Authors Electric

I used a wire recorder on my first attempt to write a detective story. I felt tres avant garde. The wire recorder preceded tape. As the name implies, It recorded and played back your voice magnetically on a long spool of fine wire. I had purchased one when Sears put them on sale cheaply enough for me to afford from my after-school, part-time grocery-wrapping earnings. That was in 1953, the year Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodby e was published and twenty years after Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express .   Dino Moro Sanchez, a Hollywood High School friend and I planned to use the wire recorder to co-author a detective screenplay-- under the illusion that we could somehow talk our way through the process doing our hip imitations of Hollywood tough guys and private eyes. Like any teen, I had no idea who I was. So I made up a noir character out of the flotsam and jetsam of the real-- and make believe-- Hollywood in which I had grown up.   Dino and I were dete...

There are, apparently, a maximum of only  six degrees of separation  between anyone on the planet and Kevin Bacon – he of the irritating EE adverts:  who says you can’t?  Me, Kevin. I say you can’t. I say it’s enough to put anyone off EE, though the reception in our village is beyond awful anyway. But everybody is connected to everybody. Somehow. However tenuous the link. For instance, I went to school with somebody who was Cliff Richard’s cousin. Allegedly; she wasn’t a close friend so I have no idea if it’s actually true or not. My daughter spent a week sitting opposite Cillian Murphy, aka  Thomas Shelby , as a guest at his wedding. She also had a chat while sheltering from the rain with Suranne Jones, aka  Gentleman Jack . And you’ll hopefully also see her (my daughter, not Suranne Jones) on Netflix next year with  Edward Holcroft  in  The English Game , which would also connect me to author Julian Fellowes, wouldn’t it? My father...

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my fairy-godmother gave to me: 12 drummers drumming - they're always the best looking guys in the rock band, aren't they? A bit noisy if they're all drumming at the same time, though. 11 pipers. Really not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, and I don't think the neighbours will appreciate them practising. Especially with the drummers. 10 lauds, praise and glory from people who love my books. Amazon reviews will do nicely, thank you. Or smashwords. Perhaps The Times literary supplement is aiming a bit high? 9 ladies to appear on Loose Women, Oprah and any other chat shows and discuss my books. My own personal book club. If they want to dance, that's fine by me. 8 maids to clean my house and wash my clothes so that I don't have to bother with housework and can concentrate on writing. Actually, one of them can pretend to be me and do my day job. 7 swans-a-swimming on the lake in the grounds of the Jacobean mansion...