Authors Electric

What better title for an autumn blog? Although it’s actually the title of a book I’ve just finished, which was one of the most fascinating reads I’ve had for a long time. I’m very much a genre reader – crime, thrillers, sf and fantasy, with an occasional bit of horror thrown in for good measure. Literary fiction I find a touch pretentious, as I read for the story and while I can appreciate a carefully-constructed sentence and perfectly-placed word, it’s not as important (to me) as whether the protagonist is going to escape or not! But each to their own and the world needs more books of all sorts.   Falling Leaves   is an autobiography. Not by one of the current crop of celebrities – who on earth reads those things? Maybe they are just coffee-table tomes bought as Christmas presents for people who like to have a Book (note the capital B) on display in their house.  Falling Leaves is the life-story of an ordinary person – a Chinese girl Adeline Yen Mah growing up in 20 th c...

Serious and potentially controversial topic this month:  Cultural appropriation . Hear me out. I read somewhere in the  news way back  about a pretty, young middle-class white girl wearing a Chinese dress (specifically a  cheongsam ) to a party. There was outrage and the poor girl was vilified online for  cultural appropriation . I’m sure she simply thought she was wearing a lovely dress and in many ways paying a compliment to any Chinese friends and the Chinese culture in general. And what was wrong with that? I have no real idea. So Chinese women wear cheongsams too. But apparently she was insulting anybody Chinese, by daring to wear their (national?) dress while being white. Being middle-class probably didn’t help either as the cheongsam is allegedly a symbol of female empowerment.  It’s a cultural minefield out there. We move into the literary sphere and suddenly we can no longer write about things of which we have no personal experience, ...

          The most cliched comment in the UK at present will almost certainly include the word 'ark', as we've had almost non-stop rain for about three months. As an introvert, I'm not the greatest fan of real summer, which, with its blue skies, sunshine etc, keeps pulling at me like an irritating child, but this greyness and endless rain is something else. However, it has made me concentrate on my latest publisher's brief - a challenge involving subverting some well-known and excellent texts. Work completed (or probably not - is it ever?) I really would like to sit in my garden (at present very soggy) and enjoy some sunshine.           My latest book - PRINCESS FROG - is just out, but I have yet to receive my author's free copies. Seeing and holding the actual book still feels like the culmination of the creative process, so what about ebooks where the words are everything and the material obj...