Authors Electric

I don’t have an answer. But anyone glancing at social media during this past few weeks can’t have missed the sheer numbers posting under the #metoo hashtag - each one disclosing how she, too, has experienced sexual harassment or assault. I don’t know any women who are surprised by the numbers. It’s just something we’ve lived with for decades and felt ashamed to speak about.  But no longer. So what are the implications for us as writers? This experience is clearly ubiquitous and yet I can’t think of any novel that includes an acknowledgement that everyday harassment is just something we’ve learned to live with. There are, of course, films and novels that look at rape. I have a problem with rape being seen as a subject for entertainment - I recall seeing Sleeping with the Enemy, many years ago, and cringing when the assault lasted for hours and then the woman spent most of the rest of the film terrified that the man would find her, and all that happened to him was a qui...

Getting the work/life balance right during the school holidays can be difficult for everyone So, today – Tuesday 18 th April – marks the end of the Easter holidays and my son returns to pre-school. Although I’ve just written the date, I have no real clue what day it is, why I’m sitting at my laptop and who the characters in my current work in progress are. You see, I think I’m a very lucky person to be able to work from home. It means a can choose the hours that suit me and I can work around my son’s part-time school rota. However, the downside to that is, I’ve found I’ve just had two weeks off work… two weeks I didn’t actually want off, and I’m feeling extremely guilty. Before my son finished nursery, I had just hit the half-way mark with my work in progress. My protagonist, DI Hamilton, was talking to me and telling me where he wanted the story to go and another influential character was coming up against some deadly threats. I was in a good place with the story. I’m ...

The start of the New Year inspired some authors to share images on Faceboook of the views from their writing area. There were some truly beautiful pictures – which made me yearn more for a holiday than writing time… but that’s probably just me. These views were also a huge contrast to the one I have, and it got me thinking – does our surroundings unintentionally influence the genre we choose to write? I always think writing by the sea is very special. UK or abroad, to me, it just looks beautiful and calming and inspirational. The office window looks out onto a veranda, or pier, and the sun glistens off the water before streaming through to the author’s workspace. It’s easy to see why so many of those authors who shared images like these write about romance, or humorous situations, or family life and children’s books. You can almost taste the salty sea-breeze from their novels.   My writing space is one half of my bedroom. I set it up last year after I self-published my de...

As a crime writer I often find myself doing research. This can take many different forms. but sometimes it can take surprising turns. Despite the fact I write contemporary crime novels, I recently did a lot of research on hanging. I now know how to make a hangman's knot which traditionally has 13 loops. However, some hangman's knots have 9 loops. I also now know how to tie a cowboy's Lasso  or lariat knot. These skills are essential in any crime writer's arsenal. Guns, bullets, knives, swords, crossbows, yep, I can tick them all off my list. This probably has me on some sort of government watchlist for my online habits. I'm expecting  the local police, Interpol and the FBI to come storming through my door any minute now. How is this different I hear you say. It's just the sort of research I would expect any crime writer to do. Of course you would be right. However, sometimes research can take a very surprising turn indeed. The little fella in the pictu...