Authors Electric

  Being a sucker for children’s books, I’m often drawn to those shelves in a bookshop – only to wonder how many well-established authors of a bygone era would have a chance of being published today. Take Enid Blyton; her stereotypical characters, mediocre writing style and gloriously un-pc assumptions about class and nationality would surely send her straight to the bottom of any slush pile. Yet 50 years after her death, her books still sell in their millions worldwide. Why? Because despite all these shortcomings (which earned her plenty of criticism even in her own lifetime), she knew how to craft a cracking good story, whether it be about a mysterious tree that played host to different magical lands, or about groups of children solving mysteries and going on adventures. She was, in short, a genius.   Blyton’s books will never achieve ‘classic’ status though because they aren’t ones you’d pick up as an adult to enjoy. Children’s books still in print half a century and more af...

‘A very famous editor once said to me: “Barry, tell them what they eat.”’ This is one of the delightful pieces of advice given by Barry Cunningham on writing for children . He doesn’t say who the famous editor is – Kaye Webb? – but I love this nugget for its apparent triviality, actually giving an extremely important message.  Food matters to children. It’s a big part of their everyday lives and if you want them to get lost in your story, better make sure you don’t let the action go on too long without feeding your characters. Yes, you can have scene breaks, but every now and then your readers will want to know what your hungry hero will be having for supper; even more so, if supper happens to be a fabulous party, or a midnight feast planned in the dorm.  Enid Blyton totally got this: remember all those picnics enjoyed by the Famous Five, or the illicit night time snacks shared by boarding school girls in Malory Towers? More recently J K Rowling...

I was recently sent a Q&A interview by a publisher for an upcoming anthology Into the Night Eternal: Tales of French Folk Horror,  ( which (shameless plug) will include my novella ‘ A Small Thing for Yolanda’ ). As always that online interview sheet included that old chestnut ‘Which books have influenced your writing the most?’ And, as always, I was at a loss for an answer. The books that had any effect on us at age four are never going to be the same at age fourteen, or forty-four, or sixty-four.   That said I am not sure that books read in adulthood ever affect us in the same way that they do when we are young. I suspect what the question is designed to portray authors as astonishingly erudite by naming the latest literary success or else one of the classic worthies such as Joyce, Naipaul or Woolf.   I have read and enjoyed my share of literary classics – ancient and modern, but I suspect the books that really influenced me the most will always be those fav...