Authors Electric

Sometimes I cheat with these blogs. This month, for example, I'm quite busy so, by way of relief, rather than do any thinking, I've just had some fun turning a sketch I wrote ages ago for our Festival Fringe show into blank verse. In case it's not obvious, it's supposed to be funny. It might help if you imagine hearing it in the posh Edinburgh accent used by my wife when she performed the original. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (Enter Lady Macbeth with dog.) To Birnham Wood I come with my wee dog That he may run in Nature’s bosky glades. ( To the dog ) Away now, cur. Disport thee at thy will Whiles I reflect on what this week may bring. ( Exit dog. ) I am not sorry to quit Dunsinane, There is such brash kerfuffle at the news Of good King Duncan’s plans to stay a while. I doubt it will be more than just one night But cryptic notes from my dear Lord – he’s Thane, You know, of Glamis – insist the king has made Him Thane of Cawdor, too....

Iago and Othello I got to fretting over my fictional villains again the other night after flipping off the news (in more ways than one.) Too many real ones at the gates now. Though Trump and his barbarians are nothing new, their arrogance is more flagrant than any in my lifetime. The Death Star of demented greed appears at perigee, bloated with obscenely-financed self-assurance. You can't make these bastards up, even as parody. They're complicating my novel. Just when I think I've got the right shade of dystopia, my near-future narrative needs to turns darker. I've always found creating villains daunting. The memorable ones - from Iago, to Moriarity, to Voldemort - seem more challenging than heroes, particularly the multidimensional ones with whom we can empathize or at least identify with, like Medea, Lady Macbeth, and Raskolnikov. Not that villains are always needed. Protagonists can be their own worst enemies. A suitably sinister villain does, however, ap...