Authors Electric

I’m a member of Juno, a women’s theatre group based around Salisbury, with a brief to work at correcting the gender imbalance in theatre.           Juno’s reach is mostly in Wiltshire and Dorset and I’m in Hampshire, but I just sneak in under the ‘within 30 miles of Salisbury’ rule. We are mostly writers, but several members have performance and directing backgrounds too. We make a lively contribution to Salisbury Fringe Festival – somehow not quite part of the ‘official’ Fringe, but there all the same, putting on our own shows alongside it. ‘Little Red Ella and the FGM’ was one such production. Several of us are also working on projects celebrating women in WW1 at present. We run workshops on writing for the theatre: site-specific, non-natural, political, comedy, for example. I’ve learned a lot.           Our most recent venture has just been on at the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis – a love...

I've been thinking hard about this for some time and now I've come to a decision. I think this will be my last regular Authors Electric blog. I haven't been very well since March and though I'm not far off being restored, I feel that I have to jettison a few things. Writing a regular monthly blog - and after five years at it, trying to find something worth writing about - has become quite a burden, albeit a fulfilling one. However, I find I've picked up a few new projects - the 'ghost writing' I mentioned last month, Dora's story about escaping from Communist Bulgaria, the last part of which I am still waiting for, the birthstone story project and the strange fact that interest has been shown in my long-ago failed novel about Coleridge, the salvaging of which is now a point of honour - at the same time as losing some of my old energy. After all, the years are chugging on remorselessly. However, I won't give in to the temptation to write a f...