Authors Electric

From 25 th August I began humming ‘The Carnival is Over’ to myself. Okay, it wasn’t a carnival, but an ebook festival, however it’s well and truly over for another year.  As, it seems, is summer. I’d like to thank all at AE who contributed, visited, spread the word and hope that they all enjoyed themselves – virtually at least. Personally, it feels a bit like I’ve had my community service order revoked.  I’m glad it’s only once a year. Attendances were up from 9,000 to nearly 11,500 which is pleasing (especially given it was over 14 not 17 days as in 2012) and over 500 people took the FREE Goody Bag. So I guess it was job well done. But I’m mightily glad it’s over. Time to move on. September for me is always tied up with the idea of ‘going back to school.’ Never mind that in Scotland most schools go back at some stupid point in August (at which point the weather invariably perks up for a bit), for me September is associated with new educational endeavour and buying of...

A few weeks after I had my second child, short on sleep and high on anxiety, I woke up one morning and when I opened my mouth to speak, found that only gibberish came out.  The link, between what I was saying in my brain and what came out of my mouth, was broken.  I was utterly terrified.  Exhaustion - the doctor said - what you need is sleep.  So, a couple of pills were swallowed, baby, feeding bottles, and toddler were handed over to a panicky 'What do I do now?' father, and then I slept for 14 hours straight, woke for a drink and then slept again.  The following morning, my voice was back in its normal place, the tongue articulating what the brain dictated.  But I've never forgotten what it was like not to be able to communicate. Since then, I've been a compulsive communicator.  And compulsive is the word.  In fact, there's a label for it and I think it ends in 'aholic', and has nothing to do with the amount of wine I drink (though, on the...

PART ONE  - IS IT FAIR? A long time ago...    This month I reach my half century so of course I’ve been doing a lot of looking back and contexualising (making sense of it all still eludes me!)  I’ve just remembered that my crie de coeur from my earliest days was ‘it isn’t fair.’  This phrase was employed frequently, when I fell over (which I did a lot of as a young child until they gave me ‘built up’ shoes) or didn’t ‘win’ at football and most ridiculously when my big brother refused to give me the only pair of boxing gloves we had between us prior to the big ‘fight.’ I didn’t have the reach to hit him and if he hit me with gloves it was slightly less painful. He worked it out logically. I was less interested in pain and more concerned it ‘wasn’t fair.’ Of course for my family the cry got old rather quickly and was regularly met with variations on the ‘who told you life was fair?’ ‘life isn’t fair’ variety. I finally have to accept the truth of that, but...