Authors Electric

What festival organisers do - 1. Claudia Myatt, coracle addict, Strong Winds series illustrator and part of the M Woodbridge team pretending that all she does is pose This is a what-I-did-on-my-holidays blogpost. It won't raise your consciousness, touch your heart or even help to improve your ebook sales. In September I was invited to three different festivals and I went. I didn't get paid but none of the people organising the festivals was earning anything out of them either. These were not high-profile, prestigious events. They were intended to be fun. First in the diary came Maritime Woodbridge . This is a biennial happening centered mainly around a derelict boatyard but extending some way further along the Woodbridge waterfront and into the town as well. It's intended to connect with the Heritage Open Days scheme, the weekend every year when interesting places that are not normally open invite the public in or free. In Woodbridge the main pieces of heritage a...

Claudia Myatt's new cover for A Ravelled Flag I knew it was going to be a successful outing as soon as I got the teacher's response to the weather forecast. It was mid-October and we'd planned to take her class of ten-year olds exploring alongside the River Stour in Suffolk. I'd warned her already that they might get wet feet by the end of the day but now I needed to tell her that we were also likely to encounter rain and strong winds. Not a hurricane, you understand, but gusts that might reach 40mph and possible heavy showers.She'll cancel, I thought to myself gloomily. I was part of the way through a project for the Essex Book Festival, working with schools in the Tendring Hundred area of Essex. My job was to talk about the stories in my Strong Winds series, then encourage the children to write adventures of their own. Each school wanted something slightly different. The headteacher of this school (herself a sailing enthusiast) suggested that the Y6 ...

Too big June and July have been the Month(s) of the Child as far as I'm concerned. You might expect that with five children of my own plus five grandchildren that every month would be Month of the Child – but that's not necessarily so. The older ones are now too old (youngest will soon be seventeen) and the younger ones are still too young (oldest is not yet six). At the risk of sounding like a grumpy Goldilocks (“too hard” “too soft” “too hot” too cold”) this leaves A Gap. My sailing adventure stories are intended for ten-year olds and up and – while I'm naturally thrilled to discover that nonagenarians enjoy them – if I'm not getting it right for the tens then there's something essential lost. Too small When I wrote first drafts of the three volumes of the Strong Winds Trilogy, my prime reader (Child Number Four ) was aged 10, 11, 12. He and his younger brother were still at the village primary school and our garden, especially in the summer afterno...

I am one of many people currently reading The Reason I Jump: one boy's voice from the silence of autism by Naoki Higashida, translated by novelist David Mitchell and his wife Keiko Yoshida. It's a unique and beautiful piece of writing from a severely autistic thirteen year old who still (he's now aged sixteen) cannot reliably control his body or hold a spoken conversation. David Mitchell wrote an article in the Guardian   explaining his personal involvement (his son is autistic) and the book was also read on Radio 4. When I mention it to friends they say, “oh yes, I think I heard that” or “I know the one you mean”. The hardback edition stands at #2 in the Amazon top 100 books and is reprinting: the kindle edition is unobtrusively available at #103. I am already thinking of friends to whom I want to give The Reason I Jump . Not because they are parents or teachers of autistic children but because it speaks about the imperfect relationship between body and mind and the i...

Boat-building at the Nottage Institute The Nottage Maritime Institute, beside the River Colne in Essex, is an unexpected and delightful place. It was founded in 1896 from a legacy left by a keen amateur yachtsman, Captain Charles Nottage, who wanted to offer “Colnesiders [..] the opportunity to improve themselves in navigation primarily or make up their skills generally.” The Nottage is housed in a former sail loft on the quay at Wivenhoe and  runs a range of RYA and other courses. It's also a museum, a library and a boat-building centre. What I loved about the Nottage as soon as I met it last month, was the sense in which it's an embodiment of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm and skill and pride in craftsmanship. First there's the overwhelming atmosphere of the volunteer ethos. When I was doing an internet search before my visit I happened upon some oral history accounts by former users and committee members. Rank off the page came the time and effort they'd expended:...

I spent two nights on board Peter Duck this weekend. It had been an unsatisfactory week, unproductive, full of petty stresses. I’m in the marketing stage for Ghosting Home , (concluding volume of the Strong Winds trilogy) and scrabbling for the time to make final cuts and corrections to Fifty Years in the Fiction Factory, another long term project which is scheduled for publication in September. (September? I must be mad!). There’s the ever-present buzz of family life, more insistent some weeks than others – GCSEs for Archie, booking university open days for Bertie, a birthday for Frank, a birthday for the twins, a sharp dip down the confusional roller-coaster for Mum, builders making a start on Francis’s new shed, a close friend rushed into hospital, visits, extra school runs needed – you know the sort of thing. It goes on …   What a joy to close the computer, hug the littlest ones, reassure the oldest one, turn off the mobile phone and row down the river with the ebb. It ...