Authors Electric

Completed projects often leave me with an enormous void. With writing books, I have found out, it is different.  This time, no dark black hole... I was saved by the M-word. Yep, marketing. I had already started on social media. Now I am working on my prequel to give away as a present when people subscribe to my newsletter. What are your thoughts on that? I like doing the prequel because the questions in the book are things I have often asked myself. How did Wilma land on the tulip fields? How did she survive. I mean she weighed 99 grams when we found her, that is not an awful lot. Or, maybe she was a wild cat and we took her in... I love this part of writing, the 'what if stage'. But then I wake up and realise I need to sign up to mailerlite (tick); transfer my website to another platform - preferably one that is easy to work (tick and loving it, just need to create about 500 thumbnails for the images); get a customised email address (tick), and another day has gone...

Of course creativity matters. I mean what else can keep you sane in this mad world? I love the title of Wendy H Jones' new book and I am so proud I wrote about two of my own writing passions for this anthology. Yesterday my very own paperback copy arrived. Certain books work on my Kindle, others are better as a hard copy for me. Cooking books are one, poetry collections are another and, I can now add, books I have participated in. I want to leaf through the book. Check a bit of this then that until I can pick and choose the chapters I want to read in my own sequence  -- no offence, Wendy. And just like Wendy's social media graphic below, I will have a cuppa and pen (and notebook) right beside it. I will not write in the book itself. Promise.  I can't wait to find out which genres I'd like  to dip my pen in. You? Kirsten Bett  is writing her first book   My name is Wilma,  a personal fiction book from the point of view from her c...

       Image by  Gerhard Lipold  from  Pixabay . Ever since Crime Reporter Peter R. de Vries was killed in Amsterdam, I have been thinking about the meaning of tattoos, and if I should get one. M y main reason for not having a tattoo is my fear of needles. I only started giving blood in my forties after a good friend in the Netherlands had been diagnosed with leukaemia. Living in New Zealand at the time, I was guttered I could do so little to help so I decided to go give blood. In theory that blood could have gone to people with leukaemia  over there.  But I do love tats and all the mystery and history behind them. Peter R de Vries had an impressive one: 'On bended knee is no way to be free.' He lived by this conviction and refused police protection. He was a super hero, standing by the loved ones of murder victims and often getting cold cases back into the spotlight, and solved.  It is very sad that Peter R de Vries is dead. His family ...

  Photo taken by Kirsten Bett on 21 June 2021 Eilandverlangen or Island Longing is something I relate to. We went to Terschelling on Monday 21 June, and on the window of the ferry building in Harlingen, I saw the above poem with that very title by Gerda Posthumus. It's perfect because it always looks different. Blue skies would have made it easier to read but the grey background and rain gave it a more poetic atmosphere, wouldn't you agree? It's in Dutch because the poet and the location is in the Netherlands. The north of the Netherlands is made up of the Wadden Islands. They are part of Unesco World Heritage . Below you can see the ferry connection to Terschelling. Gerda Posthumus is the island poet of Vlieland, the island to the southwest of Terschelling -- that ferry also leaves from Harlingen. I adore the Wadden islands as I am an island lover. I would not want to live on one but if I am in a rut, if I need to clear my mind, there is no better destination. Of course, y...

Photo by Kirsten Bett.  Today I   bring you serenity. Don't you just love the sound of se-re-ni-ty. All the syllables perfectly forming the word that sounds like its meaning. Yum! I should have called our kitten Serenity instead of Max. Black and white Max sleeps outside our bedroom, on a cat pillow on top of a box of board games we were going to sort out. Some Day. About 4 am Max usually ducks under the duvet where he calmly sleeps until hunger takes his claws into your shins and you yell out: "Max!" And throw him out of the bedroom.  Back in bed you start to write your upcoming blog in your head. You write about dealing with inner critics. You use affirmations: I am a great writer. I mean, just look at this blog. You hear aunty Bettie sniffling behind you. That's fine, you bludgeon her to death. Don't worry, she does not exist, only in my head.  My head also houses inner disturbers. Like the one who talks to me when I decide to go for a stroll and find a...

  Image by Viviane Monconduit from Pixabay I love it when cats tell the story. One of the best books I read was Jennie by Paul Gallico. On my favourite app Good Reads I looked it up again because my umpteenth copy has long gone missing... Do you know it? It's about a boy who wakes up as a cat. He does not know how to be a cat but luckily he meets Jennie, a real cat who teaches him all he has to know.  This is my memory, and it often fails so maybe I am getting it all wrong. My point is: can books be written from a cat's point of view. My answer is: yes of course they can. Why not?  But then I remember when enrolling into a writing course, I was told in no uncertain terms that cats made flat story tellers. So for a long time, I didn't. And then I read another fantastic cat book: The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa. I am looking at a copy right now. It is not so much what is said in the story but what is left out. The travelling happens in Japan and follows the c...