Authors Electric

Hare's Choice by Dennis Hamley There's a tiny village school in Herefordshire, so small that it has only two classes: infants and primary.           Two children, Harry and Sarah, twin brother and sister, are walking to this school one morning when they discover a dead hare.The more they study it, the more impressed they are by its beauty and the more saddened by its death. They carry the body to school, to show their headmaster and fellow students.           The girl says, in a burst of feeling, "We should tell a story about the Hare."            We, the readers, follow Hare into an after-life, jostling with all the thousands of animals, of all kinds who have died that day...           The headmaster of the little school sees a teaching opportunity. If the children can, between them, devise a...

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...

I seem fated every year to be the bringer of sad news about a person who has been my friend, the friend of others on AE and a figure of respect and admiration  to many other readers and writers. Jim Riordan, Bob Leeson, Patricia Miles. And now comes, for me, the saddest of all. Pam Royds, Children's Book editor, first at Andre Deutsch and then at Scholastic, was 91. She was the editor who started the writing careers of both Jan and me. Our debt to her is immeasurable. Is it significant that my twenty-six years as a Deutsch and Scholastic author ended just before she finally retired?  As Jan will confirm, she was a noted fighter for her own writers. One of the last of the great  children's book editors. My first, initially bruising, meeting with Pam was in April 1973. Our first exchanges made me wonder why I'd even bothered to turn up. Yes, the lunch in Andre Deutsch's exclusive little dining room (those were the days!) was lovely and the whisky she insist...