Authors Electric

When I’m writing, I prefer silence. I don’t think I suffer from hyperacusis (which is the term applied to the condition of a person who has difficulty tolerating what’s laughingly known as ‘normal’ environmental sound), but loud noises especially bring on an unwelcome feeling of tension. That, however, is nothing compared with an other condition in which the sufferer demonstrates an equivalently enhanced level of sensitivity to external stimuli and for which there is not yet a convenient label. It’s what I’ve come to think of as Epidermal Dissociation Footballeriensis because the symptoms manifest themselves most frequently on  the football pitch (or, for those for whom ‘football’ means a game in which the ball is rarely struck with the foot, the soccer field). The football season in the UK is well under way, of course. but while reports focus on transfers, wages, managerial sackings and the like, hardly any attention is paid to this serious condition, which seems to man...

A couple of months ago I got a bee in my bonnet about how outrageously writers are treated by many organisations who solicit for submissions.   Why ask for them and then ignore them, was my question.   Perhaps they get too many to handle?   But then why not just close their submissions process for a time until the backlog of responses has been worked through?     As Katherine Roberts said to our call for advice, ‘yes is brilliant, no is good (because you can cross that publisher/agent off your list and move on), but silence is torture’.   I was determined that we would establish a submissions process which shows respect for writers, and perhaps start a new trend out there – setting the bar higher for all those organisations who seek direct manuscript submissions.     So I asked for views on a submissions code of practice for Fairlight Books and received many helpful suggestions and comments from Authors Electric et al.   I’m plea...

You know the pickle I was in if you've written a mystery series or thought of writing one. How the devil do you keep it fresh in book after book after book? Are there ways to pick up speed if your novels typically take you a couple of years to write? And can you accomplish this without loss of quality? You fear that the genie Slyboots may prove to be a false friend: Fear not. The late great Lawrence Sanders proved that Slyboots can be a best friend. His star-making Deadly Sins were long, intricate, densely plotted and gorgeously written mysteries that must have come damn close to breaking his back. Four years passed between each of the four series entries. Sanders's solution: a lighter and breezier series of Commandment novels, each with a different cast, in between. And, churned out in his twilight years, the fluffy Archy McNally mysteries read as if dictated while sipping bubbly. Thinking of Sanders, I wondered if I might start a spin-off of my Boss MacTa...

This month has been all about downsizing, which for 90% of writers that I know is a slow and painful parting of the ways with a small section of their book mountain at very least.   The Edwards-Coleborn household is attempting to relocate to somewhere easier to manage and   one of the inevitable consequences is that some of our carefully amassed volumes are going to have to go – but which tomes will be destined for the chop? (illo on left not my study - but not unlike!) We’ve been whittling away at the shelves for some weeks now with some (limited) success, and I have noted at least ten phases of book sorting - as follows: ·          One : the easiest part – mainly non-fiction that is used less  and less as we turn to the internet for those morsels of information - items of day-to-day research requiring urgent answers. Things such as the composition of  powder applicators in a 1930s handbag compact; the exact week that ...

I come to you today from the depths of my editing cave. I've been here for two weeks now, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel - and therefore the reason you're having any contact from me at all. Before writing my books, I worked for an in-house magazine as assistant editor for eight years. A weekly magazine, and a team of two, we designed the layout, interviewed the staff, wrote and edited the articles. What I do now has a very similar set-up, and that's what I had in mind when I started this process in 2015: I can handle all aspects of my writing career, after all, I've done it for many years. How wrong could I have been? And yes, editing, I'm looking at you. What I didn't appreciate was the amount of editing I'd have to do in one hit. Gone are the few hundred word articles, replaced by the hundreds of pages and thousands of words. The paragraphs are no longer factual events, coloured with interesting quotes from employees, but are the inner ...

We writers do like to bang on about writing don’t we? How many of the heroes of novels are in fact novel writers? From Death in Venice to London Fields we insert our own occupation into the mix for a little post modern intrigue. We even like our fictional detectives to be writers from Jessica Fletcher and Castle to the poet Adam Dalgliesh, created by PD James.     It is very tempting to follow that over used dictum to ‘ write what we know,’ and write all about us.  Thus far I’ve avoided that trap only because  my fictional characters have to be as  unlike me as possible  in order to fulfil their role as adventure hero or heroine.  The urge to write about a woman just like myself is strong though I am still fighting it, which makes me an unlikely convert to a script about a script writer.  Of course I  used to love those Hollywood films like ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ about making a film, but the recent 'La La Land'which seemed to focus ...

Jinx on the Drivide Pitcher Plant There have been many times that I’ve needed something for a particular purpose in a book, and when it’s something you can look at, touch, smell or rattle it makes a huge different to the way in which you write about it.      In the third book of the DivideTrilogy , I invented a malign magical object called a jinx box, which was a shape shifter. Once opened, it starts to cause mischief and it manifests itself in many different guises, simultaneously appearing to one person as one thing, and to another person as something else entirely. I did use photographs as well, but they were ones I’d taken myself, so I knew what the original was like. The jinx box first appears as a pitcher plant. When I was in Borneo I saw the largest one of all, Nepenthes rajah , if I remember correctly. As plants go, it’s pretty unpleasant. Most pitcher plants catch insects – I have one in my conservatory, Sarracenia purpurea , which attracts flie...

Where’s this ruddy spring, that’s what I want to know. It’s been a long, gruelling winter what with one thing and three others, and I’ve had just about enough of it. Packed the grandkids and their ma n pa off to some damn theme park or another today, and it’s so cold out (Pennines/Lancashire/Yorkshire border) that they’d have been better off staying in bed. Not that they’ll think that, of course. I can remember days at Alton Towers (not where they’re going; apparently they charge £20 a day for the use of a wheelchair, which sadly now is needed for one of Spring is sprung? Come to't sunny north! the party) when it rained so hard the waterproofing of my skin gave up and I filled me wellies from the inside by osmosis. Honest! You ask Donald Trump. And the children? They never noticed it. Just demanded more ice cream… Talking of wellies, my darling Mac rendered it as ‘willies’ both the first time I typed it, then again just then (which is po...