Authors Electric

  I have to admit I am a very visual person, and I am easily distracted. As a consequence I rarely listen to talk on the radio, don’t really get on with audiobooks, and haven’t – up until recently – engaged with the growing phenomenon of podcasts. If I have time to spare, I tend to read or watch something on a screen. I used to listen to things in the car, but these days I do so little driving, I don’t tend to get the time for any meaningful listening. But I have been encouraged to explore podcasts and so I have been doing so. They are apparently one of the next big things in marketing to the masses. And you never know they might even help sell books! I am trying to make time to listen to more podcasts – the time I spend doing the ironing is one opportunity (!) – finding ones that are especially relevant to writing, my interests and my genre. The world of podcasts is expanding and diversifying. I can guarantee that you will find one that fits just into your niche. A quick googl...

Rain, heavy cloud, mud, Omicron... So this is a picture post of happy memories connected with writing. This one is of my wonderful agent, Carolyn Whitaker, on the balcony of her house in Turkey, which I visited many times. We also went to Iceland together. She died in 2016, and I miss her more than I can say. A generous, funny, adventurous woman with the most incisive and down-to-earth mind I have ever encountered when it came to editing a manuscript. "Let's start with the first f--- on page thirteen." She had a speedboat at her place in Netley, and piloted it at terrifying speeds. She also owned racehorses, and I was there when she had a winner at Epsom. A total original, who was an enormous influence on me. I was very touched when she left me some money; I realised it was exactly the same amount she had earned off me in the previous twenty-five years.    This is a humming bird from the garden in Monteverde, Costa Rica, which was the initial setting for my fantasy The Di...

 Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a British Politician, statesman, army officer and prolific writer. He wrote 33 books in 51 volumes over his lifetime. His fictional output comprised one novel and one short story. His main output however, comprised non-fiction. After he was elected as an an MP,  over 130 speeches and parliamentary answers were published in booklets and pamphlets. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953 for “ his mastery of historical description as well as for oratory in defending human values.” What is more surprising is that Churchill suffered from a manic depressive disorder and could spend long periods of time, sometimes months low on energy and totally unproductive. For years Churchill had avoided standing to close to balconies and train platforms. “ I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand back and get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the sid...

In my blog post last month I commented about notebooks that are just too nice to make a mark in and a number of comments were left. This got me asking myself what makes a notebook too nice? So I grabbed my notebook (one that isn’t too nice to scribble in) and started to make a list of things that a ‘lush’ notebook must have. My list included:   A hard cover with either a lovely design or an extremely tactile texture. Decorated ends papers are a must. A ribbon that can be used as a book mark bound into the spine is always a plus. Size does matter when it comes to notebooks. I find A4 too clumsy too work with so either an A5 or even A6 notebook for me. The A5 will sit on my desk whilst the A6 is just the right size to be popped into my bag. I’m with Catherine Czerkawska with regards to unlined paper, which for me has to be matt and smooth. Although a faint line is acceptable if the rest of the notebook ticks all my other must haves. A way to fasten closed is also nice. ...

I’m currently in the process of giving my books a facelift. I’m not reworking the actual contents (apart from clearing up a few minor typos and formatting problems), just trying to make them look more attractive and professional. The process so far has given me a thumping headache, and a renewed respect for publishers. Getting a book to look all lovely and slick – in both its print and eBook manifestations – is, let it be said, no easy matter. A thousand perils lie in wait for the unwary. This is sort of how I feel at the moment... © Phil Date / Dreamstime Stock Photos Still, I’m encouraged by the fact that achieving a nice professional look, though difficult, is eminently possible. Here I am, sitting at the kitchen table and thumping away at an ancient laptop that’s probably not even good for spare parts any more, but with attention to detail, hard work and a smidgeon of luck I might just be able to turn out books that are at least acceptable . Still, it’s tricky. The n...

Consider these three different scenarios: 1. The hero of a Regency romance stalks into a drawing-room and greets his bewildered valet with the words ‘What’s up, dude?’ 2. A generally well-researched novel set in Mediaeval Europe has a scene in which the protagonist gets out of bed and puts on his underpants. (Underpants, so I’m told, were not commonly worn in the Mediaevael era.)  3. An author deliberately and knowingly introduces anachronisms, such as spaceships or the internet, into a novel set in Tudor England. Which of these scenarios is worst, or best? Do all of them set your teeth on edge, or just some? Do anachronisms wreck historical fiction, or not? How much difference is there between an anachronism that is introduced by design, and one that is the result of shoddy research?  Historical fiction often (but not always) strives to be realistic, and this realism sometimes extends to a horror of anachronism. The argument seems to be that readers...

Where we'd all like to see our books, eventually ... Image c/o Wikimedia Commons One piece of advice that is frequently aimed at today's self-publishers is that we ought to write, and publish, at a pretty high velocity. Conventional wisdom (insofar as conventional wisdom can be said to exist in a movement that’s still in its infancy) suggests that momentum is everything. A single book is worth little; two or three books represent just a fraction of what has to be done. We need, in short, to have a vast personal bookshelf, stuffed full of multiple titles. I can see the logic of this viewpoint, too. After all, if a reader has read and enjoyed one of your books, then they’ll be altogether more inclined to pick up another. However, I’d add a small caveat: this is only likely to work if the books in question are any good. Over the past few years I've read a lot of self-published books. Many of them, of course, have been wonderful: well-thought-out, well-written, amb...

Serendipidity is one of the delights of being a writer. It’s the name given to making a fortunate discovery by accident, and I’ve found that it can help with my research or point me in a completely different direction. More importantly, it gives me the feeling that fate (or whatever else you like to call it) is on my side – that the book I’m working on really wants to be written. I met serendipity for the first time more than 20 years ago while I was working on my first book, A Special Child in the Family . I was umming and aahing about whether to include school issues in this book for parents of children with special needs when a couple I had never met before turned up on my doorstep. They were on holiday in my area and, having read about my research project in a women’s magazine, they hoped I might be able to help them. As they sat in my living room describing their son’s school problems, I watched the wife nervously twisting her hankerchief in her fingers and heard the...