Authors Electric

The colour spreads for my next little book with Franklin Watts arrived by post this morning. I usually get to see these online, so receiving them like this was unexpected, but pleasing, as I can scan them in to share them with friends. It's been an exquisitely beautiful Autumnal day here in London, so this added to my pleasure. The illustrator, Inna Chernyak, lives in the Ukraine, and we've already collaborated on a picture book: "Quicker than a Princess", published by TopThat Publishing. What are your optimum conditions for creative writing? I am, and have always been, a silence freak - I cannot imagine working against a background of music. It would be an active competition between the world inside my head and sound of the music, and I can't do both. Many, many years ago, when I was writing and publishing short stories for women's magazines, we had an elderly next door neighbour (we lived in rented accomodation back then). She was a thin, bitter-faced wom...

     This week I went to the opening night of an intensely moving play, in which my grand-daughter, Anna Munden, was playing a leading role. Anna's been involved in theatre from babyhood (my daughter's a costume designer, and my son in law creates stage sets) and from the time she was a toddler, has always wanted to be an actress. Until recently, she's been involved in touring productions, mostly in the South West, so this Covent Garden debut, at the Tristan Bates Theatre http://www.tristanbatestheatre.co.uk/transports.asp , was her big moment. And incidentally, getting serious reviewers to go to a Fringe production is every bit as difficult as getting reviewers to read and comment on previously unknown authors.      The play, TRANSPORTS, was written by Jon Welch, and it's very loosely based on the life story of Anna's other grandmother, who is a lot older than me. Her name is Liesl, and she's German-Jewish. As a fifteen year old, she was sen...