Authors Electric

Dear Aunty Debbie. I’m so happy!  (utterly deadpan) Why’s that then, Happy Writer?  HW: Because I’ve had an email from a company that’s going to make my book into a film!  AD: That’s amazing news. Which book is that?  HW: The one I put on Amazon last week. The one you told me needed editing and I couldn’t afford an editor, so I published it anyway.  AD: Okaaay. So what will this company do?  HW: Well, they found my book and they must have loved it so much, they told a producer friend who wants to make it into a film.  A D: They just came across it on Amazon?  H W: Yes – isn’t it incredible?  AD: (Totally incredible. As in not remotely credible …)  HW: And they won’t charge me anything.  AD: I’m sure they won’t. Yet. But this is what will happen:  The company’s representative – let’s call him John – will email you a few times, telling you how much they love your book (but oddly never mention anything specific to your story ...

I’m in quite a few writerly groups on Facebook, of varying degrees of ability and professionalism. Some – like Authors Electric’s own former blogger Wendy Jones – runs an excellent group Women Writers, Editors, Agents and Publishers . This is a highly-moderated pro group for women only and full of useful advice and networking; I highly recommend it to any women involved in the literary world.  Other groups are less professional and often have little-to-zero moderation, resulting in a large number of members of dubious reputation or ability. Sadly, newer writers join – all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of enthusiasm to write their book and are often sucked into offline chats almost immediately: How do I start my book? Is this a good opening line? Should I do x or y?  Let’s chat about that. Kindly DM me.  And you just know that the newbie is going to drown in shady promises of instant fame and fortune. These incredibly generous offers of help come from people who are a...

Katherine Roberts’s blog post a few days ago about the tyranny of social media struck a chord. Social media have changed our lives.  First Facebook, whose friend connections at least made sense. I mean, it’s just another way of connecting with friends you have in real life, isn’t it? (IRL if you will… see what I did there? Oh heavens, two deeply irritating social media cliches in one go. Sorry.) Oh, and their relations, who you may have met. And their in-laws, who you definitely haven’t. And then… crikey who are these totally strange friends from round the world I’ve never come across before? Photo by Leila Larochelle: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ white-and-brown-deer-standing-on-snow-10709569/ Then Twitter, which revolutionised everything. I remember when I first, tentatively, tweeted and followed other accounts. How amazing it was to connect with people I had absolutely nothing to do with and would never come across otherwise, not just in different parts of the UK but on d...

Picture the scene. A middle aged woman sits in her brand new garden studio gazing at a blank laptop screen. It’s 1 st January 2022 and she has just become a full time writer. No more safety nets of extra income, no boss, no pension, no certainties. She is working on her third novel and is in the grip of writer’s block. One of her largest freelance clients has had an internal restructure and has stopped sending her work.   Gentle reader, that woman was me. I am still in said garden studio but I am now surrounded with the trappings of a travelling wordsmith. A new trolley sits under the window with two boxes atop it. I am the proud owner of two large glass bowls full of sweeties, three boxes of assorted merch, a light box, a pile of business cards, an illuminated sign giving potential purchasers payment options, three miniature Christmas trees, several strings of fairy lights and some book stands.   I hadn’t been a full time writer for very long before the chill wind of reali...

I’m naturally anxious to remind the august membership of Authors Electric that I’m still a keen follower of the group’s comings and goings so I’ve decided to use one of my occasional guest visits to help prolong the relentless gaiety of the Christmas and New Year observations by offering a little light-hearted challenge designed specifically for members' tastes and talents. In fact, it’s a variation on one I published several years ago by way of response to a Facebook posting. Facebook is a strange place for all sorts of reasons – some good, some less so. Just by answering a few questions, one can, for example, find out really useful things, such as which 18th century politician, Renaissance painter, Jane Austen character, or medieval landlord one most resembles in terms of one’s susceptibility to certain medical conditions. Other queries help one decide whether, temperamentally, one is closer to a porcupine, a swallow-tailed butterfly, or a haddock. Or there’s the simple process...

This is my first post of 2021 here, so I'd like to wish a Happy New Year to readers!  When I was thinking of a topic to write, I came across a post on a friend’s Facebook page that made me laugh.  The caption read: For the next time you think the 80s were cool.  Yeah, it was the decade of big hair and outlandish fashion.  The reason I found it funny was because I used to be a slave to fashion. My jeans had to sit above the waist, not below it. They couldn’t be too faded or too dark. They had to conform nicely around my butt and not cut off the circulation in my legs. I preferred the skinny fit over a baggy, loose pair, and if there were holes in them, they had to look as if they'd been ripped accidentally, not deliberately. The pressure of buying a pair of pants!  I wanted "the look" with Jordache jeans. Didn't we all? Looking back now, I pity my younger, insecure self. I was pretty shy in the eighties, and fashion gave me a sense of belonging. The eclectic styl...

I was looking for a suitable phrase to title this post and came across   this site . Number 48 wasn’t what I was actually looking for (I’m not even sure what was), but seems curiously apposite:   there is no royal road to learning . No easy path for writers, no shortcut, no wide avenue paved with accolades and awards. Which isn’t strictly true 100% of the time I guess – there will always be somebody who appears to just get there by sheer good fortune. Being a   celebrity  (and I use the word loosely) can often guarantee a book deal and one can always hire a ghost-writer after all. Remember the fuss over a certain person who when asked what her book was about, allegedly said ‘I don’t know – I haven’t read it.’? And sometimes, just sometimes, being in the right place at the right time with the right idea can be the key to breaking through into the big time. Although even then, many well-known writers will say it took them x number of years to be an overnight succ...

In a way it seems like every introvert's dream life. Encouraged to stay at home for the common good, only venturing out occasionally for very specific reasons, and always able to use technological failures to explain away absence from meetings or even virtual coffee breaks. Yes, actually, I am fairly relaxed in many ways about life in lockdown. In my case it doesn't even have the nightmarish 'hell is other people' aspect that it does for some others, as I tend to see quite a lot more of the three family cats than I do of the two people I live with. Because there are three of us here (although six including the cats) the situation   reminds me of   the play 'In Camera', also known as 'No Exit', by Jean-Paul Sartre, which I remember viewing   on television years ago. Its three characters are trapped together in a room, apparently for eternity. Incidentally it was a memorable production, with Harold Pinter playing one of the parts. I must say I wou...

Eva Noemi Cienfuegos Sometimes we don't see the trees in a forest. We've been preoccupied - justifiably - about the flagrant abuses of privacy and exploitation of social media by deadpanned corporate owners in puerile tee-shirts, along with their platforms being weaponized in the interests of oligarchs and fascists in Moscow, London and Washington. A lot of us - including some of my good friends - have quit Facebook and other forums in disgust. I myself have stopped buying social media promo-services in protest - a gesture, I know, but I did let them know.  But I don't want to quit hanging out with my friends on Facebook, Twitter, et al, however, given their too-often discounted, fine company. Why cut off my nose that way? We've all been using the Internet to commingle long before there was a Facebook anyway (beginning with forums and bulletin boards back in the day). Before that we had (and still have) coffee houses, taverns, graffiti, and letters, poetry and or...