Authors Electric

  A confession - I have never self-published. All my ebooks are out there because when they went out of print, which to an author is like death, my husband David very expertly re-published them. This has meant that all the cover illustrations were professionally designed (I had to ask permission from the artists involved), so they look pretty good - a great asset for which I claim no credit. However, recently, I've been thinking of publishing one of my many short stories, a number of which appeared in magazines. One of these stories: The Only Way , was given an unusual full page, black and white illustration which I'd like to use as the base for an ebook cover, but so far the artist: Barbara Anne Taylor, seems to be untraceable, and believe me, I've googled her. She was working successfully in the 70s, and this is the illustration I'd like to use, simply by inserting a title somewhere - what do you think? Would it work? And, incidentally, do single short stories ...

It's early Autumn, or, if you prefer, late summer, and in my very peaceful part of North London, there's a kind of golden silence which seeps into my head. The very last of my huge crop of tomatoes remains to be picked, and this morning I gathered an unexpectedly large bunch of runner beans - all this richness from a small suburban garden. This time of year feels like a kind of dream time through which I wander almost mindlessly. Soon there will be the first breaths of the winter to come, and I love that - it's thrilling. I am not a summer person. Recently I found myself picking lawn daisies just before their decapitation by lawn mower - these lovely little things always come back. I haven't picked daisies since making daisy chains with my kids and my grandchildren, and I suddenly wanted to - they are so sweet. The movie based on one of my books has now progressed to the stage of location and actually filming, and I will be shown the first images in ten days time...

          I n my last blog, I suggested that it was time I stopped faffing around and got on with some proper writing.  So I’ve done just that and have now passed (I hope) the point of no return with The Second Man From Porlock ,  my latest attempt  to  get the  old, failed novel about Samuel Taylor Coleridge right at last and out of my system.   STC.   The man himself           Trying to write novels centred round real people presents many difficulties.  They aren’t biographies: conversely, they ca n’t be pure fiction.   It takes a braver writer than I am to dare even to think of writing a book like  Milton in America , Peter Ackroyd’s wonderful ‘What if?’ novel, which turns what might well have been Milton’s fate into something which actually happens.   This makes for a stunning piece of literary and historical understanding, not ...