Authors Electric

You can find the Book DNA site here. It's a site that aims to put people who love reading and books in touch with other people who love reading and books. You can join as a reader and/or as a writer (since writers tend to be book-lovers and avid readers often write.) You can put forward your favourite books of a year, as I've done here  ...and Book DNA will make you a beautiful page to show off your choices. Or, if you join as an author, you can choose one of your own books, and then show-case five other books which you think will appeal to a similar readership, as I did here... At the beginning of this post and again at the end, I have the opportunity to mention my own book of ghost stories, Hauntings . This doesn't cost the writer anything except the time spent compiling their choice of books -- which, as always, is rather a pleasure. And I noticed a definite up-turn in the sales of my ghost stories after posting this.  The Book DNA site is building a community of reader...

  If that's the view from the front door, I'm staying in. That Storm Goretti was some storm.    And that's the view from the back door. It weighed down and broke my rose arch.            Still....   The Ghost Drum My story is set (says the cat) in a far-away Czardom, where the winter is a cold half-year of darkness.         In that country the snow falls deep and lies long, lies and freezes until bears can walk on its thick crust of ice. The ice glitters on the snow like white stars in a white sky! In the north of that country all the winter is one long night, and all that long night long, the sky-stars glisten in their darkness, and the snow-stars glitter in their whiteness, and between the two there hangs a shivering curtain of cold twilight.      In winters there, the cold is so fierce the frost can be heard crackling and snapping as it travels through the air. The snow is so deep that...

    The hosta that grows in a pot near my kitchen door. The pink petals have fallen from the climbing rose above. I was told that hostas grow best in damp, shady places and don't like growing in pots. I suspect I was told wrong because this hosta is living its best life-- in a pot, in the sunniest, warmest spot in my garden.  It's starting shooting up arcs of delicate, bell-shaped, lavender coloured flowers.  Another view of my garden in all its scruffyness. Seed trays piled on the bench. A watering bucket making the place look untidy.    This peaony -- paeony -- peony is called 'Bowl of Beauty.' No argument from me. And it's a sight easier to spell than 'peony'.     The herb trough - marjoram, thyme, sage -- and a tiny olive tree poking up at far right. It is now covered in miniscule yellow flowers.  The yellow flag in the pond.  The roses, hanging in swags from their broken arch. Light through hazel leaves, and the roses... Writing? I ...

 In January 2024, I'm quite chuffed to say, my book The Ghost Drum was reviewed in The Times by Lucy Bannerman, as 'Children's Book of the Week.' Ghost Drum by Susan Price review — a rediscovered gem of a fairytale Narrated by a cat on a golden chain, this Carnegie winning story of a young shaman fighting back against a brutal ‘Czardom’ is breathtaking Lucy Bannerman Saturday January 27 2024, 12.01am, The Times My word. Ghost Drum isn’t just a gem; it’s the Fabergé egg of fairytales. Having fallen out of print, this electrifying story is now being reissued as part of Faber’s Young Adult Classics series and what a treat it is. We begin on a midwinter night “in a far-away Czardom” when a stranger knocks on the door and persuades a slave woman to hand over her newborn baby. “The snow is so deep that the houses are half-buried in it, and the frost so hard that it grips the houses and squeezes them till they crack.” The stranger is a (good) witch who raises th...