Authors Electric

Life’s parallel tracks fascinate me. Or, at least, human beings’ ability to navigate them. They are a reflection of that dual personality propensity that lies within us all. My favourite classic writer - and fellow Scot - Robert Louis Stevenson, was also fascinated: his famous novel,  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , is only the ultimate expression of it. It can be traced in lots of his other novels too. I had a very real life- experience of this last month. Picture this: I am getting ready for my annual fortnight in The Hebrides and I trawl round the bookshops in the area (by email) and ask if they want any more copies of my Hebridean novel,  The Ghost of Erraid , for the tourist season, which is everyone's bread and butter there. I get several re-orders, gratifyingly . And  I get an invitation from one shop to be their featured author at one of their ‘Book Chat” events. Brilliant!  Now picture this: when my mother died suddenly at the age of fifty, I was twen...

For novel writers, characters are very important, and so too are settings. In two of my four novels, I was very conscious, while writing, that the place itself was as much a character as the protagonist. One is set in St Andrews in Scotland, home of golf and of the third oldest university in Britain, steeped in history and horror stories (e.g. Reformation martyrs burnt at the stake at the entrance to Quad. The other is set in the Hebrides and revolves around a lighthouse family.  The bleak but beautiful landscape, the wild and wilful sea: both are fully paid-up members of the  dramatic personae.   Weather too can be so central to the tale as to assume character status. Heavy skies, scudding clouds and sheeting rain can have as much effect on the action and atmosphere as a human character.  Or stifling heat, gentle, warm breezes ... If they happen once, they are just details; but, if they are frequent and integral, they...