Authors Electric

 Well, I say March update - really it's all about February as March has only just started.  My beta reader gave me a thumbs up for DI Bernie Noel 4 which was a huge relief. The last thing I had to do before sending it to my editor was a final read through. I did this using the Read function on Word. A fairly nice voice read out my MS to me and it was so helpful. I 'heard' the mistakes which were often small and I probably would have missed them if I'd just been reading normally. My plan was take my time with this over half-term but a couple of members of my family had other ideas.  I'm not very good with spontaneity but my husband and youngest made last minute plans to visit the Netherlands and Belgium and expected me to go to! I was still determined to finish the final read through and managed to do it just in time. It was a huge relief to send my MS off and now I'm waiting for the verdict! We had a good time away and my youngest can add the Netherlands and Bel...

I’ve just visited the Chip Museum in Bruges. Sounds utterly ludicrous, doesn’t it? How can you have a whole museum devoted entirely to that very Belgian food item, the chip? But you can – and I think this is one of the secrets of humour, when you take something way beyond the obvious.           The Chip Museum starts off the way you’d expect, with the history of the potato and a delightful display with potatoes of every shape and size and colour suspended in mid-air. Then there’s the fascinating topic of freeze-drying, the invention of the chip (with crisps as a by-product) and the correct way to cook them; oils or fats? And just when you think the place must run out of steam, there is a whole host of chip-cutting machines. Every sort of fryer you’ve ever thought of, and more besides, and the dinky little stalls that have sold them through the ages with their candy-striped canopies or corrugated iron roofs. Lots of cartoons, with baby...