Authors Electric

It is March, and World Book Day approacheth… and I am delighted to find myself booked for the whole day. Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford have asked for 3 workshops, one based on each of my books, to 3 different year groups, and I’m just hoping my voice doesn’t run out half way through the third one. I know this is nothing for many seasoned authors but I’ve never done quite so much in one day before and I’m wondering how to get into training. Talk more at home, perhaps, in the week up to Thursday, 7th March ? (What, more than you do already? exclaims my husband. Hmph. Thanks for that.) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame One thing I do need to prepare, though: my costume. Dressing up as a favourite character in a children’s book is all part of the fun, apparently, but isn’t as easy as it sounds. Animals (Ratty in The Wind in the Willows , Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader , Kanga in Winnie the Pooh ) are out, as far as I’m concerned, owing to complexity of cos...

Author Ann Evans and class Author visits to schools are really rewarding – not just financially, although you certainly earn your money; but because it's great to encourage the youngsters to enjoy books and to write better stories. World Book Week is fast approaching, and I've got a busy week, working some days as a solo author in a school, and a couple of visits when I team up with author Karen King, for one of our KAT Visits – Kids and Authors Together.  Doing this we can cover the whole of a primary school with Karen working KS1 and me doing KS2. We'll usually start with a joint assembly for the school, which somehow we've got down to a fine art! Each of us knowing the other one's anecdotes, and feeding each other the right question or comment to lead into our humorous tale (or tale of woe!) to entertain 200-300 bright eager faces. Ant and Dec have nothing on us! However, generally our KAT visits have some sort of 'disaster' suc...

VIRTUAL READERS? Pauline Fisk says I think not I blogged the other month about the ups and downs of being a virtual author. At the time of writing, I had my first e-publication day in mind but now it’s readers I’m worrying about. Anything that creates a barrier between the books we authors write and the people out there reading them is a bad thing. Too often, whilst visiting schools, I’ve found children amazed to discover that an author like me is made of flesh and blood. But how much less real will I seem now that I’m a virtual writer? And with no physical books for them to buy, or bookshops for them to buy in, aren‘t I in danger of thinking of my readers as virtual too? I hope not, because I hate this use of the word virtual. The connections people make online are as real as anything else that happens in their lives. Authors Electric is a virtual group, but it’s a real group too, full of fellow-writers far too alive and kicking...