Authors Electric

Writers who get their evil on. Bwahahahaha! Just musing, should I murder my ex? Hmmm. A fellow-writer, fictional but then aren’t we all one way or another, Richard Castle in the eponymous TV series, says ‘ There are  two kinds  of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill  people : psychopaths and mystery writers. ’  I’m a crime writer (and not a psychopath at all, honestly. No, really.) And I suspect that quite a few authors have bumped off or tormented in print those they have reason to dislike in ways the law of the land unsportingly refuses to sanction. Advice for writers ‘I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.’ Thus DH Lawrence, and it is obviously true, he must have felt malevolent when he saddled us with his whiney novels and cluelessness about female orgasms. But perhaps writing for spite is more common than gamekeepers shagging posh birds? (Oops, unfortunate kinky image conjured up there! You’re welcome!) ...

Last New Year I was in Sydney - apocalyptic fireworks! HAPPY NEW YEAR! This post should go live at midnight, some time after which my boyfriend and I will be heading back from our friends’ house party. When we arrive home we shall deploy the motley collection of objects I shall take with us or previously place near the front door step: a box of matches/lighter, a bottle of drink (usually whisky but could be wine or juice), some salt, a piece of wood/coal, and bread/something edible. We will make sure he goes into the house first, for he will be the 'first foot' through the door in 2015, carrying these objects representing fire, fuel, food and drink, with the hope that the whole year to come will see us well supplied with these essentials and therefore Good Luck. First-footing Kit - salt, coal, whisky and bread, aka the basics. When I was a bairn in the north east of England, New Year’s Eve was celebrated as much as it is in Scotland under the name of Hogmanay, t...

Everybody knows the Henry Ford bon mot. ‘History is bunk,’ the great man said.  Or didn’t, probably. Search hard enough (not very hard, at that) and you’ll discover several different versions, all claimed by someone as the one and only truth. ‘History is junk.’ ‘History is bunkum.’ ‘History is the junk.’ ‘History is the bunk.’    Or try Hermann Goering’s chilling giveaway of the Nazi character. ‘When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.’ Ooh, nasty – except that what he probably said – an adaptation of a quote by the poet and playwright Hanns Johst – was ‘When I hear the word Kultur [which has subtle connotations in German anyway] I reach for my Browning.’ Aha! A sophisticated joke, perhaps. Does he mean a semi-automatic pistol, a medium machine gun – or the revered English poet, whose own ambiguity, for me, is best revealed in My Last Duchess? You tell me.    When I wrote my first version of my Rudolf Hess book, which HarperCollins publish...