Authors Electric

Hallo. My name is Karen, and I am a bookaholic. Haven't been able to say no to them for years and years and years, and it affects my everyday life in many, many ways ... If I have to make a choice between buying a book or something for dinner, it's a no-brainer. Even if I am a little tired of beans on toast. I can't pass a charity shop: I always have to go in because there are always so many books in there, all desperately looking for good homes. While everyone else is whining on about it, I never mind being stuck in a queue as I always have a book or my e-reader with me. While everyone else is out at the cinema I'm at home reading the book of the film. Which by all accounts is much better as well as cheaper. If I'm dragged off to the pub, I'm the one sitting in the corner with a book. My partner used to complain until he saw sense after I pointed out that it was the price of my being the designated driver, and that although there was little that I could ...

The author's displacement activity I want to share with you a very personal yet truly illuminating experience. Earlier this year, around Easter time in fact, I received an email from my son, whose own son, Axl, is surpassing his grandfather with ease. It read: "I thought you might be interested in reading Axl’s first ‘book’. It’s a simple tale that touches on a variety of themes, innocence, violence, hunger, parental devotion and, without giving away the ‘ending’, murder. Of course as with many of his works there is a subtext.  It skilfully deals with sensitive issues of religion and, for me, reading between the lines, its conclusion surmises that there is no afterlife and, controversially at this time of year, absolutely no possibility of resurrection.  The author leaves one in no doubt of his view on this final point. It’s a real page turner." My son had attached the story, formatted as a four page book. Here it is in its entirety: The 3 Chick...

Dilston Physic Garden, scene of a new co-writing project blending botany, folklore, neuroscience. There are some activities which are more fun with two. (Or even more. Allegedly.) Activities which are also fun solo. For most writers, the solitary vice is the chosen norm, though there are writing teams who are very successful. There’s thriller writer ‘Nicci French’, aka Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (see below); while Phoef Sutton has recently teamed up with Janet Evanovich. Some forms of writing involve inevitable collaboration. I write plays, which involve directors, producers and actors, but the actual original writing is mine. I’ve collaborated with visual artists, such as in my ‘science of dying’ project This Fatal Subject which won a Wellcome Trust Arts Award. Collaboration without competition or stifling each other can be a tricky line to walk, and there are few poets and artists who maintain those kind of projects for more than a limited time. Here's a video of one of...

I’m very fond of my book about Alfred the Great (and his daughter, Aethelflaed). There, I’ve admitted it. I always feel a bit guilty when children (or grown-ups, for that matter) ask which of my books is my favourite. As if you shouldn’t have favourites among your books, just as you shouldn’t have favourites among your children. But I think if I did have a favourite, Warrior King would be it. Why? I think it’s partly because I became so very intrigued by the character and achievements of this Dark Age king, who believed so strongly in the value of education and the arts; who had a vision of how to unite his people and make them safe; who, although he was, by all accounts, a sensitive soul who was not always in the best of health, still managed to defeat the Viking leader, Guthrum, against all the odds. And when he had Guthrum at his mercy, instead of simply killing him, he instead had him christened and made him his godson. Interesting, eh? Unlike a certain permatanned recent ...

Books by Caroline Akrill Whilst one’s own transition from teen to adult is usually comfortingly blurred, the transition from writing for the teenage fiction market to the general adult market is a definite step – in my case more of a stumble, because nobody realized what I was up to until it was too late, so secure had I appeared to be in my little niche.   I had produced nine books all aimed at the teen market, all in the horse and pony genre, and the eventing trilogy had exceeded all expectations – there was even a supermarket deal for 25,000 copies (for which I would receive a derisory 10p per copy, but I didn’t know that at the time) so everyone at Arlington Books was in celebratory mood, and Desmond had brought out the champagne, and when I enquired as to what I should write next (having hitherto never written anything not actually commissioned) they waved their arms airily and said ‘Write whatever you like.’  A casual, champagne-fuelled statement they would ...

