Authors Electric

  Reading to Write   When the green book containing my INSTED article “The Companionship of Books”, dropped onto the doormat, I was over the moon as the expression goes. I wanted to play my favourite records at full volume; I wanted to take my wife out for a slap-up dinner. I felt so inordinately pleased with myself that I gave our cat Monty some extra Dreamies. Recognition is such a wonderful thing for us writers.   As most writers do I love reading as well as writing, and recently, before we went on our wedding anniversary trip to Corfu, I bought two of the books that have featured on Authors Electric and which had intrigued me as a reader. These were,  Life in Art and Practice  by Mari Howard and  Sex Pro!  by Reb McGrath. The following comments are not   reviews but my thoughts on the books, how I read them and what they made me think about, answering for myself the important question of, 'Why we read?' - something I had looked at in the artic...

The other night I found myself in a crush of shoppers at a big-top market. Its cavernous space cheerfully illuminated: Murmurs blended into the ambient up-music amid a kaleidoscope of kiosks, redolent with e xotic victuals. I was bringing an order of barbecued prawns to my inamorata and a couple of friends who sat at a food court table chatting merrily. As I approached, someone informed me that I had dropped something. Shrimp were falling from the soggy bottom of my bag, one-by-one, leaving a trail behind me. Then the bag gave way and the rest plopped to the tiled floor in a slippery mess at my feet. There was a hush. People tried not to stare. No use attempting to salvage anything. I could just hear, “Clean-up on aisle 4,” over the loudspeakers. “ Tooozi again! Get that Toozi off the court!” I remembered my red-faced high school basketball coach blowing his whistle and yanking me out of practice games for passing the ball to opposing players. I grinned fe...

           Should it matter what I look like? I’m a writer, and what I do is make up stories with characters in them.   My books should speak for themselves.   My physical appearance should be immaterial.           And yet.   Over and over again I am asked for photographs of me.   It might be publicity shots for events I’m involved in, local newspapers and of course there’s also the online world – it just does not look right to have a Twitter or Facebook profile without a photo.   Don’t you just hate those blank-egg shapes that Twitter bestows on those of us too shy or private to post up a mugshot?   Though I’ve chosen not to have my photo along with the cover of my e-book, Good Recipes and Bad Women , it’s there on my Amazon page.           So.   What makes a good author shot?   Ought one to look...