that getting out there impossible. But how to get my book talked about, seen, bought even? I was fortunate enough to be a part of a writers group who introduced me to the idea of a blog tour. This simple idea relies on recruiting bloggers and book reviewers who are willing to read and review your book on their blogs. I...

Reading - for pleasure, obvs! I’ve reached that point when life (or what’s left of it, let’s not talk numbers!) is too short to carry on reading a book I’m not enjoying. So on my list of unfinished books are novels judged ‘great’ by the rest of the world. Cloud Atlas springs to mind – I think I started it twice but never got beyond the opening chapter as well as other more  random things which have rolled up on my book pile – I didn’t dislike Colm Toibins Norah Webster but wasn’t moved to carry on with it so eventually sent it on its way to a charity shop. With these and other masterpieces I’m happy to apply the 50 page rule*. If it’s not working for me by then, I might as well give up. But then there’s the book that does appeal straight away and has you hooked for quite a while.   Until  you start to lose interest. At first you blame yourself: lack of concentration, lack of intelligence! You’re clearly just missing something. But as the evenings pass you’r...

Ali Bacon out and about Time was when I regularly listened to audio books  that was when I had a part-time job involving a half-hour commute - perfect for picking up a story and letting go of home or work preoccupations. This was some time ago, of course and my audio books were on cassette - sets of tapes encased in big library boxes and taking several hours of listening. For some reason after I left that job,  and even though I still spent considerable periods driving, I somehow lost the habit of audio books. Possibly this was because I had started writing and spent most journeys worrying over my own characters. Remember these? I do remember the pleasure of those journeys and how the narrat out and aboutor was as important as the book. I discovered a penchant for a quiet American voice, perhaps because I also like quiet American books. and particularly remember losing myself in the cult hit of the time The Bridges of Madison County, to the extent of arriving at wor...

This month has delivered another hard knock as regards the realities of life with a small publisher. I’m talking about book reviews, not on Amazon or Goodreads or the fabulous efforts of book bloggers (to whom I'm eternally grateful), but the world of the main-stream press, or the bits of it I thought would be accessible to the author of a small but perfectly formed (though I say it myself!) piece of Scottish historical fiction. Print copies don't come cheap I like to think neither myself nor Linen Press took anything for granted as far as reviewers were concerned.   Before Blink was published we made a list of potential review media from the general (Guardian, TLS, Scotsman) to the more niche photography journals. Rather than send review copies unsolicited, each of the reviewers  was sent  (as were many personal contacts, bloggers and bookshops)  book, author and cover info. I was buoyed up by the fact that we got replies from several large circulatio...

Reviews. They’re a new thing for me. Being on the receiving end, anyway. Some authors don’t read them apparently. A. L. Kennedy, writing in  The Guardian  some years ago, said, ‘They emerge months, if not years after the book is done with, so they're not that much use to the author. If the book's a car crash, it's already happened and we've walked or crawled away long ago.’ Maybe that’s just traditionally published authors. It may be a different scenario for those of us who have published independently. After all, we’re told how important it is for sales for our books to have good reviews on Amazon and GoodReads, or from the many bloggers worldwide. We use snippets of them on social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, and in our blogs and websites as part of our never-ceasing promotion. A review is not just about helping readers find new books – it’s about authors actively helping them do that. New books? And, let’s be honest, a good review can ...