Authors Electric

As the year of the Covid rumbles on we find more and more of those events we look forward to are falling by the wayside.  At the weekend just past I should have been on a panel at EdgeLit in Derby (event cancelled). Likewise events where I was intended to be on panels, or give readings, or (wo)man a book stall for Alchemy Press, are Birmingham Lit Fest, Fantasycon, Novacon, Stokercon and several other one day Lit events. Stokercon was the biggest loss for me. This had been scheduled for April and I had intended to launch my folk horror novella, A Small Thing for Yolanda, there, as well as the horror anthology Alchemy Press Books of Horror 2, which I co-edited with Peter Coleborn and Alchemy Press, and two other Alchemy titles, Les Vacances by Phil Sloman and Talking To Strangers by Tina Rath. But alas, it was not to be. The only bright spot at that times was that Stokercon was rescheduled (optimistically as it turned out) for August. But Covid had not done with us. Stoke...

In August last year, I was right amid book launch mayhem for You Beneath Your Skin . Almost one year later, the world is irrevocably changed--there is a pre and post covid era, and we are all waiting for the shape of us when we emerge at the other end, when covid becomes a memory. Things are apparently not yet at their worst. Through it all, life has gone on, as it does. Last week, amid all the crazy anxiety for friends and family, I announced a piece of news that helped cheer us a little. Endemol Shine has optioned You Beneath Your Skin for TV screens, and the news emerged on Hollywood Deadline . This will hopefully take the book into new hands--and when the TV series gets made, I would get see my characters on screen. I'm equal parts excited and apprehensive, for obvious reasons, but it still makes for good news for the two nonprofits the book supports: Project WHY and Stop Acid Attacks . Meanwhile, the world still goes on. Everywhere I look, there's misery...

Colorado Symphony's "Play On" virtual ensemble This changes everything! We repeat this mantra with every crisis, disaster, plague , and war. There's truth in it, despite that our ways may change, but human nature not so much. COVID-19 remains rampant worldwide at this writing, while our cities hunker down to stall its spread and buy time for our doctors and scientists. Squint, and you can see the outlines of changes to come in a post-pandemic world. I'll leave analyses of the cultural, economic and political tectonics to others, and note only the vibrations we're already feeling in our world of writing and publishing. It's early days, but reports indicate a surge in book sales as might be expected what with so many of us sequestered at home with time on our hands. It's difficult to tell if this will be a longterm trend, but demand for books seems to be surging at the moment, particularly for e-books - delivered electronically...