Authors Electric

 How was your summer? It's probably the question asked most in September as people head back to work and school after the holidays. Of course, the expectation is that you've had a good time and are rested to face the rest of the year. My answer to this question though is that it was a bit crap. More than a bit, actually. It started on a high with attending the Theakston's Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate but I caught Covid and things plummeted from there. My husband caught it from me. We were both ill for over four weeks. It wasn't an easy time for our kids.  We had to give up Proms and theatre tickets. We watched a LOT of TV, including the Prom we had to miss. Thankfully, we were well enough to go on holiday to Croatia last week. Croatia In amongst all of this, I was waiting for an email from my publisher. The book I spent all of last year writing had finally gone in to a different editor. Unfortunately, the news wasn't positive. Lots of things to like but not f...

  On June 30 th we were to set off for the Deal Festival via an overnight stop in Crowborough to catch up with my aunties. On the return journey we would have another stopover in Tunbridge Wells to see my brothers. On Wednesday 29 th Niall, who had been uncharacteristically vague and forgetful for about a week, tested positive for covid. I followed suit 24 hours later. In the meantime, a flurry of emails and phone calls cancelled everything. We would have been at the World Premiere of Joy Spencer’s The Mud Maid Suite, signing books, presenting participating schools with signed hardbacks…the familiar kinds of things I thought I’d left behind years ago now, until Joy had a trip to Heligan and was hooked, first on the sculpture and then on the book.       I can’t think of myself as a children’s author legitimately these days. I’ve been dusting off some poems for children lately, not with any clear purpose, but they were written ages ago. All the books are now o...

 Sometimes writing fiction feels pointless. Sometimes what is going on in real life eclipses fiction, so that making things up can feel like the most cowardly kind of escapism, a failure to engage with reality.  In Covid lockdown, writing poetry about the pandemic made sense because, Downing St apart, we were all in it together.  Not all of us suffered, but we all feared suffering and for a time, when it seemed that the virus was as likely to affect all of us equally, that seemed to legitimise writing about it. It was everyone's story even for those of us not on the front line or in hospital. I felt entitled, obliged even to write about it.     The war in Ukraine feels different. I don't know where the line lies between imaginative empathy and exploitation.  This is not my suffering and dipping my metaphorical pen in someone else's blood feels inappropriate. Let those who are living it, write it, record it, rework it into art or poetry or propaganda as...

After 19 months of facing the virus in India, I realized that apart from my 'blog posts', even my stray thoughts on social media have somewhere unwittingly added up to a COVID DIARY of sorts. Quite a few are reflections on/about my daughter, who has been my only constant companion through this period. The rest charts the covid-graph in my life & mind.  Thought of collating it for this month's post for AE. 24 March 2020 (immediately after the 1st lockdown was announced) May we all live through the coming 3 weeks with strength, patience & compassion. May good sense prevail. Stay safe!   21 April 2020 After 4 weeks of lockdown, I have nothing but admiration for those who are successfully harnessing their inner strength and resourcefulness & nothing but sympathy for those who are trying but failing. Meanwhile, doffs hat to the resilience of kids (at home for 5 weeks now), most of whom don't have siblings to play with, and are thus - beyond zoom classes a...

So I had covid. Double jabbed in March and May, and then caught the bloody thing last month. It’s a nasty little bugger too – wiped me out for 10 days, more or less, although not life-threatening by any means. Luckily we have good friends and were well-supplied with necessities, but for a good many days, there was nothing but television. I couldn’t even summon up enough energy or concentration to read.  Netflix comes to the rescue again. This time it’s Gotham . ** Spoiler alert: do not read on if you don’t want to learn what happens **  We’re still watching this now (just started season 5). I have mixed feelings, although I’ve got through 4 seasons so it’s not all bad! Leaving out the fact that nobody important really seems to die and our heroes keep getting captured and tortured and fight time and time again, and yet never seem to suffer more than a few cuts and bruises; ignore the caricature characters – this is comic territory after all – and forget the fact that the cops ...

March 2020, two months after Authors Electric welcomed me, I wrote a blog called “Splendid Isolation.” It was named after Warren Zevon's song about the difference between being alone and being lonely. Feel free to hop over and read it if you haven't already. During that time, much of the world was trying to figure out how to combat the Corona virus. In Canada, we were doing the same. Even though there was a lot to deal with—closing borders, face coverings, shutting down businesses, our leaders worked together and appeared to be taking the right steps forward. There was so much to learn.  The pandemic also produced an explosion of neologisms. Phrases and words like: self-isolation; shelter in place; social distancing; flatten the curve; curb-side pickup became part of everyday news feeds and conversation. New acronyms cropped up too—PPE, WHO, Covid-19, HCQ. We were more digitally connected than ever before—in a way we weren’t during the SARS outbreak in 2002. I zoomed daily with...