Authors Electric

Something happened to me recently that gave me a terrible fright. (No, this doesn't have anything to do with Hallowe'en!) I completely lost my hearing overnight. I had caught a really bad cold, possibly as a divine judgement for enjoying a performance of 'The Book of Mormon' at Edinburgh Playhouse or possibly because I'd spent an afternoon playing with my grandson and some bug he had picked up at nursery had breached my defences. At first it was just a normal cold, and then I woke up three nights in a row with earache and had to sit upright in a chair for a couple of hours each time until I was comfortable enough to lie down again. After the third night of earache, I woke up and found I couldn't hear anything. Only the previous day I'd been able to hear music, and audiobooks, and the sound on television, and then suddenly I couldn't. I couldn't even ring the doctor to ask for an appointment, so my son had to do it for me, and then he had to come with...

I'm not the most romantic person on the planet. I do try and remember to buy the long suffering Mrs R a card on birthdays, Valentine's, wedding anniversary and Christmas, but the finer detail of celebratory arrangements often passes me by. Meanwhile, my fictional characters are happily getting lovey-dovey and doing all the right things. But this year was different. I had finished book three of my Zombies v. Ninjas trilogy (which anyway contains minimal romance) and had no active WIP to distract me. So Mrs R was given a (modestly) better birthday deal this February. The celebratory dinner didn't involve the kids but just the two of us. The restaurant was the award-winning Zuni , her favourite in Kilkenny, and the choice was kept secret right up until we stepped out of the leather-seated taxi. The maitre d showed us to a quiet corner table which ideally suited our mood and we kicked off with a glass of Prosecco, as is our habit. Mrs R looked gorgeous and I had even remembe...

Authors Electric has decided to give me a regular slot on the 26th after my recent guest post about snake oil . They should have spoken to the schoolteacher who wrote on my homework "Ruby Barnes has a complex neurosis that makes him cry out for attention by not fulfilling his obligations." The subject was meteorology and I was writing about cloud formations. I guess he didn't like my blue sky thinking. Back to the monkeys in the title. Last week I collected my first ever vari-focal spectacles from the opticians. Fooled by the 2 for 1 special offer, I over-invested in Tommy Hilfiger and Timberland frames and had to lie to Mrs R about the real cost. These are the first you have to wear them all the time glasses since I first donned John Lennons at school aged 9. I had managed to reach a venerable half-century without further deterioration, so I thought. The Kindle is to blame. For the last two years I've done all my reading on my Kindle 3, adjusting the text size...