Authors Electric

It's been a busy few weeks with the emphasis being on anthologies and short stories.  Belonging to the Coventry Writers Group and running my own creative writing class, Focus on Fiction , which meets every Monday evening, both groups have put together anthologies of short stories and both have been launched this week. I'm excited about both, but I have to admit that I'm really excited about the Focus on Fiction anthology, Winter Tales as the majority of my eight students have never seen their work in print. And their enthusiasm in getting this book together has been fantastic. I got to know this group of novice writers at the beginning of the year when I started running a new creative writing course. The course was supposed to last just six weeks, but something clicked and my band of eight didn't want the course to end, and so it's continued throughout the year.  A couple of months ago I set them an exercise to write a wintery/Christmas short...

The photo shows yours truly adding a pen to a fine collection in Highgate Cemetery. I didn't want my partner to take this photo, but he took it anyway and I'm quite pleased that he did. It was my first visit to Highgate and the tub of colourful pens caught my attention as I passed what was otherwise a rather unassuming headstone. Stopping to look, I saw it was the grave of one of my greatest heroes and favourite writers, Douglas Adams. As for the connection to this blog... well, The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy - not Douglas Adams's book but the original (and fictional) work upon which is it based - is arguably the Milky Way's first electronic book, though of course there may be others as yet unknown to our civilisation. It was certainly the first one to reach Earth. This revolutionary piece of technology predated the web and most of the internet, foreshadowing it while Tim Berners-Lee was probably still wrestling with BBC Basic. The entry in it for Earth de...

Cover Design by Rob Tysall   Fear. Fear. A fanatical devotion to the.... no, fear again. I'm not a complete e-publishing newbie. Last November, the Coventry Writers' group, to which I belong, ventured into e-publishing with our Coventry Tales . It was a rewarding and educational experience and the sales, while not amazing, have not been bad. Nor am I a stranger to conventional publishing (or whatever it's OK to call it now... I can never remember). I've had two books for adults and one for YA published that way and I have another series commissioned, this time for younger readers. So I'm not a complete beginner, though I'm relatively inexperienced in comparison with many of  my esteemed co-contributors on this blog (I'm learning lots from them). And I now have a book ready for e-release. Well, almost ready. It's been revised to within a jot and tittle of its life. It's been edited and proofed. I've hired a professional designer and pho...

Hi everyone - I'm Rosalie and it's great to be here. I love this blog and am delighted to be part of it. You people are all so inspiring and I'm hoping some of your talent, enthusiasm and expertise will rub off on me. As it's unlikely that most of you will have heard of me (though I know a few of you - hello!), let me tell you a bit about myself. I'm a bit of a scattergun author, the kind who makes agents wring their hands in despair. Some would say I haven't yet found my niche, but I prefer to think that I'm not the kind of creature that is happy in a single niche - or at least, I'd rather explore a variety of them first, before making up my mind. I've been making up stories since the age of four or five. I wrote my first full-length novel at 15 and had a near-miss with a publisher when I was in my late twenties, but foolishly took this to mean I should give up. So I studied for my PhD and became a university lecturer. This, together with my family...