Authors Electric

A calotype in the making* Filming a trailer for my latest book with Gavin Allen Productions (see last month's post ) is still a few weeks away, but a location recce has thrown up some matters of urgency.  As you will probably know by now, the book features encounters with early photography and while we’re not, I’m glad to say, planning to replicate the entire calotype process of 1843, even to give a flavour of what it was like demands a degree of historical accuracy.  Luckily we had an expert on hand who agreed with our idea that negatives were very often hung up to dry on a makeshift clothesline. Just one thing had as all stumped – what kind of pegs would be used to attach them? Surely the handy wooden spring clip (I even have some now mixed in with the flashy plastic variety) weren't in use back then? Just in time my calotypist friend emails me with a gratifying quote from 1844,   " let it merely be suspended in the air, and in the absence of a bett...

Iconic: Edinburgh from Calton Hill I’ve always thought setting a book in a famous city gives it a head start. The skyline and the iconic views, familiar to most readers, present us with an instant connection to our audience.  Assuming of course we get it right - woe betide the writer who gets a street name wrong or transports the gets the hero/ine across town on the wrong bus! So there’s always a case for making the place as much of a fiction as the characters and adjusting the geography to suit.  Of course the really successful writer (especially one who can conjure up a long-running detective series!) will add seriously to that city’s cachet and tourist offering.    D. O. Hill (Image Preus Museum Norway) In the Blink of an Eye , which recreates the life of an Edinburgh artist – compelled me to use a city I knew as a visitor rather than a native, with the added difficulty of going back nearly 200 years.   As a newcomer to historical...

Ali Bacon at the St Andrews Photography Festival  We Authors Electric are a far-flung bunch, but this month, through a happy coincidence, Wendy Jones and I found ourselves in roughly the same place at the same time.  On Friday September 9 th I was reading a programme of short stories in St Andrews in Fife as part of the town’s first Festival of Photography . Wendy, who lives just over the Tay Bridge in Dundee – said she could make it to St Andrews – and by the way, she had a book launch in Waterstones in Dundee the following day.  Some mutual writerly support was on the cards! I won’t elaborate on my own event right now (more coming soon on my own blog ) except to say that I had an appreciative audience (including Wendy!) most of whom were fellow photography fans and some of whom were movers and shakers of the early photography world. As well as getting some great comments from the audience it was a fantastic networking opportunity for me.  ...

Since my recent post which touched on the early photographs of Hill and Adamson , I’ve not only paid a flying visit to St Andrews (my old university town and always a good place to go) but also been invited to read a selection of my historical fiction at the St Andrews Photography Festival . This is a huge thrill for me and has given me the nice job of making sure that by the time of my event on Sept 9 th . I've assembled the right words in exactly the right order.  Reading Silver Harvest in April at  Stroud Short Stories I’m planning to read five or six pieces which have already been written in one form or other, but I don’t want to read for more than 10 minutes at a time  - i.e. 1500 words max - and although the pieces are linked in theme, I would like each one to stand alone.  Looking at my raw material, only Silver Harvest fits the bill exactly. The others are either too long or, on closer inspection, betray their origins as fragments of a novel. ‘...