Authors Electric

 How was your summer? It's probably the question asked most in September as people head back to work and school after the holidays. Of course, the expectation is that you've had a good time and are rested to face the rest of the year. My answer to this question though is that it was a bit crap. More than a bit, actually. It started on a high with attending the Theakston's Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate but I caught Covid and things plummeted from there. My husband caught it from me. We were both ill for over four weeks. It wasn't an easy time for our kids.  We had to give up Proms and theatre tickets. We watched a LOT of TV, including the Prom we had to miss. Thankfully, we were well enough to go on holiday to Croatia last week. Croatia In amongst all of this, I was waiting for an email from my publisher. The book I spent all of last year writing had finally gone in to a different editor. Unfortunately, the news wasn't positive. Lots of things to like but not f...

OK, so I admit - sometimes a writer's life is not at all bad!  Most people would call it a holiday, but it goes down in the accounts as research. On the quayside  of Rovinj with the 'centro storico' in the background. Settings are very important - Catherine Cookson always said that she chose characters and an environment and the whole novel came out of the conflict between the two. One writer I know deliberately thinks of the most romantic destinations she can and then sets her new book in one of them - a great excuse to go off for a month or so to soak up the atmosphere.  I set my latest novel in Istria, Croatia for very different reasons (honest!)   I wanted a location that hadn't been overused and wouldn't be all that familiar to the reader, and I wanted somewhere with a troubled, but reasonably safe, atmosphere.  There had to be an undertow of unease from past events, to echo what is happening in the lives of the two main characters.  Croatia has...