Authors Electric

What writing magazines do you read? I ask because I’ve had  a cull recently (no, not like the badgers, no guns involved, no rotating goal posts). I found I had several writing magazines lying about in the house unread, and no time to read them, and some of them not as interesting or as useful as I once thought, and so it made sense to reconsider what I look for in a journal and subscribe only to those that give me greatest pleasure. Which has made me think a little deeper about what I like about them, and why, and what I learn from them.             I’m down to three – which feels like an achievement. The number may well creep up again as I come across new ones that inspire me. But my three are: Mslexia – I’ve subscribed to Mslexia since I began writing. Not only because it celebrates women’s writing – though that is what drew me in the first place. But also because it is funny, and informative. It assumes...

What do you do when you’re not writing (or travelling)? How often am I asked that! It’s a strange life, being a travel writer. I’m officially retired, so I can’t claim it’s a ‘proper job’, even though it fills almost all my time – or it feels like that. I had a proper job once. I worked in Child Protection – putting on special clothes to go to work, picking up my case and my files and heading for an office with a desk and secretary. I was, I was assured, an expert. Sometimes I had to appear in Court and give evidence, help to prove a child had suffered ‘significant harm’ (that’s jargon. I won’t elaborate.). I tied my hair back and wore stern clothes. The only way to survive a job like that is to learn to turn it off. No phone calls after eight at night. At least one day off a week. If a child continued to run around in my head I knew I’d missed something, and so go back to the papers and notes till I’d worked out what it was. Then close the office door, sit ba...