Authors Electric

I’ve spent the last year or more waiting for heart surgery, and the last couple of months of this time have been particularly frustrating. This is because I got as far as having a pre-operation assessment at the end of May, and felt fairly confident that I would find myself on the operating table within a few weeks of it. Other family members even made their holiday arrangements around that date prediction, and I’m not really getting any better as I wait either! Still, I’ve managed to finish and publish two (or is it three? I’m starting to lose count) novels in the time since I first saw the cardiac surgeon, and I’m working on two more at this very moment, so it isn’t as if I’ve completely wasted the time, though anyone who sees the state of our house might imagine I have. In some ways this reminds me of the wait I had before giving birth to my first child. I was supposed to be resting in bed during the eight weeks before the due date because of raised blood pressure, but the problem...

Thanks. Obliged. Hallowe’en, yeah? Going to hang up your furry spiders and plastic skulls, eh? ‘Cos tonight’s the night graves open and give forth their dead. Ghosts on Hallowe’en? Get off. You can see ghosts any night of the week. Oooh, it’s behind you! And in front of you, and alongside you and following you up the stairs. Never seen a ghost? Well, you’ve never been homeless, have you? Never slept in a nice, comfy doorway. Except you don’t sleep. Too cold. Too dangerous. You doze, off and on, all night. Wake up with a jump every few minutes. Half-sleep is the best you get. A few nights like that strips something away. And you see the ghosts. They walk past you, walk around you, walk up and down the street, across the street, in and out of doors... They stop by your doorway and stand there and stare at you. And then walk on. No wonder they say ghosts ‘walk.’ They walk all right. Day and night. Go sleepless for a few nights and you see ‘em. You see ‘em in broad dayligh...

My good friend Sheila Robinson, who writes as S.C. Skillman has a brand new book out and I'm fascinated as to how she blends this with her Christian Faith. I was delighted when she agreed to guest post for the blog to talk about this subject, one which I feel needs discussion. Thank you, Sheila. I know this will be good.  BALANCING THE CHRISTIAN AND THE PARANORMAL IN MY BOOKS Thank you, Wendy, for offering me this space on your blog to introduce my books to your readers. I am a Christian, and I write about the paranormal. Some may think it’s a bit odd for a Christian to be doing this, and a few have asked me how I reconcile my Christian faith with writing about the paranormal. But they are indissolubly linked with one another. In fact, I would argue, who better to write about the paranormal than a Christian? First let me define paranormal as strange events for which there is no scientific explanation. For my new book Paranormal Warwickshire (published by Amberley on 15th November...

Photo: bye bye balloon: Daniel Novta Today, the day of this post, is my father’s birthday. He would have been eighty three but unfortunately died at fifty seven, not much older than me. I mention it, because his birthday is an annual reminder of what I’ve lost but also how lucky I was to have him at all. Along with my mother, he made me feel that I could do anything I wanted to, long before the idea of following your dream became a staple of Saturday night TV. He died before I’d published anything, but without him I would never have written a word of fiction. He was a painter and so I grew up in a house in which the importance of creativity was a given; the arts were important and to participate in them a privilege. I think that concept is rarer now than it was. Our dead are always with us. I see his echo in my children, a look in the eye, a tilt of the head, the way they, like him, drink from a beer glass tucked against their chests. Years on, I still glimpse him occasionally ...

It's lovely when you receive a letter from someone who's enjoyed your book. But a little more unusual when you get a letter from the characters themselves! The other day I was curious when the postman delivered a brown padded envelope, and even more curious to find a hand written letter on a kind of scroll, and something wrapped in a piece of black material and tied with a black ribbon. A cursory glance at the letter had me noticing the words Cross of Aes Dana – which, if you've read my YA time slip book, Celeste you'll know is a magical pendant that my character Megan (alias Celeste) has to guard with her life, as it possesses the power of eternal life. I instantly thought it was from one of the teenagers I'd spoken to at their school recently – until I saw the letter was signed by Megan, Freya and Jamie.  That trio of names rang a bell – my characters in the book! They explained that they'd retrieved the Cross of Aes...

I have recently emerged from reading Mari Biella's scary, ghostly and disturbing novel: "THE QUICKENING". I'm usually a slow reader, with an uncomfortable tendency to abandon a book and come back to it later - 'later', in this context, meaning anything from days to weeks. Ruth Rendell, however, with her psychological intricacies and insights into the nastier side of humanity, has always grabbed me by the throat, and once 'into' a Ruth Rendell novel, I don't emerge until I've seen it through , although there have been a few exceptions. THE QUICKENING grabbed me in precisely the same way. I found myself deeply involved with the tragic protagonist, but also with the strange, flat landscape of the Fens (note to self - must go there one day) and the wild and unsettling weather, both of which form the vivid backdrop to this story. I don't often write reviews, but this book impressed me , so thank you, Mari. On the right ( I hope) is the cover...

c/o Fred Goldstein | Dreamstime Stock Photos It’s that time of year again, when pumpkins are carved out, horror films dominate the TV schedules, and kids don Frankenstein masks and flit around their neighbourhoods asking for sweets. Well, technically speaking, I am of course a few days late, but my AE slot falls on the second of the month, which means that – curses! – the coveted Halloween spot will never be mine. Neither will that of April Fool’s Day, which I miss out on by just one day. That particular splendid opportunity goes to my esteemed colleague, Valerie Laws . Ah, well: better late than never, I suppose. Ghosts. Whether you believe in them or not, they continue to haunt us. They have, so far, proved remarkably resistant to the silver bullet of science. You can’t get away from them; you might not have seen a ghost, but ask around in your social circle and the chances are that at least one person will claim that they have. Even if you never encounter a spook in the re...