Authors Electric

In the intervals of wrestling with ACX, I've managed to start some minimalist gardening. For some time now, I’ve had the idea at the back of my mind that I’d like to have a go at audiobooks. I have a feeling the books in my 30-book mystery series might suit the format, and as a recent audiobook listener I now know that the right narrator can add a lot to the basic text. Until now there were two main barriers preventing me from going ahead. One was the likely cost, needless to say. However I’ve somehow managed to make enough from Kobo sales, of all things, to cover the cost of having the first book, at least, narrated. The other and slightly more daunting barrier was that I had always imagined my younger son was the only person I could trust to do the books justice. They are set in Fife, in Scotland, with a cast of characters who vary in age and life experience but are mostly Scottish, so I needed someone with a Scottish but not too Scottish accent. When I say ‘not too Scottish’, I ...

I've been conscious for quite a few years of an instinctive desire to hibernate during those months of hardly any daylight and weather that varies between being too cold to go out and too wet to go out. Here in Edinburgh, however, January 2026 has begun with several days of the blue skies and dazzling brightness that sometimes happens after a heavy fall of snow, only until today we hadn’t had the snow, thank goodness. In fact, as soon as I had drafted this post the clouds rolled in and we had a couple of flurries.  Until this happened, it was almost as if the weather was trying to tempt me to go outside, though I am not up to full strength yet for walking, and there are some frosty patches on the roads and pavements. Still, it's a far cry from the last time we had serious snow, when the 'Beast from the East' arrived some years ago. I well remember being sent home from work in mid-afternoon only to find the buses had stopped running and I had to walk all the way, taking ...

My reading has taken a slightly different path this autumn, thanks to the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence. Last month, Machines That Think (part of the New Scientist Expert series) rather blew my mind, despite being published 10 years ago. Since then, AIs have become more sophisticated and even more data hungry, resulting in a class action by authors against Anthropic in the US claiming their copyrights were violated. Similar questions are being asked by the music business, as highlighted in a recent Radio 3 programme The Artificial Composer . AI is also active in other creative industries, such as the art world and video games. It seems creative professionals the world over are in danger of being reduced to hobbyists, helping to train the very AI tools that will enable everyone else to become an instant author or composer, visual artist or video game creator. How did this happen without us noticing? Let me take you back to fiction's favourite prompt: What If? and a bo...

 " ... The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die."   -- Marcel Proust, Swann's Way    From Stepanie Heuet's 2019 graphic novel adaptation It's been twenty five years since I last dove into Proust. I was living in San Francisco. The Millennium was still a couple of years off. I had my first cell phone, a nifty flip device. Looking back, I see that I was living  in two worlds - at least. I stretched myself between a demanding Silicon Valley start-up job and being an over-age, doting, divorced dad to a precocious, late-in-life eight-year old.  It was no more harried a lifestyle than that of many single parents, mostly moms, but that didn't make it any easier. I had zero time for much of anything reflective, enlight...

It seems professional authors are an increasingly endangered species these days. The latest ALCS survey shows average incomes down by 42% in real terms since the first ALCS earnings survey in 2005. A writing income is never steady, which means these surveys can only provide a snapshot of authors' earnings, and for that reason I tend not to do them. It's like betting on the horses... you lose a bit, then you lose a bit more, and - goddammit - you lose again , and then you might win big-time, which makes it all worthwhile. Or I imagine it does. I don't squander my royalties on the horses these days (I stopped after my big win at Chepstow on a 40-1 long shot at £1 each way - no point tempting fate.) Assuming you're all back by now from that rather depressing earnings survey, let's forget about money for a few paragraphs, shall we? Let's pretend we are all living in Elfland, or whatever fantasy world takes your fancy, where all authors - no matter how humble o...

It’s been a long road, this process of converting a novel into an audiobook. So far, it’s taken me over two years to get to this point. Looking back on my AE posts, I started way back in June 2014 , when I met my first narrator. How does one meet a narrator? On ACX – one of the biggest sites/distributors (and yes – you’ve guessed it – part of Amazon. Isn’t everything these days?), it’s a bit like a dating agency. Authors upload samples of scripts and hope to get picked by narrators; narrators upload samples of their work and hope to get picked by authors. Each can search listings of the other, filtered by genre, book type, voice type, gender etc etc. People make approaches and get rejected. Eventually you meet somebody whose voice/story you like the sound/look of, they feel the same way about you and think you can work together. It really is like a dating agency … So way back in 2014, I met Cliff. He was a singer with a great voice and liked my novel, and we signed a contract...

On March 28, 2017, Audbible release Ode to Broken Things as an audiobook, but before that, they sent me a link to an excerpt on SoundCloud . Ode to Broken Things is my debut novel. Like a jealous Mum, I wanted the book to stride into this new audio world with intelligent self-conviction but I definitely did not want it adopted by a mentor so fabulous that it would forget its roots and my vision. So the first time I listened to Ode To Broken Things— if it can be called “listening” –   was in the shower, with the sound partially drowned by cascading waters. Okay. So I am a writer who NEVER reads her books once they are published. When I am called upon at literary or talks to read excerpts, I discover cringe-worthy writing hiding in the recesses of my beloved passages. I am glad that excellent editors comb through my writing, because when I am done with edits, all I do is binge-watch Hallmark movies and Bollywood escapism for weeks, completely disengaging my brain until...

It's that time again. The third week in November: when, here in America, we give thanks for all our nonmaterial blessings a mere 24 hours before we quite literally try to kill each other over the latest toy or electronic gadget we just have to get our Sweet Baby Boo-Boo for Christmas (because of course, nothing says "Happy birthday, Jesus" and "Welcome Prince of Peace" like a bloodstained plasma television set with surround sound and built-in blu-ray player). Screw you, Tammy! Sweet Baby Jesus wants me to have this! Well, as I did last year, I'd like to take a moment here to give thanks, in no particular order, for the things reading/writing related that I am thankful for this year. Venture and Hold Fast Presses: This year has been good to me as a writer. The first two volumes of my Western retelling of the King Arthur legends, Guns of the Waste Land , were picked up by not one, but two independent presses. Venture Press  purchased the ebook right...