Authors Electric

Margery Allingham on Mersea Island Very few people these days have read Margery Allingham’s first novel, Blackkerchief Dick , published in 1923 when she was aged 19. They are probably wise, though for the uber-Allingham nerd, there are definitely points of interest. But for anybody who writes fiction, its genesis is surely fascinating. The plot and characters for this first novel were, apparently, ‘given’ via a series of eight séances, initially undertaken by the Allingham family as a summer holiday pastime on Mersea Island in August 1921. From the first moment that I read through the slightly tired looking leaves of paper with transcription in capital letters and blunt pencil, that survive in Margery’s archive, I’ve felt convinced that here lies treasure for the literary psychologist.   The word séance probably makes this sound more occult than was intended. At its most basic level ‘playing the glass’ is a game.   A wineglass or tumbler is placed on a table and encircled ...

Hello! This is my first post here on Kindle Authors UK, so I thought I’d tell you a few things about myself. I on ce volunteered for an experiment in ESP. I sat in a room and was told to close my eyes and think of nothing while someone in another room beamed thoughts at me. A researcher put wires on my head to record my brain patterns and see if any communication was taking place between us. To help me zone out he put a swirly mandala on the wall and played me white noise through headphones (thank you, SantaRosa OldSkool for the one below). Honestly, I tried to think of nothing but it was just like an episode of The Avengers . Brainwashing, EEGs, far eastern symbols; and all in a leafy suburb of London. With some difficulty, I locked in on the husky hiss in my headphones. After a while I began to he ar voices. Inside my head. Very faint, but definitely people talking. Eureka, was this ESP? I heard the crackly whisper of a jingle, and then … was that Bon Jovi’s...