Authors Electric

If you can't bear advertorial, then you'd better avert your gaze now ... because this month I am shamelessly promoting  GHOSTS ELECTRIC . This is the fabulous new spooktacular anthology from the Dark Sparks who are to be found lurking in the shadows cast by Authors Electric, and it is out now, in plenty of time for Halloween. (And in even better time for Christmas, another traditional time for the sort of story that gives you horripilations as you read by the gloomy light of a gibbous moon ...) It was never supposed to exist ... but the idea was spawned one dark and stormy night by Sue Price, who, like Mary Shelley, suggested that we try our hands at something a little bit seasonal. As it was Octoberish at the time, Halloween naturally sprang to mind ... But as I was already midway through rounding up the contributions for our annual fiction anthology Another Flash in the Pen , rather than being an...

I normally hate climbing on the promotional bandwagon ... yes, I know it has to be done, but it doesn't mean I have to enjoy it. Although this month my teeth are gritted a little less than usual as I try to encourage folk to pick up a copy of Haunting Hounds. The reason? Well, apart from it being the season of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go woof in the night, it's all in a good cause. Or almost all, as fifty percent of all the profits are donated to Kim's Home for Elderly/Abused Dogs , which more than deserves all the dosh I can help raise for it. Wendy Jordan is a wonderwoman who not only cares for around 16 rescue dogs in her home, many of them elderly 'rejects', but works tirelessly to help save many others, not to mention fostering numerous others who are inbetween homes ... she does an amazing job. I know I couldn't do it myself, but what I can do is to try and help raise some money by doing something that I  am capable of doing: writing a b...

           It's Octobrrrrrr and the season of witches and spooks is here. It's time to draw the curtains, edge closer to the fire and get your nose stuck into a ghost story or two. For my money, those which are short stories work best and there are some great ones out there - tales which get it just right, scaring the pants off you and haunting you for years after, jumping out at you from dark corners of your memory at unexpected moments, and without ever needing to overstep the matter and descend into horror and grim and grisly goriness to achieve their effect.           If you need some classic examples, there's our own Sue Price's Overheard in a Graveyard for starters: it's right up there with that master of Halloween eeeek Ray Bradbury's story The Emissary from his collection The October Country .           And there are of course other m...

What's the point of blogging? As others here have pointed out, strenuously blogging and Facebooking your book and/or yourself doesn't necessarily result in attracting new readers or produce much by way of increased sales.  Halloween countdown ... Christmas countdown ... I nearly pulled a muscle in my brain thinking up things to post on the FB page for Haunting Hounds each day during October last year, counting down to Halloween. And then did it all over again for December, producing an Advent Calendar countdown to Christmas (another traditional time for telling spooky tales).  And then let off steam by adding a 12 Days of Christmas countdown (or count up) too.  The people that saw the posts seemed to quite like them and they got shared about, but it didn't crank sales up by more than a few copies. It's a shame as my share of the profits all go to Scruples Whippet Rescue ... 12 days of Christmas ... Blogging and FB-ing can be pretty...

From ghosties and ghoulies and long leggerty beasties, And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us ... Yes, the witching season is upon us once again this month! If you're looking for something both seasonal and canine, might I recommend Haunting Hounds? Although I don't normally make a habit of plugging my books here in such an in-your-face manner, I will make an exception for this one, as it's in aid of a really good cause:  50% of all royalties are going to Scruples Whippet Rescue , which does a wonderful job of rescuing and helping to find new homes for whippets in need. It was really good fun to write; and although it's a little bit tongue in cheek in places, there are a couple of stories that really gave me goosebumps when researching them, such as the tale of the Newgate Black Dog and that of fighter pilot Guy Gibson's Labrador who became the mascot for the Dam Busters squadron.     As well as o...

At the age of eight I was discovered curled up in a chair reading my Dad's battered old Penguin edition of The Iliad . I'd like to claim I was a child prodigy, but it really would be a blatant lie: when the book was gently prised out of my fingers and replaced with a version more accessible to my tender years, I found it much easier going. The Iliad was followed in quick succession with The Odyssey which I liked even better: I still have the copy, bought by my Mum, back in the days when hardbacks were Expensive. And that was followed by a collection of Greek and Roman myths, by Roger Lancelyn-Green - and I liked his Robin Hood much better than some of the others I also read. It was this with this discovery of multiple versions of Robin Hood that it slowly dawned on me that Not All Stories were Original. (See? Told you - definitely not a Child Prodigy.) Sometimes it was a re-telling of a story which someone else had written. Sometimes the writer did a brilliant job, a...

In my teens I went through a phase of reading horror stories – remember those collections of short stories published by Pan with gruesome illustrations of bloody eyeballs and worse on the covers? Me and my friends passed copies around ourselves, comparing notes and shuddering over the most grisly. Finally it all got too much: one story eventually gave me such bad dreams that I stopped reading them, and moved on from horror to the much more sophisticated ghost story genre. Being able to create a delicious thrill which makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck is very much harder than horror as it doesn’t rely on the cheap trick of buckets of blood and gore to achieve its aim. It's a more subtle and challenging skill, and one which many writers fail to achieve - but those stories that do succeed you will always remember, even though you may forget the writer’s name. Recently I read a story on my Kindle, ‘Overheard in a Graveyard’ which I’d read many yea...