Authors Electric

Sara Sheridan is mostly an historical novelist but also publishes her contemporary fiction on Kindle. She sits on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland (where she lives) and on the board of the writers’ collective, “26”. She tweets about her writing life as @sarasheridan. Her books are available here . Today she tells us about all her Kindle adventures... This summer, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, I read from my kindle during an event rather than using a copy of my book. All month “The Secret Mandarin”, my novel about early Empire explorer and tea botanist, Robert Fortune, had been running up and down the top 100 in the Kindle store, getting into the top 20 several times. “The Secret of the Sands” the book’s follow up (set in the desert) was not too far behind it. I figured most of my readers that month were using kindles, and why shouldn’t I? I was taking part in several events and wanted to read from lots of different sources...

Today's guest is Xavier Leret who is of Hispanic, Cuban, French and also, apparently, Jewish and Arabic stock, although looks-wise he has inherited everything from his mother’s Irish/North-of-England roots. His family on his father’s side were all taken out on the first day of the Spanish Civil War and shot. His grandfather survived the firing squad three times, only to die of a smoking related illness in 1977. After fleeing a monastery, his father (pursued by the Vatican) landed on the protestant shores of England, where he met Xavier's mother. Before each of them gave it a second thought they got married, and it was not long after that Xavier Leret was born. Here he talks about his first e-book HEAVEN SENT and finding a publisher... I was half way through sending my novel, Heaven Sent, to agents and publishers. Some copies made it into envelopes and one or two got as far as the post office. But I stopped. It was just after Christmas and I thought, what am I doing? Why...

We’d like to introduce you to Stephen Livingston, who has bravely agreed to be our first guest on Kindle Authors UK. In contrast to many of our regular bloggers who are republishing out of print titles for our fans, here is an author at the very start of his career hoping to hook some new readers with his e-books. Over to you, Stephen… My career in traditional print format began shortly after graduating from the University of Glasgow where I’d gained a Master of Arts degree with honours in English Language and Literature.   I entered and was a winner of the inaugural Canongate Prize for New Writing with my short story “Choose Your Future”.   This story became my first published work in the prize-winning anthology Scotland into the New Era . From there I went on to win another short story competition, the EndPapers Tales Series, with my story “The Waster’s Tale”.   This was published in the anthology Glasgow Tales and I completed a post-g...