Authors Electric

Due to all sorts of circumstances, I’ve not been on a plane for ten years, but finally this year I have a reason to fly. My nephew is getting married in the USA this month and I always thought very few things would stop me from being there. That was before Covid and travel restrictions, fit to fly tests and passenger locator forms. For most of this year I’ve been unsure if this trip would really happen. I’ve got used to planning with that niggling thought in the back of my brain that everything might just go pear-shaped. I hold everything loosely in my hand, waiting to see what direction the wind blows, if there’s a sudden gust I’ll shrug with a nonchalant “ c’est la vie!”.   They say travel broadens the mind and it only takes a few clicks online to come up with a plethora of articles on the subject. I recently read Maggie O’Farrell’s excellent memoir “I am, I am, I am”. I am in awe of her adventurous travels but don’t envy the near-death experiences which she has strung t...

  Most of us, when we were kids, have played some form of the gruesome verbal game of "Would you rather...?" Would you rather be eaten by a crocodile or swallowed by a whale? Would you rather be drowned in the sea or frozen in a deep freeze? Would you rather be locked up forever inside a chest, like the lost girl in the story, or would you prefer to be thrown from the top of the Empire State Building? For lucky children with kind and loving families, it feels like fun to flirt with terrible things, daring them to come on while knowing they are fantasies, and so we can push the improbable scenarios to impossible extremes. Nobody really believes in their own death, in spite of wills being drawn up (my daughter wrote an elaborate one when she was about nine) and funerals planned, often in great detail. These things feel like theatre, and the fact that we won't be there to watch a bit irrelevant, unless we believe in ghosts. I have, very recently, had a reality check in the...

 This is my last regular blog post for Authors Electric, so I would like to say farewell and thank you to everyone who has read and commented on my posts over the past couple of years, and for the support of both my fellow author/bloggers and readers. It’s been an exciting time for me since publishing my first children’s novel The Order of the White Boar in October 2017, and I’ve enjoyed sharing the ups and downs of life as a newbie indie author with you all. But I’ve come to realize that a commitment to writing a monthly blog results in time spent away from getting on with the novel writing itself (which is already rather far down the pecking order in terms of time spent). So I’ve sadly decided to call it a day. But I’m calling it a day on a day when the launch has happened of a wonderful charity auction of books! For the next 62 days, until the Friday that is the annual BBC Children in Need day, an auction of more than 500 titles across a range of genres will be underway at ...