Authors Electric

I’ve worked in publishing for a long time now in various capacities. My first job was as desk editor for a small press in Gloucestershire - back in the days when galley proofs were still a thing, and my first job was proofreading medieval city records in Latin (letter by letter...). The company was leading the way in computer typesetting, but overall little had changed since Gutenberg.  Caxton's printing shop After a spell back in archaeology, I moved briefly into medical, then management publishing – where I learnt numerous buzzwords and reluctantly retailed the bulls**t beloved of that sector. Being pushed towards management didn’t appeal – neither wrangling staff nor overseeing the editing of magazines – so I moved back to what first drew me to the industry – working directly with collections of words that other people had lovingly crafted. Newly freelance, I targeted academic publishing companies as potential clients – that’s where I’d started and where I fe...

The manuscript, a second volume of my ongoing memoir series, was done and sent to my beta readers. I felt so proud, constructing essays using some of the tools I learned in Julie Otsuka’s Buddha in the Attic and a few essays I studied in the journal A   Public Space . “I like what you’ve written,” one beta reader wrote in an email. “My question is,” she continued. “Who are you writing for?” Her question floored me. I had countless bylines, varieties of writing experience, two completed screenplays and one completed novel and more than a passing understanding of how the English language works. Not once did a beta reader ask me who I was writing for. The second volume seemed no different. I was writing for my readers. Like me, I thought the tired cliches used to describe transsexual experiences like mine bored them. Like me, I thought they wanted a complex narrative about being born female then transitioning to male, and well before the internet, too. Like me...

I have an uneasy relationship with New Year resolutions - and in fact, with New Year in general,  since I can't bring myself to enter into the spirit of it as I feel most Scots are expected to these days, particularly in Edinburgh, the Hogmanay capital of the world. Also, over the years, I've developed a strong feeling that  instead of both Christmas and New Year we should celebrate the solstice, representing as it does the start of the return of daylight to the northern hemisphere. Still, I don't think it's too late to wish anyone reading this a very Happy New Year. It has taken me a while to think of a suitable resolution for this coming year. My most successful resolution of the past was not to say 'I can't be bothered' and in fact this was such a resounding success that even now, years later, I usually catch myself in time to avoid actually speaking the words, although sometimes I can't help thinking them. So there is no point in making that...

As this is the last of my AE blogs for 2017, I have been casting around for a suitable topic to sum up the past 12 months.  New year resolutions sprang to mind but they can be such a mine field when you make your own choice a matter of public record. I am quite bad at them. I start with the best of intentions but by the end of January my well meant promises are already being shoved to the back of the queue as life gets in the way and by the 1 st March I am usually trying to forget I ever made them in the first place. So what then? The general wisdom is to make a resolution that is within your grasp and to be specific. I was giving this very matter some thought as I struggled through a step routine for the first time this year! It would be fair to say that I am not a natural athlete, and that, combined with hours spent at the keyboard, does mean a certain tendency to spreading out a little. The recent weather has even limited my walking any distance – and if I am perfectl...

One of the elements of writing that often causes the most trouble for students (and for me) is, what everyone now calls: 'point of Cover: Marina Esmeraldo view.' I mean, I’ve been doing this a while now so I don’t usually switch between character perspectives accidentally. I do, however, still struggle to enter the mind and milieu of my protagonist as completely as I need to. I find my own characteristic verbal tics turn up whether I’m supposed to be a wolf, a Saxon warrior or a teenage time traveller none of whom should sound like a middle aged white woman.  It takes considerable effort on my part to imagine being ‘other’ and to enter the linguistic and perceptual world of this ‘other’ mind. I have no tips to offer. Sorry. I approach it in my usual bumbling irrational way, working it out by trial and error. Sometimes I never get there and I have at least two unpublished novels on my hard drive which are narrated by entirely the wrong person in completely the wrong wa...

My first ebook Around 2007 I began to take interest in ebooks and started reading the reports of booming ebook sales. Seeing sales were increasing month on month I decided to join this revolution. So in 2011 I published my first collection of short stories as an ebook. Based on my sales I followed this ebook with others. Then came the print on demand (POD) revolution, where authors like myself and the Author Electric team could publish a physical book without holding stock. So in 2014 I decided to combine my two Anansi ebooks and release as a POD book. At first sales were slow, then they started to match those of my ebooks. Now they outsell my ebooks. This made me wonder if it was just my ebooks or if ebook sales were down generally. So I did a little research. I discovered sales of ebooks have been falling for the last couple of years. Some of the large publishers have given figures in the region of a 12% fall from 2015 - 2016. I found several reasons being suggested for this...

