Authors Electric

I’ve finally managed to obtain something I’ve wanted for a while – an antique writing slope, almost identical to the one below: It’s probably taken a couple of years of looking to find the one I want, at the right price, and in the right condition. I must’ve become a bit of an expert on them since I started looking. I didn’t want to buy new – part of the appeal, for me, as the history attached to it. I also didn’t want a restored version, for similar reasons. But I did want something that was more than just a pile of broken bits – surprising how hard it was to find something to match the image in my head. I want to put my own stamp on it, give it my own twist to make it mine. I was also looking for a chance to flex my woodworking skills, and challenge myself with something different from the usual DIY or garden furniture. My most complex woodworking project so far has been a guitar, which I built many years ago; starting a family and changing jobs has meant less time ...

The occasional old shawl like this gorgeous Cantonese shawl For some years now, I’ve been running another business on the side, supplementing my writing income by buying and selling antique and vintage textiles of all kinds. Textiles have been pretty much a lifelong passion with me. It all started when I was a child and used to go with my mum to the saleroom – she would always be looking at pottery and porcelain while I would be gazing at linens, lace, embroideries and the occasional old shawl that was always thrown in the corner of the saleroom, because nobody bothered much about old clothes back then. Or, come to think of it, old teddies. How time have changed! An old fabric doll, fully dressed in Polonaise style For me, there seemed to be something quite magical about them. When I went to university in Edinburgh, I was fascinated by the emerging vintage clothes shops there, even though ‘vintage’ had not yet become a mainstream interest. My mum was a very good seamstress...

There was quite a lengthy period in the history of publishing when the short story was held in higher regard than the novel. A glance now at the collected works of Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, or Vladimir Nabokov, shows the huge volume of short stories they produced alongside their novels. Authors such as Katherine Mansfield, O. Henry, “Saki”, and Sherwood Anderson published short stories exclusively, in some cases famously being unable to manage the novel form when they tried their hand at it.   Aside from being a playwright, when it came to prose, Anton Chekhov was entirely satisfied to focus his art on the perfection and development of the short story alone. In his memoir, A MOVEABLE FEAST, Hemingway makes it quite clear that he and F. Scott Fitzgerald turned to the sale of short stories to magazines whenever they urgently needed to keep the wolf from the door; Hemingway only being more stringent in his ideals than Fitzgerald by refusing to change th...