Authors Electric

Well, it’s been a bit since I last posted about my ongoing countdown of the best self - published books I’ve found. So lets get right to it. Rooted - Idabell Allen Pick your own cover! Personally, I like them both, though the punk rock cow really speaks to me.. I have to admit that when I first read this book, I had no idea that it was self-published. I met Idabell Allen at a conference in New Orleans in September of last year. She was presenting a paper on the podcast S-Town (and if you haven’t heard that podcast, do yourself a favor and start downloading it now) and mentioned in passing her own novel about a misfit in a small Southern town, which she described as “Sid Vicious stuck in rural Tennessee.” Being a huge Sex Pistols fan from all the way back in high school, and being a Southern lit scholar since grad school, obviously this was an idea I found all too intriguing. Total punk and rule-breaker right there. During the luncheon, she and I found ours...

William Faulkner These days most of our correspondence comes via email, but it's still nice to receive a letter in the post - unless it's a bill! But we do take the good old Royal Mail for granted but that's not surprising seeing as it has been around for 500 years. It was back in 1516 that King Henry VII established a 'Master of the Posts' which was a position that evolved into the office of the Postmaster General. It was another 19 years however before the postal service was available to the general public. And then the cost of postage was paid by the recipient. I somehow don't think that would work these days with all the junk mail we receive. The policy of having the receiver pay for the letter ended in 1840 when Sir Rowland Hill introduced the Penny Black stamp. However, MPs were able to send mail for free so long as they stamped their 'frank' or mark on the letter. Uniformed postmen first appeared on the streets in 1792 ...