Authors Electric

I officially launched my third paperback book last Friday. The lovely Dolores, new landlady of our local pub offered to host the launch for me and supported by my equally lovely neighbour and friend Gill, I decided to take up the offer. I ordered stock – all three paperbacks weeks ago. I even parcelled up a few sets of all three books in gold Christmas paper, all ready to be bought and given as presents. I experimented on Vistaprint with keyrings and ordered twenty as a gimmick (not cheap, and I’ve since found better and cheaper ways of doing keyrings). I always have postcards (Vistaprint again) and I did some flyers and a few A4 and A3 posters. I'm lucky in having a print shop at work that will do personal printing and copying at trade prices, subject to work commitments. I even dyed my hair to try to hide the fact that I will be fifty next month ... So Friday evening arrives and I stuff everything into a box. On goes the face and the short skirt and I drive down int...

I’m watching a discussion in one of the many writers’ groups on facebook at the moment. The statement being debated is along the lines of if you don’t have your book professionally edited, it will be rubbish . But nobody has yet defined professional and rubbish , or even edited, and until the goalposts are set firmly on the pitch, it’s all rather meaningless in my opinion. In this particular discussion, professional appears to mean "paying somebody", or indeed "paying anybody". I’ve noticed in my alternative online life (aka facebook…) that there are a lot of people who set themselves up as publishers and editors. Just recently I saw an advert for a "new" publisher – the website says As a principal [sic], and to help new authors … Now what self-respecting author is going to sign up with a publisher who doesn’t understand homophones? Answer: the ones who still think that any "publisher" is better than no publisher. Editors too. They e...

Book titles either arrive instantly in my head or it takes me forever to tease them out of my subconscious. Sometimes they reflect the actual story; sometimes they suggest a theme or a tone. I’ve used song titles for short stories – The Leaving of Liverpool comes to mind. This was written originally for a competition, the "theme" for which was that stories should have a "strong sense of place", so I wrote about a plot to blow up the Liver Birds and the folk song just seemed to fit (I remember the version done by The Seekers in the 1960s). My YA fantasy Edge of Dreams is about dreaming and how dreams may in fact be other worlds and become just as real as this world. The title for my thriller Hamelin's Child was one of those that arrived fully-formed. This was more of a theme-title, in that the book is about people-trafficking and the sex-trade. I think it's a strong title and it works, especially in context with a book cover that suggests genre. Its ...