I get mail. A lot of mail. Every day. I ask for it. In total I am subscribed to twenty-five (yes, 25) daily e-book mail lists. In addition, I'm also subscribed to a similar number, no, let's say maybe fifty author and publisher mail lists from which I receive maybe two or three e-mails a day. I like getting e-mails. However, I don't buy a lot of e-books, maybe one or two a month. But there is method in my madness. I'm studying mail lists. Yesterday I was reading a thread in the Writers' Cafe on kboards.com and the topic was Veterans, share your pro-tips! What's something you wish you'd known sooner? This topic or similar comes up frequently in on-line self-published author communities. A lot of great advice can be gleaned by mining these threads, with the caveat that your mileage may vary i.e. all things don't work equally well for everyone. One perennial gem in such threads is build your mailing list. As soon as you get into this self-published or...

I remember the original  Opportunity Knocks from my childhood. I don't recall the late 1980s revival, but then I didn't have a television for a while back then. But it does knock, doesn't it? Opportunity. And often when you least expect it. Take the other day for example and we're out at an RSPCA centre, looking at cats. With Andy being allergic to a lot of furry animals, it's becoming a mission to find a cat he can tolerate - different cats produce stronger/weaker reactions. And bizarrely it's a long-haired cat that he seems most comfortable with ... So we head off for a pub lunch, (paid for by the discount we negotiated in Maplin earlier while buying a joint business asset of a projector - it always pays to haggle). We decide to go to a pub in Whitchurch where Andy renovated and replaced all the lead-light windows last summer. We've not been since it re-opened for business and it's already gaining a good reputation for food. There's a pian...

Ever wondered where our fascination with, and addiction to, stories comes from? They are as much a part of us as our DNA. Children tell them quite naturally, but our need for them is mysterious.  ‘At any given moment,’ Christopher Booker writes, ‘all over the world, hundreds of millions of people will . . . have their attention focused on one of those strange sequences of mental images which we call a story.’   It is, he states, ‘one of the most important mysteries’.* We are surrounded by stories – everyone  has their own story and we are all part of other people’s stories, as well as being part of the bigger historical story of the human race – the whole world is a web of interlocking narrative. We are all part of each other's stories Which is exactly how our ancestors saw it.  Not just human history and interaction, but the landscape as well.  Those weren’t hills on the horizon, they were the bones of some ancient god fallen in battle or the breasts o...

e-book or printed? During a recent weekend spent with writers old and young, I was in the company of a well-known novelist (no namedropping) and mentioned I was enjoying reading Gone Girl. (I was about half way through at the time).  She said she had like it too and like me had read the e-book. She also happened to say that it was ‘the kind of book that was good for Kindle’. This perplexed me but I let it ride until later in the weekend by which time I had finished the book and  we talked about it again. I wanted to know which novels she considered good for Kindle. I might have misunderstood, but I gathered that she considered the e-format better for quick reads, genre fiction or page-turning thrillers. I was surprised that she felt this need to differentiate in this way. She has, by the way, been published in both formats and is working now on something that will go straight to e-book, so we are not talking Luddite or literary snob. I went off to think about my ...

The long-promised launch for my first (published) picture book, "...and Nobody Noticed the Mouse" took place at my local, and highly regarded, Children's Bookshop, in Muswell Hill, North London, last Tuesday. The last book launch I had was at the turn of the century, and a very different affair. This was for my Young Adult novel: "For Maritsa with Love". Set in Paris in the 80s, it's the story of a Romanian gypsy girl who's a professional beggar on the Metro, and Simon & Schuster thought it was going to be a best seller, so they pulled out all the stops. The launch happened in a very grand central London hotel, and the wines came from a prestigious French wine merchant who sent along an expert to introduce them. The nibbles were far more than that, and prepared by a chef. There were even small chocolates with the letter 'M' embossed on them. My lovely David was there with me, thoroughly enjoying the whole thing. And me? I was both elated, ...