Authors Electric

Since last month's post started out as an intro to this one that grew in the telling , let's just jump right in to my selection for this month's great self-published book. Jump in like Holmes and Moriarty over Reichenbach Falls The Swithen  by Scott Telek I have been a fan of the King Arthur legends since I was old enough to read, so much so that  I am writing my own version of them .  This series, then, is of particular interest to me. It is certainly the most ambitious. As anyone who has studied Arthurian myth knows, what we tend to think of as "Arthurian" legend really comes from one book: Thomas Malory's  Le Mort D'Arthur   and one or two other related texts, usually  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  and sometimes Geoffrey of Monmouth's  History of the King's of Britain   or  Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian poems . However, Arthurian legends are much more than three or four texts. There are literally hundreds, maybe ...

'Writers Block' strikes us all at times.  As a fantasy and Science Fiction writer, I often find reading old myths and legends will get the creative juices flowing again, and wake up the muse.  Reworking old legends to a modern setting is a good way to start, and I usually find a story will evolve in my mind which is completely different to the original idea that sparked it  and, while going off in a totally different direction, provides the 'starting point' and sometimes even a character, to build on. My native Wales is a land full of myths and legends, with  its fair share of ghosts, and is a rich source of ideas.  Usually, it is the beautiful landscape itself, and the many pools, waterfalls and mountains that provide the settings for these stories, rather than old houses or castles. Here are just a few tales of hauntings from various parts of the Principality. (Apologies in advance for some of the 'hard to pronounce Welsh names!) the Short Bridge, Lla...

Does my bum look big on this? And do you really care? How much information do you really need - or want - about an author? When I was much younger, if I'd just finished a really good book, all I really wanted to know was whether the author had written any more, so a list of titles was all I wanted. Sometimes though, reluctant to put the book down, I'd read the bit of bumph about the author found at the front of the book in paperbacks, and on the dustjacket if it was a hardback still in possession of one. Occasionally it offered tantalising little snippets of information: my Narnia books informed me that the young Clive had lived in Belfast (where I was living at the time, instantly making me feel there was a special bond between us) and had decided to write the sort of books which he would have liked to read when he was young. I learned that Gillian Baxter, who wrote some brilliant pony stories, had written - and got published - her first novel when she was fifteen; there'...