Authors Electric

Veni, vidi...Wiki! Not long ago I had the all-time greatest Great Idea: one, born of total ignorance, that nearly tanked a novel. As you may have guessed from my opening line, my subject is Julius Caesar. But you might not have guessed from the title that my Great Idea entailed his being reborn as a penis. Don't laugh, please, I beg you. I saw no way around this, even though showing JC as a 'dick' might lead some to think that I've written a spoof. In fact, it's a serious thriller. Without giving the plot away, I can say this: I needed JC's ghost, today, remembering his nights with Cleopatra on her fabled golden barge. There  was the heart of my book--a ghost trying for 2000 years to relive that lost boogie with Liz. And I'd begun to run with this when my memory corrected me: Mark Anthony, not JC, was on the barge with Cleo. And this was after JC's death. What the hell was I to do, lacking the good sense to check memory's 'facts...

          A fantasy setting is, in many ways, closer to the world as we know it than a science fiction one. It’s more accessible, and consequently more attractive to a child who is still awed by things that are all too familiar to an adult. Fantasy is unlikely to change gravity, or body chemistry, or a breathable atmosphere. Therefore the creatures that populate that particular world would be at home in ours.  There are several ways of creating these creatures – either by changing the size or behaviour or appendages of an existing creature, or by making a hybrid of creatures already known. Many mythical beasts are clear mixtures of two or more real animals. The griffin is half eagle and half lion; the minotaur half bull, half man; and the chimera had the body of a goat, the hindquarters of a dragon, and the head of a lion, although descriptions do vary.      When I needed to invent a really scary animal myse...