Authors Electric

  After a few months delving into the classics, I’ve now gone back to reading more in the genre I write – when asked, I usually say ‘crime’ as that’s easier than saying, ‘Well, it’s a mix of dark psychological thriller with occasional horror thrown in, plus a bit of action and adventure on the side.’ The truth is, as I suspect for most of us who write, it’s hard to pigeonhole oneself into a specific box. I write stories; that’s the more honest answer, but give that as an answer and you get a frown, followed by, ‘Well yes, but what sort?’ For me, writing is a way to tell a story. That’s my motivation. It’s a way to explore topics I’m interested in. The genre I write in is secondary to that. I generally choose crime, as I enjoy reading it, and I understand the structure. But another writer may take the same idea and approach it from the opposite direction, with equally valid results. I think the same holds true for the reader – each reader’s life experiences will shape their percep...

Welcome to the second installment of my second count down . This time around, instead of counting down my favorite novels, I'm discussing my five favorite comics/graphic novels that are in some way metafictional. That is, comics that are on some level aware of themselves as works of fiction. Great, now everyone's doing it. Last month, I discussed Dave Sim's 300 issue saga, Cerebus the Aardvark , which involves a fictional world that includes fictionalized versions of writers from Oscar Wilde to Ernest Hemingway to Dave Sim himself. This month we are looking at an alternate version of the "real" world in which the events of all fiction actually occurred. Now this is a tea,-up I wanna see. 4. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Alan Moore (writer) and Kevin O'Neal (artist) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen  is essentially Moore's answer to the superhero team-up comics that became popular during the 1960's and 1970's such...

Ever since I started to fall in love with books as a kid, I began to dream of writing my own versions, or putting the characters into my own stories. I figured out quite soon that it meant I’d probably end up as a writer, and I was in fact first published at the age of eight. Before you reach for the laudanum, let me disinfest that statement. My father used to produce a weekly newsletter for the P ortsmouth West Labour Party, and told me he was going to publish the novel I had started writing, which he’d found lying around the place. I was delighted, until the first chapter (all I’d written as it happened) appeared in the Labour Courier. It was on the front page, and he had not corrected my spelling. This, I quickly learned, was its USP. My spelling was hiliarious, and the comrades wanted more. It was almost enough to make a sensitive lad vote Tory! I got my own back in a way that I was rather proud of – by refusing to write Chapter Two. It was something of a relief, in fact...

I once read a book by Gwyn Thomas called The World Cannot Hear You. I can’t f o r the life of me remember much about it (except that I loved it), but the title has always lurked in my mind. I t seemed to me to epitomise the writer’s (or writers’) tragedy. You write, or read, these wonderful books, somebody reads them, or maybe not, and then they are gone. I used to drone on about Gerald Kersh, whom I thought was fantastic. Nobody else had ever heard of him, which I bitterly resented, more on his behalf than my own. Before and during World WarII he was enormous. And now…? But sometimes, out of the blue, things get jogged. My phone rang not so long ago , and I was asked to take part in a Radio 4 programme about the writers considered to be in the van of the “new realism” in children’s books. My Mate Shofiq was mentioned, and Albes on and the Germans. Good God, I thought - I wrote them! And suddenly remembered being rung up by the headmaster of a school in Peckham to cancel my invitatio...