Authors Electric

 Today (I'm writing this on the 29th of November), I realised it was almost December. It shouldn't have come as a surprise, considering that quite a lot of social media friends and some city centres started putting up their decorations a few weeks ago, but as usual I've been writing my November novel for NaNoWriMo and lost track of time. I had even forgotten until today to write down my plan for November. It was only when I got out the notebook I keep my writing plans in to write my December plan that I found there was nothing for November. I think what caused this oversight was that, quite unusually for me, I hadn't been able to decide what to write for NaNoWriMo until the end of October. This was obvious when I looked back at October's plan, in which I had written, as a kind of second priority for that month:  'Consider options for NaNo - Max Falconer 4? Calico Cat development? Complete Heiresses 3 - or is it really Brighton Heirs 5?' As November loomed ev...

As a writer, when things get too difficult, I can escape into another world. Recently I have spent a good deal of time with Letty Parker, in an alternative Victorian Bristol. Like its nineteenth century model this is a place of stark contrasts between rich and poor. The Downs are lined with the mansions of the rich, while the threat of the workhouse looms over those who can barely scrape a living to feed themselves and their families. Letty starts off making a living selling pies. She is twelve years old and prides herself on being an independent business woman. Her friends are the street children. They are the pickpockets, the burglars, the runners for the criminal gangs that are operated by Miss Liddy and The Bear. Having divided the city between them, the gangs keep to their own territory. To stray over the boundary is to risk a stabbing, or to be thrown into the river for the eels to devour. The eels that slide up from the river to coil in dark corners awaiting th...

In nine days’ time it will be the 534th anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth, often viewed as a turning point in English history. It’s when the medieval period is deemed to have ended and the early modern age begun – with the fall of the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, and the victory of Henry Tudor, first in the dynasty that bore his name. King Richard III of England Of course, history is never quite that simple, but it’s handy to focus on a specific date marked by a climactic battle, such as 22 August 1485, rather than have to chart the decades-long transition between medieval and modern to be found in religious changes or the gradual move from rule based on personal loyalty to a more modern, bureaucratic state. Either way, this coming weekend, the event will be commemorated in the annual Bosworth Medieval Festival on the fields of Leicestershire, with its re-enactment of the battle itself by hundreds of modern-day ‘knights in shining armour’. [The alternat...