Authors Electric

Where has the time gone since last month? I’m finding that in this year of not being able to do very much, time is actually passing rather quickly. It doesn’t seem like nearly 8 months since we were all told to STAY INDOORS. The spring and summer went past in a blur of inactivity and now we’re in November with the first frost yesterday and the garden a mess of soggy leaves and needles from next door’s hideous tree. So what do I have to show for months of not-going-out? Absolutely nothing apart from a short story which is hiding on my computer and waiting to be submitted to an anthology in early 2021. You’d think I’d have done more, achieved more with all this enforced staying in. But I’m lucky enough to still have a job and still be working. I haven’t really saved on travel time either since my daily commute is only 15 minutes each way and I’ve been in the office 50% of the time anyway. And there’s still housework and other stuff going on in my life. And somehow I have zero inclination...

There’s a saying isn’t there – about   knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing . But just how valuable is that nothing? I ran a writing science fiction workshop last week on a very wet and windy Saturday in North East Manchester. Now I don't write a lot of SF (far more crime these days), but given that a lot of the event was Dr Who -themed, with people in costumes, mask-making and a few props around, I suspect they booked me because of the Daemons DVD and anthology I was involved with. When I arrived, I was told that the workshop was fully booked and that the places had gone quickly. I was shown to a nice little room on a quiet corridor, I set up the tables, laid out some free books I’d acquired and waited for my delegates to arrive. A very nice chap turned up. An ex-EastEnders script-writer (yes, imposter syndrome started to kick in at this point), closely followed by another writer.  And nothing. We had a chat, liaised with the staff –...

It’s rare that I’m ever in both at the same time. Usually I’m in the wrong place at the right time, or very occasionally the reverse. Once, I missed an entire day of appointments because I’d convinced myself it was yesterday. Or tomorrow. I can’t remember which to be honest, but I know I did a lot of apologising! But rarely do the planets align in my favour …   I received an email from a library in North East Manchester a month or so back. Completely out of the blue – would I be interested in running a science-fiction writing workshop?  Well, yes, of course , says I, never one to turn down an opportunity. I mean how hard can it be? I’ve done enough talks and readings and the odd panel about writing; I’m sure I can run a workshop. On science-fiction? OK, I’ve never written much sf – though I grew up in the genre writing world, I’ve always been more of a fantasy writer, but some of my short stories have veered into sf territory and as a teenager, my reading fodder from a...

This is Sheffield on a cold but sunny Saturday in November. Galaxy 4 is a shop specialising in Dr Who merchandise, and those people are queuing to buy a DVD and/or books. I am sitting just inside the window behind a table with a black cloth and a name placard with a pen and ready to sign purchases! Yes, those people are queuing to see me! Well, OK - they are more likely to be queuing to meet Damaris Hayman , tv actress who starred in the early 1970s Dr Who story The Daemons . She's also just starred in White Witch of Devil's End - a follow-on from the original story. Part monologue, part drama, this is a sequence of six short episodes where Olive Hawthorne talks about her life as protector of Devil's End. White Witch launched in November - and I wrote one of the episodes. So I now have my first IMDb credit as a scriptwriter and I get to sign DVD sleeves alongside Damaris and some of the other writers. Plus there is the book too - a novelisation and expansion of ...

My other half and I recently gave in to the wave of nothingness and repeats on Freeview TV and acquired Netflix.  A week on, and several evenings of watching we've only touched the surface the stuff that is available.  When I say that I now have Netflix people often smile knowingly and utter dire warning of  binge-watching, but a week on I can’t say it has been any different to before.  Oh  I admit there is an awful lot more of it, and it is so very easy to access, but that Curate's egg conundrum of good versus bad in more or less equal measures remains. We’ve done a lot of sampling and/or catching up on things that we've missed. Watched random episodes of things that we’ve only ever heard about before. My other half likes super-hero fiction whereas I am fairly indifferent to it so perhaps I have not really indulged in bingeing as such. Watching a whole series in a few days is not exactly new to us.  We have bought enough boxsets to prove that!  ...

If you ask writers why they write most will say tell you it is a compulsion, or, as Terry Pratchett once said, ‘writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.’ If we manage to make a few bucks in the process all the better. If we come to be recognised as a writer of some merit, better still, but to do that the writing needs a reader.   So how do we get noticed? During September I had quite a few changes going on around me on a personal/family level. Moving house and also the marriage of my step-son Graham to his lovely wife, Anna. In addition there was Fantasycon, an event that I have haunted for the past 25 years, either as an organiser, a bookseller, a book editor,  an author (and sometimes all at once). For the uninitiated, Fantasycon is the annual convention organised on behalf of the British Fantasy Society at which the British Fantasy Awards are announced. This year’s event was held in Peterborough  between 29 th September to October 1 st So many people w...

I sometimes swear I'm caught up in some kind of bizarre Dr Who -style time-bending experiment. I don't know what's happened to the space-time continuum, but it just doesn't seem to be functioning as it once did. I can remember a time when the temporal gap between one Christmas and the next lasted for about - well, about twelve months, actually: twelve long, glorious months that were stuffed full of exciting possibilities. Now I sometimes wonder if it's even worth packing away the festive decorations; before I know it, it'll be time to put them all back up again. Time is a peculiarly elastic thing. When you're miserable, or trapped at a particularly dreary social event, or waiting for a delayed flight, it hardly moves at all. When you're actually doing something enjoyable and/or worthwhile, like writing, it zips by. Hardly seems fair, does it? This problem becomes even more striking when you're trying to forge a career (I use the term loosel...

Me and horror writer Sam Stone I spent last weekend in the company of several incarnations of Dr Who, a few daleks, lots of stormtroopers, jedi knights and Chewbacca – plus various characters from Lord of The Rings, Batman and numerous other film and television shows. Not forgetting the creepy Pennywise the clown and other scary creatures. I was at Sci-Fi Weekender – an annual get-together of more than 6,000 fans of science-fiction, fantasy and horror in all media forms. At a Haven holiday park in North Wales, I stayed in a gorgeous caravan with stunning views of Tremaddog Bay and so close to the sea, you could hear it at night. And I was there as a “guest artist”, with an access-all-areas pass! With several other writers, I co-hosted a variety of panels on writing in the Author Zone – part of the Spaceport (aka the smaller of the two main areas on the site – with a stage, seating, bar etc). I somehow managed to get listed in the lovely, glossy, full-colour event guide on...