Authors Electric

  October is a month for sprits, ghosts, phantoms, ghouls and witches. This October for me is also the time for an angel – the Ice Angel to be precise. She is one of the characters in the eponymous final story of my series of children’s books “The Adventures of Letty Parker.”   Set in an alternative Victorian Bristol, Letty and her Associates solve mysteries and seek the missing, but this time Letty must travel out of the city where she has contacts and support and into the Land of Ice where she will have to face her angelic opponent on her own. Stories, like books, start with a seed of inspiration, or an idea which grows into a final product. Unlike fruit, however, books don’t grow by themselves, they need beta-readers and editors and proof-readers and in my case someone to format the publishable copy. A writing group that gives feedback and support is invaluable and if you’re very lucky, like I am, there is also an artist who has produced the picture for the cover and th...

Granny Grabbers by Charlotte Haptie There are many reasons for writing, but perhaps the most important (and only legitimate?) one is joy. The joy of creating the story, the poem, the essay from your own store of words. The joy of knowing that the work is as you want it to be, the pattern of the words has fallen right, the arc of the narrative is pleasingly as you planned. There’s nothing else like that feeling. From time to time, someone unearths a notebook or diary from a forgotten cupboard or box in the attic, and discovers a treasure, the writings of someone, perhaps long gone, never meant for publication – created for the joy of creating. For most of us, however, the next step in the creating is to share it, and to that end, we enter the devious and dangerous world of publishing, without even a ‘Beware of Crocodiles’ sign to guide us. From time to time, someone I do not know, or know slightly, or is the friend of a friend, says the dreaded words, ‘I’ve written/my mother-in-law...