Authors Electric

  "Break a leg!" is a common phrase heard in the theatre. It is said without malice and means the complete opposite. I Googled to find our why but the exact origin is unknown. Before Christmas I slipped on the ice and broke my arm – is that a writerly equivalent I wondered? "Hey - Break an arm!" Writers obviously use their arms more than legs. Of course, it’s my right arm that’s broken, my writing arm, if I’m using pen and paper. Although I am typing this with both hands using most of my fingers, so even with a broken arm my hands and fingers still work. I should count my blessings, most of me still works, although I find I am feeling more creaky as the years pass. Slowing up or should that be slowing down? Perhaps my brain is seizing up as well, although I didn’t land on my head, just my ample behind, which started aching a few days later, and the arm that I put out to quite literally break my fall. There is no cast on it, no visible sign to the outside w...

Mum with 'Mr Cuddlebear' a present from her great granddaughters. There's more than one way to 'Be With'.  I think my mother may be dying – or perhaps she's 'just' seriously ill? She has an acute urinary tract and kidney infection, her lungs are crackly, her throat full of mucus.   She hasn’t eaten or drunk for several days and her breathing is rapid and shallow. She can no longer get out of bed, is alternately restless and drowsy, confused, hallucinating, dehydrated, delirious. She thinks she’s dying -- but she often thinks that (most nights, when I leave her). Is this time different? I know so little about death.   When I go to the internet and consult the Marie Curie site  I see Mum’s symptoms checking almost all the boxes – but also these may equally well be the manifestations of her severe infection, diagnosed ten days ago. So there’s no let-up in the struggle to get the antibiotic medication into her, as she spits and claws and hurls ab...

Some time ago, my writers' group chose to share images of their working environment. Th ese were some of mine . I work in a room full of books, the greater part of them consisting of my late husband David's lifetime's collection of F antasy and S cience F iction. T his small collection sits just to the right of my computer, and the bits and bobs in front of the books hold very pers onal memories for me. There are two Walker Christmas bears dating from the years I was regularly published by Walker Books (any previously published Walker authors may recognise the se - the one on the left came in a kit).  Next to the cuddly bear stands a parrot whose significance I have long forgotten, but I do love him . And then there's a shad owy image of something I will now show you in more detail - yes, it's a pottery cat, and it could well be flying. It remi nded David of the flying/gliding kitten in my junior novel DRAGONCAT so he bought it for me. As you m i gh t kno...

Six Eyes, Eight Legs, One Sword Mirkwood was murky as murky could be Murk lurked in each glade and each glum shrubbery With cobwebs and shlob-webs that swagged every tree In loomings and gloomings of dark sorcery. No sunbeam could slip through those corpsickly pines No glow could untangle the strangulous vines There wasn’t a glimmer! There wasn’t a glim! Oh, never had Bilbo seen forest so dim. The dwarves all were grumbly with rumbling tums For most of their food was now chowed down to crumbs. The hobbit was famished with ravenous fam Their poultry was paltry, they’d finished the ham. They tried shooting squirrels as black as coal tar But which tasted the same, and one doesn’t go far. Those thirteen-plus-one had no lunch, not the least – When suddenly – wondrously! – there lay a feast! A shizzling of torches blazed out of the wood Which moments ago had been black, and a good Smell of cooking, and singing! came winging this way And “We’ll...

Are you sure it's only a figment of the imagination? A gorgeous botanical drawing of a Triffid by Bryan Poole for the Science Fiction Classics (1998) Dr Seuss allegedly invented the word ‘nerd’. Lewis Carroll gave us Jabberwocks, slithy toves and vorpal blades.  And no dinner service is complete without a runcible spoon, courtesy of Edward Lear. Everyone has heard of robots - a word popularized by Karel Capek in 1920, although he credited his brother Josef with actually inventing it. Following the discovery of a newly discovered particle called a positron, Isaac Asimov provided his robots with ‘positronic’ brains to help give the stories a more scientific feel, even though he admitted himself that it was a bit of spoofery. It was catchy, sounded right, and stuck, and has been used ever since by other writers - not to mention being incorporated into the names of any number of companies: even non-nerds will have come across the word. Personally, my fa...