Authors Electric

I want to talk to you today about why we write. I’ve read that some writers can do nothing but write, the words pouring out of their mind onto the paper. Some only ever publish one book. For me, the reading came first. From an early age, I was allowed, once a week, after we had been grocery shopping, to pick a book. My family had emigrated to America when I was two years old, we returned when I was six. When I started my local primary school, I was already a year behind everyone else as my peers had already begun learning their three ‘Rs’ a year before me. However, my voracious appetite for reading had paid off and I could already write my name and read well above my chronological age when I started.  I think Enid Blyton’s Famous Five were my first loves! The adventures and camaraderie brought my imagination to life. The siblings and their cousin, with of course Timmy the dog, gave me something I didn’t have as an only child. I quickly progressed to the St Clare’s and Malory Towers...

I have just finished reading, on my Kindle, Philip Pullman's latest book, "LA BELLE SAUVAGE", the back story to his award-winning Trilogy, "HIS DARK MATERIALS". It has been an enchanted reading journey to which, whenever real life got in the way, I kept wanting to return, so did. That's the spell that really good writing always casts. The next book on my current reading list will, I think, be very different - Kate Atkinson's "A GOD IN RUINS" (or perhaps not so very different as Philip Pullman, too, classifies Church and Religion as the enemy, but then I don't know the plot so it may not involve that at all). Moving from a passionate involvement with one book to another always feels slightly promiscuous, but then what is life without a bit of delicious promiscuity? And mentioning promiscuity, for those of you who are, like me, agented, have you ever approached another agent while still tied to your current one? Does the word get out? I...

‘Buy me!’ yelled the cover. ‘This book is for you.’ One of my all-time favourite covers  - and books  What is it about a book cover that makes you want to read the book? Like much of advertising – for, of course, that’s at least partly what cover design is about – the process is shrouded in mystery to many of us mere authors. You can often see which bits of you a particular cover is getting to – part of it is genre and sub-genre information but I think there’s more to it than that. Those new(ish) style moleskin-like covers have the feel of ‘quality product’ about them, perhaps with the attendant ‘you’re worth it’ and ‘you deserve it’ connotations which, even though we can see what’s happening, are hard to resist. Some book covers have tactile appeal – ‘Stroke me!’ – and of course, once you’ve checked to see if anyone’s looking and then run your finger across the front cover and received the thrill, it’s difficult not to take a respectful peep inside or at lea...

Do you love birds? I wouldn't have one as a pet in a cage, but I love to see them in the garden, especially finches. They're  like bright little jewels. R ecently, I was struck by how different birds pick out different foods. Usually we fill up the feeders with sunflower hearts, to the delight of the finches. Then, one morning,  we put out a pile of stale bread, pulled into chunks. The finches weren’t the least bit interested, but a great flock of jackdaws came down and took the bread away, every last scrap, within a couple of minutes, like pro burglars on an easy-peasy heist, in and out, roundabout, thank you very much. They left a most confused squirrel, frozen, beneath the bird table, eyes lifted to the skies and a speech bubble issuing from its mouth: ‘Wha.at? Wha.at? Wha.at sort of a cheese sandwich was that?’ (Love that ad!) Put that bread back or else!                             ...

Phenomena like the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy are a constant fascination to me. What they seem to show is that no one has any idea at all why some books take off and some don’t. Quality doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it at all. Crap novels become best sellers, wonderful novels become remainders. The big publishers throw money at some of their titles, and they still bomb. Word of mouth is meant to be king, yet everyone I know who has read Fifty Shades etc (or claims to have done so) is lukewarm. How many sold? Twenty million? Thus I now crave your indulgence as friends, real and virtual, to name two books by two authors you won’t have heard of, and give you tasters of their work. This is done, naturally, with their full permission, and I have absolutely no commercial interest in either of them. One is a friend called Margaret, the other a friend called John. John’s book is a police procedural called No Place for Dinosaurs, and the other a weird and wonderful shor...