Authors Electric

Ah, travel writers - they can transport us all over the world. But times have changed since Eric Newby wrote about his Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Now we can google anywhere we want. We can watch people terrify themselves with white water rafting or bungee jumping. We can relax to the shush of the waves while we sip wine from the comfort of our own living rooms. Do we need words any more? And, if we do need words (I'm a writer - what is life without words?), what are we hoping for? To find out about a faraway place we might visit some day? To learn about cultures and differences that can widen our horizons? To get vicarious pleasure from someone else's risk-taking? I've written about travel for decades. I think that the focus - even the reason - for travel writing has changed. When I wrote about my round-the-world trip ( Over the Hill and Far Away ) I was in my mid-50s and wanted to show that it was possible for women of any age to take on the world and have advent...

I’m in Ecuador - and writing this in a hammock. Oh lucky me!! However, by putting my good fortune down to luck devalues the privilege that allows me to wander round the world as I do. I am a white woman, from a comfortable background, and graduated from university (a long time ago) with no debt and plenty of dreams. There’s been a lot of Life since then, of course, but that doesn’t take from the fundamental good fortune of my origins. I love it here. I have spent hours watching pelicans dive-bombing the sea: they cruise from about two feet above the waves and then rise, only to plummet like rockets. Sometimes they bob up with a full beak, and sit on the sea gulping for a minute or two before taking to the skies again.  There they joined by the frigatebirds, which wheel above the fishermen in their hundreds. Frigatebirds don’t bother to fish for themselves; they wait for a fisherman to throw away a tiddler, or to turn his back, and steal it. And, if one should be succe...

What do you look for in a travel book? One of the most memorable pieces of advice I was ever given was 'don't write about things people can see on the telly'. And so I have never written about hearing Rigoletto at the Sydney Opera House as both can be found online without too much difficulty (even though it was wonderful). That mentor also told me make sure I involved my own experience - which meant writing about things I hadn't told my daughters about. I'll never forget steeling myself to tell them about the man with a gun in Lucknow. But my last trip took me to Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands. I spent a few days deep in the upper Amazon basin, where caimans hide in the shallows and tarantulas creep up the hut walls. Google any nature site and it's easy to see pictures of the Amazon (though they can't capture that wet mud smell, nor the wake-up call of the howler monkeys). I took a road trip through the mountains, where the ground trembles for so...

I've just sent my ebook about Ecuador to the copy editor. It's nail-biting, isn't it, that moment of pressing 'send' and knowing someone is going to take a toothcomb to your efforts. If it's truly dreadful, I want to know - of course I do. I don't want to publish something that will make the reader decide that chewing his/her own arm off is preferable to reading this twaddle. Travel writing brings its own challenges. Print books can include photographs. But I haven't found a way to incorporate pictures into ebooks and still keep the price down. Which has been a particular challenge with this book. I mean, how do you find the words for this: Or this: So I need to know if the word-pictures I've painted do justice to some of the things I've seen. Some I can enhance by talking about smells (the mud and dust of the jungle) or sounds (the cry of the frigate birds), or just the feeling of amazement at being there (swimming with ...

I don't often use this post for blatant marketing. My hope is to entertain, or make you think - if only for a moment. If anyone is inspired to follow the links and buy a book, well that's a bonus. So please bear with me, just this once. You'll see why. You can't have missed the news about recent earthquakes. This time last year is was Nepal. Recently there have been two huge quakes in Japan, followed by a third in Ecuador. Each time there are pictures of collapsed buildings, exhausted men and women digging in the rubble in the hope of pulling one person out alive. Anyone who survives under the stones and the dust for longer than a day or so is celebrated. Do we, from the comfort of our sofas, grow immune to such disasters? Do we see so many that we forget that these are people just like us, with children and dreams. People who work and play and squabble over what to watch on the telly. People who want nothing more than family around them, food to eat - and a r...

When you read this, I'll be climbing off a boat in the Galapagos. I shall have been snorkelling, gazing at exotic fish and corals. I shall have been tramping on tropical islands and gawping at giant turtles and blue-footed boobies (that's a bird, just in case your imagination was taking you elsewhere). And I shall have had no phone nor internet connection for a whole week. (I don't, as I write this, know if I'll be connected by the time you read it.) So here's the dilemma. A week on a boat, sailing among the most exotic islands in the world. Or faffing about on social media, marketing a book or few? For me, the answer is easy. Travelling comes first, then writing about travelling, and finally the delights of blogs and Facebook and Twitter.  (Actually keeping in touch with my daughters and grandchildren comes very high on that list - and they know that.) As writers we are told we should be out there, all the time, reinforcing our brand. Being generally witty a...