Authors Electric

The Scattered Authors Society is a fine, upstanding body of writers scribbling away all over Britain. I'm a member -- one of the founder members, in fact, along with Authors Electric's own Katherine Roberts. But I'm also a member of a smaller group (and very exclusive group, I'm telling you) within the SAS.  This very exclusive writing group of ours had a problem. None of us were doing much writing. Which, I understand, is not all that unusual with writing groups. Personally, I was bereft of all ideas. Just flat out. But the problem most of the others had was that they had deadlines and  ought to be writing, and wanted to write-- but somehow, the writing just wasn't getting done. We meet up reguarly on Zoom, it being a bit difficult to meet up in person, scattered as we are from the West Country to Scotland. The meetings were full of complaints about the failure to actually get any writing done, beset as we were by distractions. Now there are a few tricks to con you...

A while ago, I submitted two poems for an anthology on Age. I am Of A Certain Age myself, and was under the (mistaken, as it turned out) impression that it would be celebrating agedness. I was delighted when one poem was accepted. Then, when the proofs came, it was only too evident that the focus was on loss, dementia, incontinence, death...very good poems, I must say, but not exactly joyful. I went to the launch with some trepidation and discovered two things: the guest editor had been working with people with dementia, and I was, by a stretch, the oldest poet there.   It made me remember that when one is surrounded by the less happy aspects of life, perspectives, inevitably, become skewed. No-one there had met my sparky mother, dignified, in control, and sharp as a tack until she closed her eyes for the last time at age 93. Or my friend Alice, who lived to 105 and was equally ‘with-it’ to the end. They didn’t know about the woman who has just passed grade 6 ballet at the ...

Nothing like sharing a good book. Whatever your age. Yes, I read 'children's' books.  And 'YA' books. Not exclusively - I do read books aimed at the adult market too. But I don't see why I should confine myself only to books written for my age group, when there's some really great stuff out there written primarily with a younger readership in mind, but which I enjoy just as much. Some people seem to disapprove of this: it seemed to really kick off when grown ups were observed reading the Harry Potter books. Love them or hate them, while it may have generated some disparaging criticism from some, it also made a lot of older readers aware of some of the fun they might be missing out on by sticking solely to adult books.  Adult and children's books happily cohabiting on my shelves ...           While The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are classic examples of cross-generation appeal, there are plenty of more recent b...

Telling stories round the fire, out in the wilderness, holding back the night ... That's pretty much where it all started, I guess, at the beginning of the human era. And one of the great joys of childhood is still being told a story. Being read to. The theatre company, White Rabbit , tries to recreate that joy for grownups. In an evening performance called Are You Sitting Comfortably? the actors (Bernadette Russell and Gareth Brierley) read aloud stories written by local writers, on a set theme, in a tea party setting. (This was in the Byre Theatre in St Andrews but they go all over.) I loved what Gareth did with my story! It needed to be read by a male voice, but Gareth does a crooked smile like no one on earth, and he just lit the tale up. It was an exhilarating, slightly atavistic evening. At the end each writer was given a booklet of their story, tied up with red ribbon - AND an invitation to submit their tale to Ether Books to be made into an app. So "Dissident...

It's happened! My collection of YA sci-fi stories has been e-booked! There have been interesting posts here and elsewhere about the challenge of making our own covers - especially when it's for a collection. Do you choose one story to illustrate or something that, um, covers them all? We went for the second option. So, all we needed to do was come up with something that represented a story about a diary discovered in a deserted space station, one about a forgotten waterworld, another that was a re-telling of Macbeth on a gigantic spaceship - something that would be attractive without giving away any plot twists. And then there were the problems specific to e-book covers - how they needed to look good in colour, in greyscale, as a thumbnail, mid-size, paperback book size. I love this cover best when it's REALLY BIG. You can see all the detail of the city on the back of the spaceship then. The rip in space started life as a piece of scrap paper with a hole punched in i...