Authors Electric

I can't quite fix in my mind the moment I decided that enough was enough and I would leave the world of conventional publishing for ever. It's a bad sign of a senior condition when you can't identify even the year it happened. But I think it was in 2009, even before I had to accept that Walker weren't going to do the third in the Ellen's People trilogy, an event which almost made me lose heart about writing completely. But not quite. There was still a possibility of a new beginning, an enticing prospect with a new publisher who had already reissued The War and Freddie , a book for which I have a huge affection. I'd just finished a novella for the YA market. It was about something I'd never really considered writing about before. That was because it was something I'd not experienced directly. I'd only watched and enviously read about it. Sailing. With Julia and Jan around on this blog, I hardly dare mention the word. Besides which, I still have ech...

This will be a broken-backed blog, I fear.  There's a radical change of subject half-way through, but there's a segue which I hope you think works. We had a wonderful day out last week.  Like millions of others, we had tried in vain to buy tickets for something - anything - in the Olympics.  Of course, we failed.  When the Games started and tickets were put on sale every morning, we tried again.  But the tickets cost the proverbial arm and leg and we soon realised that we had to get up at 3am to stand a chance.   Yet we still clung on to the idea that we might somehow see the Olympic Park while it was fulfilling its original purpose and also get into at least one of the venues, preferably the main stadium.  And so we tried for what we thought would be just a consolation prize.  We bought tickets for the Paralympics. And all that mighty heart is lying still Just a consolation.  And then I remembered something very pleasing.  Wh...