Authors Electric

When I was a grotty teenager, we moved from our council house to a dilapidated cottage in a couple of acres of its own grounds, on the edge of Ashdown Forest. It was in a hollow, down a quarter-of-a-mile of unmade road across a golf course (on Common Land, but whoever managed to swing it to put a golf course on it is lost in the mists of time). It had typical Sussex tile hanging on the outside, and oak panelling in the downstairs rooms, which we thought incredibly grand, although it was just thin ply. It had no electricity or gas, an outside lav and only two bedrooms, so until Dad built an extension, Mum and I had one room and Dad and my brothers the other – christened the Hennery and the Mennery. Much later, I set a series of stories for children in an imagined version of the place, weaving Sussex legends and folklore into them. They were called The Hob and Miss Minkin, the Hob being a household spirit who lived under the hearthstone and was invisible to the family. Such spirits wer...

Completed projects often leave me with an enormous void. With writing books, I have found out, it is different.  This time, no dark black hole... I was saved by the M-word. Yep, marketing. I had already started on social media. Now I am working on my prequel to give away as a present when people subscribe to my newsletter. What are your thoughts on that? I like doing the prequel because the questions in the book are things I have often asked myself. How did Wilma land on the tulip fields? How did she survive. I mean she weighed 99 grams when we found her, that is not an awful lot. Or, maybe she was a wild cat and we took her in... I love this part of writing, the 'what if stage'. But then I wake up and realise I need to sign up to mailerlite (tick); transfer my website to another platform - preferably one that is easy to work (tick and loving it, just need to create about 500 thumbnails for the images); get a customised email address (tick), and another day has gone...

              A Merry Christmas  and a Prosperous New Year  to all our readers!           But it's Christmas Day and you want something a little different from the usual blog.           So I offer you this wintery tale...Or, at least, its first chapter.  ******************************************************** ******************************************* Ghost Dance Or, The Czar's Black Angel 'Are you cold, my children? Are you cold?' Chapter 1       In a place far distant from where you are now grows an oak tree by a lake.         Round the oak's trunk is a chain of golden links.         Tethered to the chain is a learned cat, and this most learned of all cats ...