Authors Electric

Three things to celebrate this month Firstly the pARTyLines Literary Caberet on Tues 8th Oct at The Old Joint Stock Pub & Theatre.   This was organised by Writing West Midlands as part of the Birmingham Literary Festival. The range of performances was tremendous and depth from performance poetry to prose and songs You will notice I am not in the photo…    There is a reason for that. Those who know me well may recall that this is the third occasion when I have been called upon for curtain calls and the cry of ‘she’s in the bar’ has gone up.  Its becoming something of a habit! It sounds bad – but hand on heart I had one drink all evening and happened to be at the bar buying it at that very moment.  In my defence if the nerve wobbling act of reading to a full house (standing room only) and little old me being sandwiched in the running order between two professional actors didn’t earn me a large G&T I don’t know what would. But hey – no big d...

In Her Defence : Bunch Courtney Investigation #2  has hit the stores at last! There is only so much one can say about a book launch.  We have all been there with the drinks and cakes - in this case it was tea and homemade cakes. We went with the alcohol free a s the launch was in the City Central Library, Hanley on a Saturday lunchtime, plus tea and cakes rather fitted the WW2 ethos of a tea party. Books were bought and signed and much chatter occurs. I gave a short reading and then a Q&A session, which was interesting in that many of the questions revolved around my research - how much did I do, was it online or in hard copy etc.   The reading was a little over ten minutes but the questions and answers went on for almost half an hour. But it was great fun. The blog tour on the other hand was more tiring in many ways.   Fielding contacts across various platforms every day was a full time occupation! So here it is – In Her Defenc...

In writing the various Bunch Courtney books food and drink often seemed to play an important part. The discussions between Bunch and various characters sometimes take place over the traditional cup of tea and yet we all know that tea was rationed from July 1940 with each adult allowed just 2 oz per person per week. There is a lot that I could say about tea during ww2. It is a treatise in itself, but one thing that came as a surprise, and yet was no surprise to me, was that in 1942 the UK government — close to defeat on all fronts and close to broke, its reserves drained as Atlantic convoys were hunted by U-boats— made the decision to buy up every available pound of tea from every country in the world. (With the obvious exception of Japan.) It was estimated that government purchases in that year were, in order of weight, bullets, tea, artillery shells, bombs and explosives. German High Command fully understood the importance of tea  and one of the primary targets for ...

It is that time of year when, amid the bustle of Yule planning, we often pause to take stock of our lives; especially in the days leading up to the end of the year when many of us make resolutions for the coming twelve months.   Those of us who embark on these plans do so with every intention of achieving something important to ourselves or to those around us. It might be losing weight or writing that best seller or beating that illness, or perhaps getting (or keeping) that job. Few people set them with the certain knowledge they will fail. Yes, we all have that sneaking suspicion that we may be reaching a little far, yet we wade in nevertheless in the hope that fortune will be on our side. Sometimes we set the bar a little lower with the expectation of attaining an achievable goal and in my experience they are the ones that get broken the fastest. Possibly because they are frivolous, more often because they were never serious objectives in the first place. I recall ...