Authors Electric

As a fifty-something female, I'm feeling anxious about the UK's r apidly rising pension age  and have been turning my attention to other forms of income to get me through what looks to be a rather alarming financial hole (in my case seven years between 60 and 67 - though I'm not holding my breath). I've considered several options that might fill this hole. Go back to riding racehorses (I doubt I could still jump back on a fidgety youngster if I fell off in the middle of a field). Retrain for a completely different career with a proper pension scheme, like a clever friend who is doing a law degree in her fifties (might be useful for chasing publishers who default on contracts). Dust off my melodeon and try busking on the street corner (quite a decent hourly rate, actually, but my fingers get cold and I can only remember about three tunes). Sign up for the new Universal Credit (many writers do not qualify because they do not earn the 'minimum income floor' each...

... supernatural, folklore, custom and belief ... When I find an author I love, I’m a binge reader. I’m reading my sixteenth or seventeenth Phil Rickman novel at the moment. I’ve lost count. I began with the Merrily Watkins series as recommended to me simultaneously by a couple of friends. This was before the television series, which I didn’t watch, because by the time it was shown, I had very definite ideas about the characters and I didn’t want to interfere with them. I enjoyed them all, although they did grow very dark towards the end of the series, almost too dark for me. And Jane, Merrily’s daughter, sometimes irritated me to the point where I wanted her to meet with a sticky end. But these were minor matters and I was never going to stop reading. From there, I moved smoothly on to Rickman’s backlist, novels written and published in the 1990s, big, meaty books, right up my street: earth mysteries, witchcraft and the supernatural, folklore, custom and belief, the occasional mu...

Lawrence Sanders should be the patron saint of all older writers....and all younger writers who hope to hang around. He published his first book, The Anderson Tapes, in 1970--when he was fifty--and went on to publish 37 books before his death in 1998. And if you like humble beginnings: After working for Macy's, Sanders worked as an editorial writer and sold action stories on the side for $75 a pop. His hardcover advance for The Anderson Tapes was a lowly $3,000. But the humble origins took a rich turn when his agent sold the film rights for $100,000...then the paperback rights for twice that. And Sanders' advances continued to rise until he pulled in seven figures and owned two condos in Pompano Beach. Yes, a film sale can make a big difference. And it didn't hurt at all to have Sean Connery in the lead role or Sydney Lumet as the director. True, we can't all count on that kind of luck. But, luckily, The Colonel has left us with some lessons as enduri...

Last night, trick-and-treaters braved the rain to knock at my door. They all want the same thing – treats, preferably in the form of sweet things that might look like skulls or snakes or eyeballs, but are actually mostly sugar and are bad for their teeth. They dress up as witches and skeletons and jump out from behind walls with blood-curdling yells. They carry pumpkin lanterns and things that glow in the dark. The smaller ones come with parents who wait at the gate to check they are safe. Since I don't have to pay their dentist bills, I give them exactly what they want: As a less sugary Halloween treat, I have been running a Twitter campaign all this week to highlight my backlist e-book Spellfall , a fantasy thriller set over the week of Halloween ending with ‘the Opening’ at midnight on 31st October, when the boundary between worlds grows thin. In Spellfall, this boundary lies between our familiar world of supermarkets and trick-and-treaters and the enchant...