Authors Electric

Daisy Ridley's Ophelia swims with the fishes It's a writer's nightmare. You've put everything into a novel based on an idea that you thought was original, only to discover that it's already been done - maybe better, and perhaps famously. How did you overlook it? Just like that, your shiny new bicycle has a flat and you're out there pedaling with no pants on! No matter. Call it "a reimagining" and carry on. Writers have done it for thousands of years, most notably, William Shakespeare, that all time master of tales retold in iambic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet , was already a popular Italian tale when the Bard made it the subject of his masterpiece, as were other most famous plays. He based Hamlet on a very old Danish play entitled "Ur-Hamlet" which in turn was derived from a lengthy, 1200 A.D. compilation of Norse legends written in Latin: Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, or History of the Danes , telling of the rise and fall of t...

As well as being a fan of Monty Python in my youth, I was also an avid reader of horror and ghost stories. Grubby, increasingly battered copies of the Pan series of horror stories passed from hand to hand around the classroom ... and then I discovered Dennis Wheatley and H.P Lovecraft nestling up against Dickens in my Dad's bookcase, and had a few more sleepless nights ... As I got older I became a bit more squeamish and my love of horror lessened - but not so the good old ghost story, which provides all of the chills but without the buckets of blood and gore. The highlight of Christmas TV viewing was the BBC ghost story: a friend introduced me to MR James amongst other authors - and there are some very fine ghost story writers amongst the Authors Electric members too, including Susan Price, Mari Biella and Ann Evan s ... But although I read lots of ghost stories, I don't write them. Well, not normally. I did at one time pen a few, for t...

It’s (almost) that time of year again, when the entire Western world embarks upon a huge sweaty orgy of buying and selling, and we all demand to have our stockings well and truly stuffed. When having fun is mandatory, and rapidly-sobering revellers are admitted to A&E Departments after attempting injudiciously ambitious dance moves at office parties. It’s... No, wait! There’s no way I can say it as well as this gentleman: Let the Festive foolishness begin! I try to hate Christmas, I really do. I fulminate against the crass commercialism of it all, at the way a jolly Midwinter festival has been hijacked by the crazed forces of global hyper-Capitalism. But the moment I see a twinkly Christmas tree or hear the strains of Jingle Bell Rock , all is in vain. Sooner or later, my inner Scrooge always gets socked in the mouth by my inner six-year-old. He's not going down without a fight, though... Someone – it might have been my inner six-year-old, come to t...

I have recently emerged from reading Mari Biella's scary, ghostly and disturbing novel: "THE QUICKENING". I'm usually a slow reader, with an uncomfortable tendency to abandon a book and come back to it later - 'later', in this context, meaning anything from days to weeks. Ruth Rendell, however, with her psychological intricacies and insights into the nastier side of humanity, has always grabbed me by the throat, and once 'into' a Ruth Rendell novel, I don't emerge until I've seen it through , although there have been a few exceptions. THE QUICKENING grabbed me in precisely the same way. I found myself deeply involved with the tragic protagonist, but also with the strange, flat landscape of the Fens (note to self - must go there one day) and the wild and unsettling weather, both of which form the vivid backdrop to this story. I don't often write reviews, but this book impressed me , so thank you, Mari. On the right ( I hope) is the cover...

Picture credit: laobc, via openclipart.org If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that it just doesn’t do to rely too much on technology. Just when you get to that point at which everything depends on a gadget, invention or app, what happens? Why, the blasted thing fails to work, of course! Our regular poster on the 26 th , Ruby Barnes, has very recently found this out to his cost. A combination of computer woes and travel plans have made it impossible for him to publish his regular post, so I’ve stepped in at the last minute. And, ironically enough, my replacement post will, after a fashion, concern technology. Two things have, of late, been taking up my meagre mental resources: firstly, the Authors Electric newsletter, of which I am the administrator; and secondly, my favourite festival, the fast-approaching Hallowe’en. I’m at that age where I should regard All Hallows’ Eve as a bit of fun for kids, but come this time of year I’m often to be found car...

