Authors Electric

As usual, once Christmas is over, New Zealand calls. Wonderful. And it looks as if Kay's protracted fight with the insurance company over damage in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake may be nearly over, with a result very close to a victory. Even better. Over the last two months, whenever my blogs haven't been in prophetic, apocalyptic or merely nostalgic mode, I've been talking of the projects I have in hand and my deadline to get them all sorted by the time we leave in the New Year for two months.  As I remember, they were (1) finishing  and publishing a short story collection, Yan Tan Tethera: five stories an d a very tiny novel , (2) finishing and publishing the second in the  Bright Sea, Dark Graves trilogy, The Nightmares of Invasion, (3) completing the editing and production of Dora's Story, written by Dora Ganeva, the indomitable nonagenarian who escaped from Communist Bulgaria to New Zealand in 1976 with her family, (4) writing the ongoing advertisin...

At my time of life I didn’t expect to find myself accepting a writing challenge utterly new to me. But that’s what has happened and I feel elated and yet, though I’ve made a start and am fairly pleased so far, I still have a nagging fear that it may not turn out well after all. In my June blog, I told how I had , with some misgivings, accepted Margaret Quon’s invitation to write the copy describing  all her products for the website for her new online shop. Copywriting was something I’d never done before. It seemed to me a specific skill which needed a special training (though, looking at what passes for persuasive prose in most advertisements, I didn’t think it could be very good). But I started it, warmed to the task and Margaret was pleased. Then came another challenge. Looking back, I can’t remember which of us first suggested it.  It suddenly stood there, a definite, cut and dried decision to do it. Margaret is starting a project to sell birthstone earrings and ...