Authors Electric

An Ixy Selfie As well as provoking an interesting theological exchange between Jan and Enid, my last blog asked what I think is the most important question one can ask in almost every context: Why? It also made me remember another blog I wrote years ago along similar (not to say identical) lines so, since it’s an early expression of a thread of my thinking that hasn’t shifted much over the years, I’m adding it here to reinforce last month’s point. In essence, it’s a quick biology lesson. It’s about something that sounds as if it were a warrior in some ancient battle – Ixodes ricinus . But we know it better as a sheep tick. (By the way, the ricinus part of the name really is a bit sinister. It relates to its other common name, the castor bean tick, and it’s from castor beans that you get that horrible poison, ricin, which, of course, features briefly in my novel The Darkness .) Anyway, Ixy, as we’ll fondly call it, is a very common tick indeed. It can live for anythin...

After being so pleasantly surprised by the number and nature of comments provoked by my first Authors Electric blog, the pressure is on. And yes, that’s a deliberate example of a hanging participle because it gives me the opportunity to show that I know what a hanging participle is. Anyway, as I was saying ... the pressure. It seems that by speculating on the ‘literary’ aspects of our trade I was offering some sort of relief from the traditional (and, let’s face it, crucially important), topic of marketing, increasing sales, raising profiles and the rest. I can assure you that, had I been any good at selling, I’d have written about that, but I’m not. So, at least to begin with, I’ll try to fill the role of a specific archetype in this village-like online community. Villages have vicars, pub landlords, squires and postmistresses, but there’s only one role that includes the word ‘village’ in its title – idiot. However, despite Danny Boyle’s plans for the Olympic opening c...