Authors Electric

"I know. Just what we need; another Christmas story," I joked to my cousin, Broadway satirist, lyricist and playwright Gerard Alessandrini on the phone the other day about my latest holiday offerings. "You can never have too many Christmas stories," he reassured me. Good ones that is, but you can't have the best without putting up with some of the worst. Christmas and the holidays take a beating every year as we endeavour to survive being inundated with canned mercantile sentimentality.  Cousin Gerard, like my four grown daughters, however, keeps his eyes on the brightest ornaments on the tree--   albeit with tongue planted in cheek. Gerard and I grew in an extended family that celebrated the holidays as joyfully as circumstances would allow. Our festivities included transcontinental reunions and week-long Italian feasts-- that included Christmas Eve crab cioppino in San Francisco and Maine lobster in Boston in days gone by. The feasting is more fictional thes...

This month I wanted to do something a little different, something that wasn't connected to the work I self-publish. So this post is linked to the picture books I've had traditionally published and my teaching role in the early years sector. We all know (I hope) that reading stories is an invaluable experience for young children. But many people seem to just read picture books and not explore their potential to support learning. But introduce a story sack to the equation and the learning opportunities expand hugely. A story sack offers opportunities for active, involved, cross-curricular learning. They help bring stories to life and offer practical ideas that support the differing interests and learning styles of young children. So what is a story sack?  It's a large cloth bag (or any type of container) that contains a picture book and supporting materials that will stimulate language activities and make reading a memorable and enjoyable experience. How do you mak...

I was recently reading a book by Paul Mckenna entitled I Can Make You Rich . He includes a quote from Sol Kurzner  (billionaire hotelier), which says  "you've got to be totally in love with what you do because you are going to be spending a lot of time doing it." Thankfully I love writing but I'm not a marketer, hence reading Paul McKenna's book. Until reading this book I was trying to sell a product, my eBooks. But apparently I should have been looking at it from a different angle. This being people buy something because of the benefit owning that item has. This got me thinking about my eBooks and why someone would purchase them. My first response was, "well they're to be read by children and adults for entertainment." Although this is true this is not what the book described as a benefit. So I did a little research and discovered there have been many studies into the relationship between fostering the habit of reading in ch...

Before I begin I'll admit I feel a bit of a fraud as I've still not managed to publish a book on Kindle. This time last month I was all set to launch my new book. However things never go to plan and I am in the process of totally re-structuring the book before it goes to my proofreader. In the middle of restructuring the book I remembered I had two magazines features to write, some one-to-one coaching to do and a front cover to design. Obviously when having a book traditionally published the publisher or packagers take care of cover design. I may get a chance to see a few mock-ups, perhaps ever say which cover I prefer but I've never had to design one. I have taught kitchen and produce design but with cover design I was working outside of my comfort zone. I therefore started where I would suggest my student's start, by researching covers with similar titles. I'll be honest that wasn't much help. They either looked dated, I knew there was no way I could achiev...