Authors Electric

Do you sometimes struggle to come up with a subject to blog about? Well that was me up until I read Reb MacRath's blog on size (Friday) and Jan Needle's comment about interviewing the Beatles. I was about to add a comment, when I suddenly realised that what I was going to put, could be turned into an entire blog. So first off, thank you Reb and Jan for inspiring today's blog! My comment was in response to Jan who had once interviewed the Beatles, finding that three of them were smaller than him. That reminded me of interviewing Chewbacca, an 8ft Wookiee about a month ago. That was certainly a bit of a size difference! It dawned on me that over the years, I've interviewed some weird and wonderful characters. So I thought I might share a few with you. Topically, as Star Wars celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, I remember writing an article for a magazine celebrating Star Wars' 25th anniversary. I got to interview Dave Prowse – who played Darth Vader. ...

Wander around any supermarket at the moment and you'll be bumping into witch, ghost, skeleton and pumpkin costumes as Halloween approaches. And they seem to get better every year. Couldn't help but smile at a skeleton outfit I saw the other day that had a moving jaw and talked. Now that my kids are all grown up, Halloween isn't something I usually bother with, although this time last year, Rob who I work with at his Tysall's Photography Studio, was asked if he could take some family shots at the customer's house. No problem... until we got there, and the guy met us at the door, all dressed up as Dracula, and soon informed us that actually he was a real vampire. We hoped he was joking! After the photo-shoot we came away giggling like a couple of kids, and still looking over our shoulders as we headed to the car. Still, it provided a nice little scenario for a horror story should one be needed. Although I love writing stories that send shivers up t...

I was trying to think of something interesting and inspiring to write about for my Authors Electric blog this month, and thought I'd look back at the blog, to remind myself what other authors had written in the hope it might kick start my blogging brain! So I Googled Authors Electric – or rather I didn't Google Authors Electric, I hit the wrong keys and Googled Arthurs Electric . And got a whole different category of topics and websites. I was suddenly faced with all the information I needed if I wanted to get my chainsaw serviced! It had to be word association, because when I thought of chainsaw I immediately thought of two things – and they both have a writing link. Hurray! I'd got my blog idea by default – very weird, but I'm not complaining. So, chainsaws! And my first thought was of the horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the time I interviewed the leading man from the original film, Leatherface himself – Gunnar Hansen. My second...