Authors Electric

Exciting News First suggested back in, I think, 2006, it's gone on for far too long. I 've touched on it, briefly, in blogs,here, and on my website, but couldn't go into more exciting detail because there simply wasn't any. The story is that, many years ago, a really good friend, and admirer of my work (and we all need those) suggested that "THE TIME TREE" might be promising film material, and prodded me into turning it into a film script, which during one of those all too many arid times when nothing else was happening, I did, using several of those 'HOW TO DO IT' books. I showed the result to my agent - she was not impressed. Nevertheless, m y friend was convinced that the book had 'legs', so I took it walking. I can't post the details of that walk because they're still under wraps, but know that finally, in 2016, I can tell you that a company is interested enough to offer me a contract, with filming to start in Spring 2017. ...

Recently I was given this delightful book by my daughter who thought (quite rightly) that it would amuse me. LOST IN TRANSLATION, by Ella Frances Sanders, is a collection of single words  describing mostly, but not always, familiar situations for which, in English, we'd use several. There is, for example: MURR-MA, from an almost extinct Australian language, which means searching for things under water with your feet.      There is the lovely-sounding TIAM, in Farsi, meaning the twinkle in your eyes when you meet someone special, and on the downside: KUMMERSPECK, in German, which literally translates as 'grief-bacon', meaning the excess weight gained by emotional over-eating. The illustrations are fun, too - do check it out. For authors specialising in crime and horror,how are you responding to recent global events which seem to surpass anything dreamed up in a novel? Which of us, writing futuristic fantasy twenty or so years ago, would have invented a let...

Because it was on display for such a short time, on a picture-postcard Spring day I went to Trafalgar Square to see the Palmyra arch. I haven't posted an image, partly because there are so many online, but also because it would have been spoilt by so many people posing for selfies. The replica looked so startlingly new, but then as a colleague on Facebook so  wisely pointed out, that's how it would have looked when it was first built, only then it wouldn't have had the small missing bit at the top. I was surprised to find it so apparently, unprotected and open to the public, although there were one or two 'heavies' walking around. Curious about Digital Archeology, I walked over to the information centres and had a look around. Apart from the technical stuff (which was fascinating - the amount of work that went into this project was phenomenal), there were two stacks of cards. On one, you could write a general message of peace etc in Syria; on the other, you coul...

A little while ago, I was sent a signed copy of Tabitha Suzuma's Young Adult novel, Hurt . As with many online writer 'friends' on Facebook, ours has grown into something gratifyingly like a real friendship, and since we both live in London, I have no doubt that, one day, we will meet. Pain is something we share - mine from losing David and hers for very different and more complex reasons. I rarely finish reading a complex and challenging novel in a day, but that Sunday was a bad day for me - Sundays tend to be - so because it was an unexpected gift, I began reading it. I am a slow reader (David, by contrast, was a book-gobbler) so I didn't expect it to occupy my whole day, but it did. The writing is exquisite, and the plot brilliant. It's not easy to grab a reader's attention right up to the last word, but she did it. Please don't be put off by its "Young Adult" labelling - so many Y/A novels are crossover, and this one certainly was. Inciden...

To  continue the theme of publishers who nurture, or don't, my experience with Walker Books, my first publisher was very positive - in fact, I thought of them as my second family. Newspaper articles were written, at the time, about the experience - always positive - of being a Walker author, about being called, often at weekends, with exciting sales news or small publicity titbits, of the creche, of the private taxi service if you were working late with an editor (one of my most treasured memories was of being driven in a black cab from Vauxhall to Muswell Hill on an icy clear night, with all the lights of London town around me, and me feeling like a queen). Oh, and the parties - the unforgettable parties (do they still happen?) - the barn dance one where they brought in bales of straw, to celebrate their entry into the American market, the Halloween one where someone who shall be nameless turned up in a VERY explicit devil costume, and, of course, the Crystal Ball... Times hav...