Authors Electric

Two things to blog about this month, one run-of-the-mill, the other a bit special, which fully deserves the adjective 'inspiring'. First, the ordinary. While I'm sorting out the final draft of   The Nightmares of Invasion, the second in the Bright Sea Dark Graves trilogy, I'm also putting together another collection of short stories, some already published, others new, for my private JOSLIN BOOKS imprint. This is one of the many, many things I like about independent publishing. It's almost like being a poet making a retrospective New and Selected, something it would be really, really foolish to ask a publisher to do unless you are incredibly famous. And to make Createspace paperbacks out of them as well as ebooks gives the whole project a sort of three-dimensional quality, a mark of permanence. Even if nobody buys them, they are still there to be had and that in itself, is a great comfort. So this time I'm taking two already commercially published storie...

Part 3 of a typical writer's history. I suppose the occasion which defined my writing career was the day of the Smarties Award ceremony in 1991.  I was amazed to have a telephone call to say that The War and Freddy was   shortlisted.  It was such a little book.  I liked it in a mild sort of way but as soon as I heard the news it grew in stature until it became a  wartime epic, though only in my  mind.          The War and Freddy, in its latest guise  reissued by Catnip in 2007 So the day came and I presented myself in a rather exotic, plant-lined room at the top of the Barbican Centre.  An exciting atmosphere, full of other authors.  Jacqueline Wilson was there with the very first Tracy Beaker story.  No, that didn't win either.  Neither did Robert Westall.  Actually, I forget who did win our section.  Susan Hill was the judge.  Her tone of voice as she started talking about Fr...