Authors Electric

One thing that I’ve always appreciated in fiction is a fully realised sense of place: a writer’s ability to bring a real or imagined landscape to life on the page or screen. Not too long ago, I read Carson McCullers’ The Ballad of the Sad Café , and found that it made the American Deep South – an area with which I’m actually unfamiliar – seem absolutely real and immediate. By the time I’d turned the last page, I felt that I’d just paid a visit to the Georgia town in which it was set. And, to McCullers’ credit, I hadn’t felt like a gormless tourist once, but almost like a local. Putting the book down, I was surprised to find myself back in Northern Italy on a chilly autumn night. Many of my favourite books share this quality: they allow the reader to immerse him- or herself in the world in which the story occurs. In the hands of a skilled author, the reader can move quite easily through an unfamiliar place, and never feel like a stranger. Place. It’s more than just a geographi...

I'm currently busy on the final draft of a new novel called Line Dancing, set in a small Scottish village, of the kind I have lived in for many years. I've been working my way steadily through a print-out of Line Dancing, correcting and rewriting as I go. I always like to do these late corrections on paper and then type them up afterwards, even though I write the first draft straight onto the computer, and follow that up with a great number of on-screen rewrites. While I've been doing this, I've been thinking about a previous novel, Bird of Passage . I suppose there are vague similarities, although Bird of Passage is much more of a family saga; a twentieth century historical novel  spanning some 50 years. On the other hand, if I had to place Line Dancing into any category, it would be 'contemporary women's fiction, romance with a literary twist'. It's a love story which tackles serious issues in a rural setting. And perhaps that's one reason why...