Authors Electric

  I’m not long back from a few days’ break. Nothing too exciting, just a wee trip from Scotland to Yorkshire to spend a few days with my parents. The original idea was to take one of the kids with me and use up some of my annual leave before the end of the leave year. Due to various factors beyond my control, I ended up going on my own, and for five days did very little apart from eat, drink, and generally relax. No laptop, or anything like that – the plan was not to write for a few days and spend quality time with my folks. But a couple of things happened whilst I was down there – firstly, I met their cleaner, and it turns out she’s a writer, too. We had a very engaging chat about writing, and the wider process of publishing including book design, illustrations – she writes for small children – and so on. What occurred to me was, despite the fact we write in completely opposite genres, a lot of the considerations we had were the same, albeit sometimes arriving there ...