Consider these three different scenarios: 1. The hero of a Regency romance stalks into a drawing-room and greets his bewildered valet with the words ‘What’s up, dude?’ 2. A generally well-researched novel set in Mediaeval Europe has a scene in which the protagonist gets out of bed and puts on his underpants. (Underpants, so I’m told, were not commonly worn in the Mediaevael era.)  3. An author deliberately and knowingly introduces anachronisms, such as spaceships or the internet, into a novel set in Tudor England. Which of these scenarios is worst, or best? Do all of them set your teeth on edge, or just some? Do anachronisms wreck historical fiction, or not? How much difference is there between an anachronism that is introduced by design, and one that is the result of shoddy research?  Historical fiction often (but not always) strives to be realistic, and this realism sometimes extends to a horror of anachronism. The argument seems to be that readers...

I sometimes swear I'm caught up in some kind of bizarre Dr Who -style time-bending experiment. I don't know what's happened to the space-time continuum, but it just doesn't seem to be functioning as it once did. I can remember a time when the temporal gap between one Christmas and the next lasted for about - well, about twelve months, actually: twelve long, glorious months that were stuffed full of exciting possibilities. Now I sometimes wonder if it's even worth packing away the festive decorations; before I know it, it'll be time to put them all back up again. Time is a peculiarly elastic thing. When you're miserable, or trapped at a particularly dreary social event, or waiting for a delayed flight, it hardly moves at all. When you're actually doing something enjoyable and/or worthwhile, like writing, it zips by. Hardly seems fair, does it? This problem becomes even more striking when you're trying to forge a career (I use the term loosel...

Success. For some, it’s a fact. For others, it’s a dream. For still others, it’s a stick used to beat people with. But what exactly does it mean? The idea behind this month’s post has been swilling around in my mind for a while now. While I was doing some research, I googled ‘self-published authors' success’. Not surprisingly, some of the top results were '10 Best Selling Self-Published Authors’ ,   ‘Bestseller Success Stories that Started Out as Self-Published Books’ ,  and ‘Writers Who Rocked Self-Publishing’ . Hardly surprising, either: these are all genuine success stories, which give the lie to the idea, still occasionally aired, that self-publishing is the last resort of talentless amateur scribblers. The problem is that it’s easy to crudely equate success with sales. I've done it myself. I've beaten myself up because my book didn't sell x number of copies in such-and-such a month. I've gazed with wistful envy at the authors climbing up t...

Where we'd all like to see our books, eventually ... Image c/o Wikimedia Commons One piece of advice that is frequently aimed at today's self-publishers is that we ought to write, and publish, at a pretty high velocity. Conventional wisdom (insofar as conventional wisdom can be said to exist in a movement that’s still in its infancy) suggests that momentum is everything. A single book is worth little; two or three books represent just a fraction of what has to be done. We need, in short, to have a vast personal bookshelf, stuffed full of multiple titles. I can see the logic of this viewpoint, too. After all, if a reader has read and enjoyed one of your books, then they’ll be altogether more inclined to pick up another. However, I’d add a small caveat: this is only likely to work if the books in question are any good. Over the past few years I've read a lot of self-published books. Many of them, of course, have been wonderful: well-thought-out, well-written, amb...

For indie authors – and for increasing numbers of authors who aren't indie – writing a book is just part of our job description. Without a publisher ( and frequently even with a publisher these days ) we have to market what we write, and straight away we run into one of the major problems that beset indies. Most writers are not PR experts or marketing gurus. The two things require completely different skill sets. Some fortunate people have both; but what do you do if, like me, the very thought of marketing makes you come out in hives? This is a problem I've been wrestling with ever since I stepped into the self-publishing ring. I can’t claim to have come up with any particularly brilliant answers yet. However, I've gradually arrived at the following practices, which I like to think of as a form of invisible marketing. (However, a disclaimer: I am by no means a marketing authority. Everything in this post could well be rubbish. It’s a list of things I've learn...