Authors Electric

Orson Welles ' "Lady from Shanghai" Mirror Maze Scene My cursor blinks accusingly from the end of a pathetic little string of words, lost in the white-out of a freshly opened page – a tiny Inuit and his dog team sledding over the ice pack of my frozen inspiration. Time to take a walk, maybe down to the lake. Let the creative unconscious (that capricious weasel) to its job. Maybe I should get that pound of coffee we need, or change that burned-out track light in the hallway. But how can I take a break when I haven't even started? … Mmmm. What's in the refrigerator, and why am I staring into it? How did I get here? Indeed, that is the question. Back at my desk amid its comfortable clutter, I swivel in my high-backed chair to see Oliver, my inamorata's fat orange cat, sprawled on a window sill facing our pair of leafy verdant mulberry trees. A deliriously bright summer afternoon – breezy and pungent from yesterday's thunderstorms – beckons me. Olive...

Before I start: hello! This is my first post as a member of Authors Electric and very delighted I am to have been accepted into the group. Thanks to everyone. In a few months, I'm releasing the ebook version of my very first teenage novel - Mondays are Red, which was originally published in 2002 and is now out of print. I'm doing it jointly with my ever-supportive and patient agent and the question we have is a rather basic one: do teenagers buy ebooks? I hope so! Today and tomorrow, I'm going to be asking them. I'm speaking at the Appledore Festival in Devon, with a family event on Sunday and school events on Monday. This won't be the first time I've asked teenagers this question but it's the first time the answer is going to be terribly important. Here's what I've learnt from the few (probably too few to be significant?) times in recent months that I have asked: When I ask a mixed group whether they have ever read a book or part of an eboo...

I wonder how other authors feel when their books are finished? For me, each time a book is submitted to the publisher after the final revisions, I have a sense of parting with it, knowing that I’ll never again “live” in that book as I did while writing it. Reading the published book isn’t the same at all; in fact, if I do so at all, it's with trepidation, fearing the discovery of some toe-curling mistake, or at the very least something I want to change. Preparing The Damage Done for its e-edition gave me the rare chance to live in a book again, and one of my favourites. I revised it for things that have become outdated (Kirsty listening to her Walkman; people smoking in a pub or waiting for dial-up internet connections) but also made numerous small tweaks, taking a word out here, adding a few there, all so surreptitious that probably no one but me will ever notice. Doing this, I experienced the enjoyment of writing all over again. Especially, I had fun with Kirsty’s father, G...