Authors Electric

My first traditionally published picture book featuring a hedgehog and mouse I started writing non-fiction 20 years ago and I continue to write non-fiction magazine features to this day.   I've always strived to write features that are as accurate as possible. Even though I know (I heard it on the TV programme QI, so it must be true) that facts normally have a shelf life of five years. This desire to get facts correct crosses over into my picture book and short story writing. I've had many a discussion with editors on getting the 'facts' right. I understand in my picture and short story collections we're dealing with talking animals or creatures that don't exist. However, having studied environmental geography at university I prefer to try to ensure the life science elements of a story are as real as possible. For example in my first picture book ( A Book For Bramble ) Bramble the hedgehog is hibernating under an upturned wheel barrow. This is ba...

This is a bit of an experiment. I’ve written and published before now about my mental health, including a post on Authors Electric a few months ago about anxiety and panic attacks. I’ve mentioned my recurrent depression and I may even have summarised the effects it has on me – but I’ve never published anything I actually wrote (or tried to write) while depressed. There are good reasons for that – one of which being that it can be bloomin’ difficult, if not impossible, to write anything at all when depressed. It’s certainly not something I’d advise anyone in that condition to try – not unless they really want to, and feel that it might help. The last thing someone with depression needs is another thing that he or she ‘should’ do. Depression is enough of a burden and a severe taskmaster without adding to its demands. But this time, recently, I wanted to write. Perhaps I wasn’t as bad as I’ve sometimes been. Certainly I seem to be coming out of it, thanks partly to my trusty...

(1-A. 2-A. 3-B. 4-B. 5-B. 6-A. 7-A. 8-A. 9-A. 10- A. I'll explain later).  Did you catch Stephen Fry on Radio 2 recently, talking about words? He’s something of an expert having worked on a series of programmes about plain English. His main point this time was that, unlike more regimented languages, English is constantly evolving, to embrace how people actually use words. I hadn’t really thought about it, that dictionaries record usage rather than dictating the rules. What a great example of honouring creativity! How sensible! Fry pointed out this aspect of our beautiful language, when he was asked if he really was the creator of the term ‘luvvie’ for an actor sort of person. The OED lists him as the first person to use the word.  Fry quoted another example of his creating a word that has entered common usage, with his friend Hugh Laurie. The word was ‘spoffle’, to described the muffler spongy bit which is placed on the end of a microphone during recording. He...