Authors Electric

Rain, heavy cloud, mud, Omicron... So this is a picture post of happy memories connected with writing. This one is of my wonderful agent, Carolyn Whitaker, on the balcony of her house in Turkey, which I visited many times. We also went to Iceland together. She died in 2016, and I miss her more than I can say. A generous, funny, adventurous woman with the most incisive and down-to-earth mind I have ever encountered when it came to editing a manuscript. "Let's start with the first f--- on page thirteen." She had a speedboat at her place in Netley, and piloted it at terrifying speeds. She also owned racehorses, and I was there when she had a winner at Epsom. A total original, who was an enormous influence on me. I was very touched when she left me some money; I realised it was exactly the same amount she had earned off me in the previous twenty-five years.    This is a humming bird from the garden in Monteverde, Costa Rica, which was the initial setting for my fantasy The Di...

 Setting is one of those things that is really important, and it can be the starting point for a plot. I have found the photographs I have taken on my travels to be particularly important, as they evoke memories. Extreme landscapes are the best, and in this post I’ll concentrate on ones without people. Next month I’ll do cities. The emptiest landscapes – other than being at sea – are deserts. My first experience of desert was when I was eighteen, and I went to Morocco. In those days it was not a tourist destination at all, and I was captivated by the open spaces and the feeling of freedom it gave me. I grew up in North London, before we moved to Surrey when I was ten, and my earliest memories are grey; concrete, fog, smoke, post-war austerity. I hated it. Ever since, I have sought out landscapes with no obvious trace of human interference. I have experienced deserts in Tunisia, Egypt, Mongolia… and they have all been different.   Cold is as atmospheric as heat, and my hol...

 I am a traveller. I enjoy visiting different countries. By far the most interesting place I’ve been is Iceland. I visited in February 2019. Arriving in the cold and dark I wasn’t sure what to expect. I found friendly people and lots to see and photograph. This is the Hallsgrimskirksja right in the centre of Reykjavik. A beautiful church behind the statue of Lief Erikkson.  Inside it is a beautiful place of worship with high ceilings and an organ. Light and airy a place of real reflection. The first sight of the church is awe inspiring it is a remarkable building. It is back lit at night and stands out as you arrive in the city. I am a lover of history and Reykjavik has history round every corner. People are friendly and will talk to you about everything  they know.    I felt inspired when I was there and wanted to write more. Icelandic folklore is rich with stories and fairy tales especially. In Icelandic fairy tales fairy folk are huge,  gigantic creature...

Since the advent of digital photography I’ve been an addict – and I’ve used a lot of the photographs I’ve taken in different books. Here are a few, with extracts from the book concerned. The Divide I decided to open this book in the most magical place I had ever visited, which was the humming bird garden in Monteverde, Costa Rica. …the humming birds returned to the sugar-water feeders that were hung around the outside of the Study Centre. They used their beaks as rapiers, fencing in mid-air as they tried to knock one another away from the rim. The ones that won looked smug, and the ones that lost zoomed around the garden pretending they didn’t want a drink after all. Back to the Divide Although this description comes from The Divide, lot of the action in the second book is set in the library of my alternative world. I based it on a café in Bristol. This one was made of wood, with asymmetrical window-frames and doorways. Pear-shaped windows, kidney-shaped wind...

Odds and Ends It’s January, and I’m so busy turning over new leaves that time is in short supply so I thought I’d cobble together some odds and ends that I use when teaching, which might be of use. Or not! Coincidences When you are faced with something that has to be glossed over – such as a coincidence which may seem just a bit too fortuitous to the reader – it’s often best to tackle it head-on. For example, if a character is taken for someone else because they just happen to look alike, or have the same name, you could make the character reflect how strange this was. This makes the reader subconsciously realise that the writer knows this piece of information is a bit unlikely, and is flagging it up, rather than hoping the reader hasn’t noticed – or, even worse, being totally unaware themselves how contrived the situation will seem. Don’t let your reader think he or she is smarter than you are, or the suspension of disbelief will go up in smoke. Dream Sequences D...

Oh, it happens, and it’s horrible. It’s like being in a maze when you can’t find the way out, and you keep passing the same point over and over again. Nine times out of ten there will be something wrong with the last section you wrote. There could be any number of issues here, but usually it’s just one, especially if you have an idea of where the plot is going. You need to re-read what you’ve written, as objectively as possible. This means making a note of the timeline – can everyone get to where they’re meant to be in the time you’ve given them to do it? It may mean making a map of the terrain. Are the characters in the right places? But the most likely glitch of all is that someone has behaved out of character. They simply would not have done or said something or other. Have a good hard look at each character, and the motivation for their behaviour. People (or animals, or mythical beasts!) don’t do things for no reason. Some characters seem to come from nowhere. Others ha...