Authors Electric

  Margery Allingham was a May baby, born into this gorgeous month of fresh grass and leaves, when the air is scented by honeysuckle or wild garlic; peonies, giant poppies and alliums are bursting balls of colour; the annual miracles of lilac and wisteria cascade in elegant fragrancies. As a lonely child, moving from suburban London to Layer Breton, Essex, she learned to love the unkempt garden of a decaying country rectory for its wildness and sense of possibility.  As a successful adult, living in Essex once again, she and her husband gave parties in their garden, employed a full-time gardener and exhibited prize roses in the local horticultural shows. That was never the heart of its meaning. Margery’s garden remained a sanctuary, a place where she could achieve ‘ a momentary clarity of mind, which will give me a definite lead at least to the next step in whatever I may be about .’ (Oaken Heart p115). When she experienced breakdown in mid-April 1955 she was seen wandering t...

"I wish, I wish ...." Peter Duck 2014 If I had One Wish and wasn't allowed to use for anything altruistic (eradicating poverty & inequality, enforcing world peace etc) I think I would wish to learn how to write short stories. I've never wanted this before. I'm a very quick and gulpy reader, too impatient (in the past) to savour the subtle pleasures of a good short story. These are the stories that force you to close the book, turn off the e-reader and let them linger in your mind. I've always been over-eager to race on, read more.  Occasionally binge-reading works even for short stories. As a child I read obsessively   MauriceGriffiths 's Ten Small Yachts, his 1933 follow-up to his masterpiece, The Magic of the Swatchways (1932) I read that book too but without the same compulsion. Ten Small Yachts  told me story after story (they were true) of MG's relationships with his successive boats. I would end one story satisfied, momentarily, th...

          A writer is someone who writes. Seems easy doesn’t it? But, at what stage do writers become professionals? Not so easy. Is it when they write their first article, story, novel, or book? Or is it tied to publication? And if it’s tied to publication, what kind of publication? Does publication in magazines count? What about online magazines? Does it have to be a book? And what about e-books? Do you have to be published by one of the Big Six to be recognised as a professional author? In my opinion that would be a bit restrictive. So, should this be extended to other publishing houses who are not part of the Big Six? And what about the multiplicity of independent publishers (Indies) that are springing up?           I started to wonder about this after chatting to the membership secretary of the CWA (Crime Writers Association) who indicated that the number of self published e-book auth...

Margery Allingham Albert Campion Margery Allingham (1904 – 1966) was one of the Golden Age “Queens of Crime” along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Ngaio Marsh. Her series detective, Albert Campion, sometimes merges in people's minds with Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey – those languid, upper-class, vaguely Woosterian / Sir Percy Blakeney-ish types.  As far as I'm concerned this perception does Campion and his creator a disservice. I was lucky enough to write Allingham's biography ( The Adventures of Margery Allingham ) and remain constantly impressed by the way she used her detective to dramatise her personal preoccupations and record her observations of social change over four decades.  Bibliography of MA's short stories Allingham was always a developing and experimental writer. She stayed within the 'box' of the crime novel but never wrote the same book twice. Campion appears in nineteen full-length novels from The Crime at Blac...