Authors Electric

I love the adventure of writing a novel. I've heard it said that it is like driving with dipped headlights: enough light to see for the next few yards, trusting that, if you just keep going, there will be road enough ahead to take you to your destination.  When I first tried creative writing, I expected to be able to produce some short stories and a poem or two, maybe some memoir stuff. But not a whole novel. 'I could never imagine a whole plot,' I said to my writing tutor. 'You don't have to,' said she. 'Create some characters and they will tell you the story.' I thought this highly unlikely - and I accept that it probably is so for some authors - but was amazed to find that it does work for me. A few weeks ago, I started my fifth novel. I knew it was going to be a time travel one, with some modern characters and some from a hundred years ago. I knew the name of one of the characters because it was finding out about her (my great-grand...

They do say that there is no such thing as bad publicity: ergo, the only bad publicity would be that which is ineffective. But how to judge effectiveness? Is it the number of Amazon reviews we get? Or the number of books we sell? Or the best margin of profit we can get on each sale? Or might it be that delighted smile on the face of one old lady who clutches your arm and whispers, 'I couldn't put it down', shamefacedly, as if she has been very naughty reading such lightweight stuff. Novels! Shocking! Mrs Gaskell, eat your heart out. My third novel,  Eleanor's Journey,  is decidedly a woman's book, about five friends and their families and shenanigans. It is head-and-shoulders-above my other three in the spiciness stakes. I have had several shamefaced ladies of varying ages (I think the oldest was 89) confiding that they like it best. And hastily adding, 'Don't tell anyone.' We giggle together and I feel - strangely - effective. Of course, if she is...

Several years ago, I did a 'Fiction Workshop' course. We had a writing exercise each week and it was enormously beneficial. One exercise, which involved drawing up a detailed character study of an interesting person we knew, was the genesis of my third novel, 'Eleanor's Journey.' We studied plot arcs, point of view (PoV), dialogue, character development, use of tense, writing in the first, second and third persons and - my favourite - writing from the PoV of an inanimate object.   Plundering my files for an idea for this blog, I came across some of the writing done during that course. Can you guess the inanimate object which is speaking in each of these pieces? 1.'She handles me reverently as befits my patrician pedigree. I have been  el supremo for as long as anyone can remember. There have been copies, of course, nasty cheap things in a range of offensive colours. They don’t count. She fondles me loving...