Authors Electric

Ritual -- what does this mean to you? Rituals can be traditional, religious, political: think of all the rituals we love (maybe the family time-honoured way to do Passover or Christmas -- those little add-ones which are especially ‘ours’ woven into or onto our religious or traditional festival practice. Our favourite way to celebrate family achievements such as anniversaries or graduations -- even publishing a first book.)   Rituals have honoured the arriving, mating, passing, process as far   back as -- well, as far back as human life can be traced. In ritual, we as humans find satisfaction, celebration, closure. In a known ritual, we find satisfaction or comfort. So when locked down by the pandemic, or even beyond that, for those of us who need to be a bit more careful as we move back into the ‘normal’ world again, ritual is much missed. We haven’t celebrated, or honoured, important life events of family and friends along with our circle of family and friends.   In the ...

I’ve just finished reading Twilight and its sequels New Moon and Eclipse . For the first time. If you haven’t heard of Twilight , you’re probably that person who got left behind on Mars when the tour bus left. You’d have to have been on another planet to miss the uprising of the vampires in fiction, television, film and just about every other media outlet. Vampires aren’t new – Bram Stoker created Dracula (it’s free on kindle) and even then it’s alleged that his vampire was based on Eastern European mythology – don’t shoot me: I’ve done no research for this blog post. But Dracula was dark, the spin-off films were dark (think all the old Christopher Lee films and the more modern Van Helsing ) and this breed of vampire is a dangerous beast. Then came Stephen King with Salems Lot (James Mason has the sexiest voice in the film version), Anne Rice and her Interview With The Vampire (the film version lost credibility for me - Tom Cruise? Really?) and the occasional other vampire...