Authors Electric

It's a biliously grey November day, rain falling softly all morning (tolerable) and then working itself up to an undramatically dreary all-afternoon downpour - yellowish-grey sky with no hope on the horizon. It was during weather like this that I began work, many years ago, on TO SUMMON A SPIRIT - wading past soggy leaves drained of their Autumn colours, and watching the kids from the nearby secondary school waiting, in a damp and morose huddle, outside the newsagent's shop to buy their after-school treats ( only one customer at a time please... ) As in Pauline Fisk's recent fascinating blog on AuthorsElectric about her Young Adult novel 'TELLING THE SEA', weather and the landscape are great incubators of stories. Pauline's comments on re-publishing her previously published and well-reviewed novel were interesting, too, because we writers never really let go of our work - we're always polishing and improving, even after we're 'out there', which...

So, I'm blogging on this significant date, when the world was burdened, or enriched, depending on your point of view, by yet another of those 'you-know-whats'. Maybe, though, this is one of the reason I've always loved Autumn with its fiery colours (this is the rampant Virginia Creeper putting on a show in my front garden) and its silhouettes, its short days and its drama -  that ominous beginning-to-be-winter chilly breath behind its fake gold. I've always loved Keats's poem - yes, that one - the one we all know, but which never grows stale... 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...' And we have the very last of our homegrown tomatoes ripening on the windowsill. In this same month, I've also re-published as an ebook, GEMMA AND THE BEETLE PEOPLE, http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009NW7XLK .  This was originally published by Walker Books, as an Early Reader, with short chapters and very accessible language, and it's still doing well in ...