Authors Electric

As we're all writers on this blog, it can't be breaking protocol for me to do a preliminary review/puff for Julia Jones's new book Black Waters. It's the fifth in her trilogy – or rather, it’s volume 5 in her Strong Winds series – and it takes her into ever-deeper waters. For me, it raises the perennial question: what is a children's book? But first, boringly, I'd better declare a supposed interest. Julia has extremely close connections to Private Eye, and neither of us would relish a knocking piece in that prominent and thrusting organ. Julia is also a publisher, and her imprint Golden Duck publishes one of my own books, Wild Wood. A Firefly on a run - they're faster now! So, down to brass tacks. Black Waters, like the previous volumes, is an adventure story with teeth, sinews and muscles. Nominally about one girl’s (young woman's) struggle against the unrelenting rivalry of top-level sport, it inevitably confronts racism, greed, and what I...

Yeast, Lasers and too many Words! I’m trying to finish a book. It has to be delivered at the end of Nov and I realised about a week ago that it wasn’t about what I thought it was. Not good. Yes, my characters will be doing roughly all the things I first thought they would but the heart of the book, the real centre is something far less dramatic than the all guns blazing sort of tale I thought I was writing. What I really want the reader to focus on is a much quieter tale about one man’s now ancient mistake and the, I suppose you’d say professional coming of age of a very young police officer. Now I’ve finally spotted this, it all makes perfect sense! – just wish I’d noticed sooner; that would have saved a whole heap of rewriting. Sometimes I get so sick of words, especially towards the end of writing a book. It feels like there’s a daily supply or a daily tolerance level over and above which I just don’t want to know. I don’t even want to read! So, displacement and replacem...