Some few weeks ago I purchased a copy of Writing Magazine and in the market section there were some writing opportunities for non-fiction writers. I popped off some emails and received some responses. One was from a publisher interested in me writing for them. They sent me a draft contract, which I immediately sent to the Society of Authors for checking. As per usual they did a fantastic job at highlighting clauses I should be aware of before I signed and the consequences of agreeing to them. These clauses included: Sourcing illustrations and ensuring all written permissions were obtained  Creating an index   Writing the blurb for the back cover Write some promotional material for marketing materials, including social media When I first started to write professionally some twenty years ago this was done by the publisher. So I began to wonder what I'd be gaining from signing such a contract. The reasons I came up with were: An advance They'd format and design the ...

There are those people who make lists and those who don’t. I must admit that I find the latter very hard to understand. For me, lists are an integral part of my life and I am not sure how well I would function without them.      I make lists of things to do, to buy, to take on holiday and what has to be done at the last minute before going away. That is good one as it saves that horrible feeling of panic as we are about to join the motorway and I wonder if I had indeed switched off the boiler, or locked the front door. If it’s been ticked off the list, which I have in my pocket, then I’ve done it.      When planning a novel, I list every chapter and most of the key points in each one. It is not until I have this that I start writing. Of course, this is only a rough outline of what is going to happen and as the book progresses the list is amended, sometimes even torn up and started afresh. My latest WIP had so many lists, both on the comp...

The experts like to tell us to shovel research by the ton...then add a teaspoon to our work. Authenticity and seasoning. And there's something to be said for that. Failure to keep the old adage in mind results in bloated epics with chapters devoted to ancient Roman plumbing, the story itself getting lost on the way. Purists might even add that the teaspoon of research that is used be stamped 100% Organic. That is, the author must not pre-decide to add a particular bit. Well, three cheers for the Purists. Even with my love of ancient Rome, I'm less likely to finish a history by Colleen McCullough than a Sub Rosa mystery by Steven Saylor. I feel crushed in the former but alive, in the second, on the streets of Rome. And yet I'm here to tell you: I find it impossible, sometimes, to write or eat 100% Organically. My new Boss MacTavin mystery, Seattle Red, led me into the world of alternative weapons. For, in one of the most dangerous cities on earth, Boss is forb...

Ghosts Electric was the first published anthology I wrote a short story for, and I had my reservations. While I love to read novellas or a two-page story spread in magazines, I never thought it was something I’d be able to successfully master. A collage of promotional images put together by the authors involved with the second anthology I have a short story published in      During my youth, I wrote untold amounts of small stories in notepads and colourfully designed  hardback books and treasured them for many years. But they were just for me. A collection of ideas that one day I hoped would evolve and grow and become a full-length novel. Those stories have never managed to make it out of the dusty drawer – and that’s probably a good thing – but I do finally have the ideas I need to make those novels. And, regardless of age and my state of imagination, the basic premise of writing is that the story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. But, when ...

When Sarah Towle asked me to explain to the audience at our SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Catchy name) panel how I began as a conventionally published writer but am now, mostly, a self-publishing writer, I suddenly saw my career in terms of the three questions I've been asked repeatedly. This is the one that I started hearing as soon as I started publishing. So. You're a 'writer', are you? You see, I signed my first contract at the age of 16. When people asked what I did, and I said, "I'm a writer," it caused cognitive disruption. Because, obviously, I was too young to be a writer, since writers are all at least 40. Or they're 80 and pickled in cigarettes.    Even after I stopped looking young, I still had a Black Country accent. Which, obviously, writers never do. So I couldn't possibly be simply stating what I did. I must be a fantasist. Somebody who scribbled as 'a nice little hobby' a...

Most of you know me as a travel writer. I set off on my middle-aged gap year over ten years ago now, and have been trotting off every winter and writing about it every summer since then. I was asked to join this happy band of electric authors on the basis of my travel writing. It would, I was told, broaden their spectrum. And it was a slot I was very happy to fill. But now, and without warning anyone, I've put the travel writing aside for a while and written a novel. It had, for me, been a logical progression from my traveling. I came across a vignette of the life of Barbara Weldon when I was in New Zealand: she was born in Ireland in the nineteenth century and ended up it a bleak, grey town in the middle of the gold rush in New Zealand. I'd chosen to fly  across the world. And I could keep in contact with my family by phone and email. What had driven her this far, on her own? In the absence of much detail, I made it up. And what fun I had. Should she have lovers, chil...

Alas, poor Yorick. When Hamlet gives his instructions to the players, we’re hearing from Shakespeare as writer and director. ‘Here are my words,’ he’s saying, ‘don’t eff them up. Treat them with respect. Don’t do all that acting stuff. Be normal.’ Hmmm. What you write is a blueprint for a production. It calls for teamwork so, even though it’s your baby, you have to accept the fact that you’re only a part of the experience. You may get requests for rewrites, actors may ask questions about their role to which you don’t have answers.  For them, their character is everything, for you he/she is part of a larger whole. In my last radio play, the main character,  a blind woman, receives things through the post from her grandson which may be ordinary postcards or examples of his own sketches. She shows them to people, proud of the fact that she has an artist grandson and people, not wanting to upset her, tell her he’s very talented. The actor playing her asked me whe...