Authors Electric

Coventry's very own Lady Godiva, Pru Poretta.  They say that inspiration is all around us, and if any of you have taken part in your local Heritage Open Days run during September by the National Trust, you're probably buzzing with new ideas. Here in Coventry, the Heritage Open Days weekend began on Friday with the city celebrating 1,000 years of the birth of Coventry.  As many people know, Coventry is famous for the story of Lady Godiva, and the city is so fortunate to have its own resident Lady Godiva. A lovely lady named Pru Poretta who has taken on the role for the last 30 years or so and is a real ambassador for the city. Lady Godiva (Pru Poretta) in the new Coventry Cathedral. On the Friday of the Heritage Open Days, Pru headed a multi cultural procession from the town centre to the new cathedral for a ceremony which included the unveiling and presentation of a unique Travelling Tapestry, created and inspired by hundreds of people. ...

It's lovely when you receive a letter from someone who's enjoyed your book. But a little more unusual when you get a letter from the characters themselves! The other day I was curious when the postman delivered a brown padded envelope, and even more curious to find a hand written letter on a kind of scroll, and something wrapped in a piece of black material and tied with a black ribbon. A cursory glance at the letter had me noticing the words Cross of Aes Dana – which, if you've read my YA time slip book, Celeste you'll know is a magical pendant that my character Megan (alias Celeste) has to guard with her life, as it possesses the power of eternal life. I instantly thought it was from one of the teenagers I'd spoken to at their school recently – until I saw the letter was signed by Megan, Freya and Jamie.  That trio of names rang a bell – my characters in the book! They explained that they'd retrieved the Cross of Aes...

I suppose we're all constantly trying to find ways to tell the world about our books, and seeing that quite a few authors are now having trailer's made for their novels, I thought I'd give it a go, and see if it makes any difference to sales. Not being that technically minded I took up the offer of a fellow author in the USA, who runs Videos by O , creating videos for any budget. My budget wasn't very big, but that didn't make any difference to the effort that Opal put into the video, with her sending me mock ups throughout the process, and making the changes that I asked for. I'm fortunate to share a studio with a photographer, so a couple of weeks ago, we set out to take the necessary photographs that I'd need to create the look that I wanted for the trailer. This was for Celeste, my YA time slip book, which is published by American publisher, Clean Reads,  (originally called Astraea Press .) The story is about teenager, Megan Mil...

Happy New Year everyone!  So how was 2014 for you writing-wise? Did you achieve everything you were hoping to achieve?   If you made a new year's resolution did you stick to it? If I remember correctly my new year's resolution for 2014 was to write more and try to get more stuff published. Looking back, I haven't done too badly and it's certainly been an interesting year with magazine articles and some new books out. So I thought I'd post a few photos to illustrate some of the highlights and successful bits of 2014. I try not to harp on about the disappointments, such as being asked to try for a non fiction series with a publisher that I'm working with on some fiction books. Fab! I thought and pitched four ideas... or rather I would have pitched four ideas, had I remembered to send the email. Somehow - don't ask me how, but it ended up in my draft emails rather than being sent. And there it stayed until it was too late and the slots had all been filled. Do...

Wander around any supermarket at the moment and you'll be bumping into witch, ghost, skeleton and pumpkin costumes as Halloween approaches. And they seem to get better every year. Couldn't help but smile at a skeleton outfit I saw the other day that had a moving jaw and talked. Now that my kids are all grown up, Halloween isn't something I usually bother with, although this time last year, Rob who I work with at his Tysall's Photography Studio, was asked if he could take some family shots at the customer's house. No problem... until we got there, and the guy met us at the door, all dressed up as Dracula, and soon informed us that actually he was a real vampire. We hoped he was joking! After the photo-shoot we came away giggling like a couple of kids, and still looking over our shoulders as we headed to the car. Still, it provided a nice little scenario for a horror story should one be needed. Although I love writing stories that send shivers up t...

My very first YA book, Celeste has just been released, so I hope you'll forgive me for wanting to tell you a little about it, as the story has been rattling around in my head for these last 15 years! The spark of an idea for this story was lit way back when I was researching Coventry's 11th church of St Mary Magdaline – the city's oldest church which incidentally is still regularly used. While I was making notes about its factual history, another little compartment in the old grey matter was devising a fantasy story of a young woman realising she was hearing echoes from a past life. To begin with the story didn't get past the first page, and because I was busy writing articles and other books, this one got put on the back burner to be occasionally re-ignited when I'd nothing better to do. Slowly, in between various writing projects, the story began to form some sort of shape but then it would get shoved to the back of the queue and it would disa...