Authors Electric

'Telling Tales' by Susan Price I was on the track down of an elusive and prolific beast -- one that's common but camouflages itself so well that you can be staring right at it and not see it. I knew that no matter how dedicatedly I hunted it, no matter how many hours or days I spent on the trail, I would miss many of the pestiferous things. So I asked my friend, Karen Bush,   an ex of this blog, to help and she bagged quite a few of the critters, having an expert eye for them. Using Karen's spotter notes, I culled all she discovered – but in the process found a whole lot more of the pests. They breed, I think, as soon as you turn a page. Because I'm talking about typos, of course. I've been proof-reading my latest self-published book, Telling Tales.   There are several breeds of typo. They can be mistaken spellings. I know to be wary of any word containing 'ie' or, indeed, 'ei' because I seem incapable of learning which way round they go in any...

Latest in my research requirements for   Listed Dead , the third in the Bunch Courtney Investigation series, was the ‘right’ breed of dog. Simple you might think, and perhaps it should have been. The dog in question only appears for a few pages, so why would I go to any extended effort?  Simply put, (without plot spoilers) I had a list of requirements to be met that would make said dog both suitable and unsuitable at one and the same time. So down the research rabbit hole I went. Before I even started on filling in all my writerly tick boxes there was one large point to bear in mind.  Listed Dead  is set in 1940 and dog breeding was at an all time low. Why? Because in the summer of 1939 the UK Government produced a pamphlet on the topic which read: “If at all possible, send or take your household animals into the country in advance of an emergency.” It concluded: “If you cannot place them in the care of neighbours, it really is kindest to have them destroyed...

Last month I blogged about facing an ‘empty nest’, with both daughters now at university. But to be honest, it’s not empty at all. Not only is it occupied by myself and my partner, but there are also the pets, so it doesn’t seem particularly empty at any time, even if the elderly cat spends most of her time asleep, curled up near a radiator. Gunner, the dog, more than fills any space that’s left. We rehomed Gunner in February this year, our second adoption. It was a very deliberate decision each time to offer an older dog a new home, rather than opt for a puppy, but I’m not looking for any credit for it. I simply didn’t want to face all the time and effort needed to train a puppy – however cute – in all the basic necessities, like house-training. I am, it has to be said, rather a lazy dog owner. One can, of course, feel good about offering a dog a new home. There can be many reasons why a dog needs rehoming and the word ‘rescue’, while often used, in our cases certainly hasn’...

Eric M. Knight and friend on MGM lot, 1942 They say now, that we humans coevolved with dogs over the past 30,000 or so years, rather than our prehistoric ancestors simply domesticating hapless wolves like sheep. Each changed the other. Though much remains vague, socioanthropologists theorize that certain Asian and European wolves chose us as handy sources of scraps. This suggests that humans were as messy then as they are now. Wolves who danced with humans morphed towards friendlier dogs in a symbiotic relationship that made humans more efficient apex hunters, which led to heartier nutrition supporting expanded tribal encampments. These, in turn, led to settlement, cultivation, agriculture and eventually to civilization in which dogs perform so many essential jobs beyond their central roles as family members and all around pals. My childhood experiences with Canis Lupus Familiaris leads me to speculate that a parallel process may apply in the uneven, ever unfolding evo...