Authors Electric

Image Credit: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. I love reading books of letters and diaries. I was a fan of Adrian Mole and the letters of P.G. Wodehouse are an interesting and often humorous read (as you’d expect). One of my favourite quotes comes from a Wodehouse letter.   “God may have forgiven Herbert Jenkins Limited for the jacket of Meet Mr Mulliner but I never shall!” Dodgy book covers are nothing new then! I also have a fascinating collection of letters between Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford. Reading this is like peeping in on a private world, which is a great reason to read books of letters and diaries! Have you written in letter and/or diary format? I’ve done both though for flash fiction I have needed to use close to the upper limit of 1000 words for these. They are an interesting challenge and I find they make a nice change from “straight prose”.  Having said that, I wouldn’t want to always use these formats. It can look gimmicky. Besides the...

‘Don’t panic!’ Corporal Jones on Dad’s Army used to yell at Captain Mainwaring and the rest. I’ve been saying this to myself rather a lot recently, with about as much success as Jonesy had. At the end of January this year, on a visit to my daughter in lovely Vancouver, I had to call on the emergency services to take me to hospital, following the onset of some worrying symptoms I feared might mean a heart attack. The paramedics and medics were wonderful, and thankfully my test results showed no heart attack – in fact it was unclear what had happened to me. I was sent home in the early hours, pretty much back to normal; a little shaken but hoping that would be the end of it. I went on to have a great holiday and flew home ten days later. I was eventually billed over £800 for my emergency callout and examination, and although money is the least of your worries in such circumstances, this was rather a lot and I put in a claim with my insurance company. The subsequent battle I had with...