Authors Electric

Years ago, when I was a teenager, I happened to see a short snippet in a newspaper from someone in Japan who was looking for a British pen-pal. I was a very prolific letter-writer in these teenage, pre-email days. Hard to remember the time when people could even communicate without having social media at their fingertips. Though it was much more exciting to get an actual letter from somewhere overseas, with different stamps on it – my brother collected stamps – and a different style of handwriting, than it is to receive an email. I suppose for a while I collected pen-pals the way my brother collected stamps. I had several pen-pals from inside the UK, and during my teens I also acquired pen-pals in the USA, Russia, Pakistan and Germany as well as in Japan. I have to say the Americans were the most fun to write to – although we may be divided by a common language, it was easier to write in the knowledge that they would probably understand most of what you wrote and vice versa, and yet th...

  If you are a fan of Friends you might remember Phoebe uttering those memorable words in a certain Christmas episode of the show. It caused a laugh. As did much of what came out of the hapless Phoebe’s mouth to be honest. And it is still watched as a meme on YouTube – the clip I found lasts all of 4 seconds and has had 8.1K views. Yes, today is the day before the day before the big event. What does that mean to you? Perhaps you are still frantically last minute shopping, especially food and drink, maybe even presents. Perhaps it is your last day of work before the holidays begin. Perhaps, like me it is a day to consolidate. How far have I got with the wrapping? Have I got enough sprouts? What needs to go on my 'to do' list for Christmas Eve? Is the cake iced, the pastry defrosting, the cookies made? Or perhaps you are just ignoring the fact that it is all kicking off the day after tomorrow, and burying yourself in a Christmas movie marathon, the mulled wine at hand. I wonde...

No, not the title of my next bestseller, although you never know... it could be the Next Big Thing. A recent report by media regulator Ofcom that half of 10 year olds now own a smartphone, rising to 83% of teenagers, makes me wonder how on earth I survived my childhood without one. Telephone box by McKay Savage from London, CC When I was 10, I did not have a phone of any sort. Nor did my mum and dad. There were no mobiles on sale in the UK (it would be another year before Motorola launched its huge handheld prototype). They would not have been much use, since there were no phone masts and no wi-fi, just landlines... and even they were seen as a bit of a luxury. If I wanted to phone a friend, I walked five minutes from my house and up the hill to the red telephone box on the corner, where I listened to the "pips" and forced coins into a slot before it would connect me to my best friend's landline. The value of that conversation was high. In fact, it was only anoth...

I had two conversations not long ago that made me wonder whether I should have put a map at the front of my mystery series books. One was an electronic conversation with one of my small band of keen readers in which she (apparently casually) asked me if I had ever drawn a map of the fictitious town where most of my action takes place. Trying to conceal a guilty start, which is easier in electronic form than in real life, I told her I hadn't. I also resisted the temptation to say something like, 'If I'd wanted to spend my time drawing maps I would have been a fantasy writer'.  Actually, I had often thought a map would have been a good idea, if only I had realised at the start of the series that it would go on for such a long time and that there was so much scope for me to create so many geographical misconceptions. The second conversation took place in real life, just before Christmas in the café of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It was with a friend ...

When my first novel 'Starquest' was published by the American publisher The Wild Rose Press,  in 2008, I knew nothing about 'promotion'.  Come to that, I knew nothing about E-publishing either, but I was soon to learn about both as my novel would be available both in print and electronic format. I'd decided to try my luck with an American publisher, since I felt my particular genre 'futuristic romance' had little chance of being published in the UK.  (Four years ago there weren't the same opportunities for self publishing as there are now, and there weren't so many sub genres over here in the romance market. Things have moved on quite a lot since then!) I learnt that I had to join Author loops and 'make myself known', participate in groups and comment on Blogs.  Before long I found I found other authors were generously offering to interview me on their blogs, mentioning my book and generally helping me to 'learn the ropes.' As t...