Authors Electric

This month, we expand on July's theme of long-distance walking routes to tackle endurance horse races. First we have non-fiction: Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer, which I read in the evenings while riding a much less arduous trail of my own across the Welsh mountains. Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer This beautifully-written memoir by the niece of event rider Lucinda Prior-Palmer describes Lara's experience, aged just 19, of riding the Mongol Derby. Arguably the world's toughest horse race, this 1000 km test of endurance takes place each August across the steppes made famous by Genghis Khan. Riders change mounts at each stopover and complete the course by riding 25 of the tough little Mongolian horses provided by herders along the route. This year's Derby will have just finished by the time this post goes up, but entries are now open for the 2026 race if you are inspired! Second is fiction: The Glory by Lauren St John. The Glory by Lauren St John When I first saw thi...

Roz Morris In Roz Morris'  Lifeform Three , the robots have purple hair and maintain a futuristic theme park known as the Lost Lands, where various Lifeforms are kept for the enjoyment of their human visitors, who tour around the perfectly-groomed fields in driverless vehicles taking photos and playing on their 'Pebbles' (a type of smartphone). I spoke to author Roz Morris about her thoughtful and entertaining SF novel which, with the rapid advancement of technology in recent years, feels as if it might be only just around the corner. Katherine: I think this is the first book I've read where all the main characters are robots. Your bods are obviously programmed for certain tasks in the Lost Lands, and yet your hero (or possibly heroine?) Paftoo comes across as a very likeable and realistic character. Did you find his/her story easy to write? Roz: He was a challenge, yes. I wanted him to be like an intelligent child - perceptive and curious, and aware that his world had...

'Write about what you know' is still common advice for beginning authors. When I heard that way back in my pre-publication days, my first thought was: 'well, that's going to make a boring book!' I was still in my 20s at the time and actually knew very little, so I plunged headfirst into the fantasy and science fiction genre, deliberately writing about what I didn't know (and really couldn't be expected to know much about) since I was inventing entire worlds and travelling to distant planets. Much easier, and less chance of getting found out with some glaring error that would make wiser readers who did know laugh behind my back... or, more likely these days, in a scathing online review. Or so I thought. I soon discovered inventing fantasy worlds is just as difficult as learning about our existing world, since even magic needs some rules otherwise the whole plot just collapses. All the same, it was rather fun creating them. After experimenting with short genr...

Tilbury:  Making a Difference   Starting out as a teacher in the 1970s I was an idealist. I was determined to change the world…   After a short spell teaching general subjects at a private school, I went to Tilbury with my then wife Viv, and started at a comprehensive school called St Chads, which doesn’t exist now. Apparently, it burned down but I haven’t been able to find out how. St Chad's was a converted secondary modern and looked it, except that an English department had been added - a bright new building at the back of the school - and that’s where I started with my own classroom. I had a BA (Hons) degree in English, and that’s all you needed in those days, no actual teaching qualifications. I could learn on the job.   And learn I did, mostly that a lot of the children I taught couldn’t read or write very well and if they did, were not very keen on it anyway. The school leaving age had just been raised to 16 and most of them were not very keen on that either. ...

Imagine living under an all-powerful leader who has gone insane. One act of madness follows another, until even his closest advisers and friends begin to realise he is not who they thought he was when he ascended to power. No, I'm not talking about a 21st century leader - however tempting the comparison! I am talking about Rome in the 1st century, when we were merely a barbaric outpost known as Britannia, and the Emperor Caligula was in charge. Caligula was a nickname, given to the emperor when he was a small boy and accompanied his father on campaign wearing miniature war sandals. It means 'Little Boots', which sounds rather sweet to me, and maybe he was sweet at that age. But, after he ascended the throne in AD 37, something changed. Acts of madness and cruelty abounded, until Caligula's reign as emperor ended with his assassination in AD 41 and his uncle Claudius took over. It was a turbulent period in Rome, giving rise to many rumours, including one that Caligula ma...

My main method of escape from the doom-laden statistics and fear-mongering on the news these days is to disappear into the pages of a good book, preferably backwards in time. Jojo Moyes' Giver of Stars  is one of those books that 'came' to me, sitting on top of a small pile of secondhand donations outside the tea hut in my local park, where they are raising funds for restoring the tea house ready for a grand opening once this covid pan(dem)ic is over. I dropped a few coins into the collection tin and grabbed the book straight away, because I have read this author before and know she always delivers an intelligent and emotionally engaging story that I will probably enjoy. I didn't even know what this one was about until I started to read and realised it contained HORSES, one of my lifelong passions, and also BOOKS, which are another. The story is a romance of sorts, actually several intertwined romances, set against the backdrop of 1930s Kentucky, when intrepid women rod...

The summit of Drum, a small peak nestled in the Carneddau range of Snowdonia, North Wales, can be an inhospitable, dangerous place. On day two of the annual pony-gathering, a heavy shroud of fog obscured the dense landmass to within a few feet. Someone once said, ‘It’s the centuries of men’s hands on the stones that puts the heart into a place.’ The beating heart of the Carneddau for me, has to be the wild ponies, and they were the reason I found myself on top of a bleak mountain in the Welsh hills in November. Why? I was writing Palomino Sky and the trip was partly for research reasons, partly for personal interest. The ponies of the Carneddau have access to some 27,000 acres, and there are less than 200 of them out there… somewhere. Ancestors would likely have used dogs and followed on horseback but modern times dictate the use of quad bikes and scramblers. The rest of us walked, across a vast mattress of sodden heather. Within the hour though, the sun pierced through the fog ...

Books by Caroline Akrill Whilst one’s own transition from teen to adult is usually comfortingly blurred, the transition from writing for the teenage fiction market to the general adult market is a definite step – in my case more of a stumble, because nobody realized what I was up to until it was too late, so secure had I appeared to be in my little niche.   I had produced nine books all aimed at the teen market, all in the horse and pony genre, and the eventing trilogy had exceeded all expectations – there was even a supermarket deal for 25,000 copies (for which I would receive a derisory 10p per copy, but I didn’t know that at the time) so everyone at Arlington Books was in celebratory mood, and Desmond had brought out the champagne, and when I enquired as to what I should write next (having hitherto never written anything not actually commissioned) they waved their arms airily and said ‘Write whatever you like.’  A casual, champagne-fuelled statement they would ...

          I do wish my mother wouldn’t answer the door or phone in my absence with, ‘Oh, she’s not in, she’s riding Tom.’            Most callers probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid, but I can guess that the postman probably smirked           Let me tell you about my love affair with Tom. He’s so tall I have to stand on a box to mount him. He’s very dark, apart from a couple of white socks, very male, and impossibly handsome but he knows this, so that’s possibly a minus. He always smells divine too, although I appreciate this is an acquired taste. He ran away with me once, and you might think that an incredibly romantic thing to do, but Tom’s idea of excitement was tearing hell for leather across open parkland whilst I danced that crazy line between exhilaration and terror.            Tom is...

     Writers are often asked where they find their ideas. So to answer that question three of our team - Elizabeth Kay, Karen Bush and Chris Longmuir have got together to share where they find theirs.    Elizabeth Kay - visit website I find my inspiration f rom my travels, no question. Whether it's in Kiev, watching a political demonstration, or swimming in the pool at the foot of the Angel Falls in Venezuela, these are the memories that are the strongest.  It's not just the visual.   In Costa Rica it was the taste of gallo pinto, the smell of wild ginger, the call of the bellbird, the feel of the sand between my toes as I waded across an inlet. These are the details that make stories come alive, and why the written word can be so much more evocative than an image on a TV screen. Costa Rica was the most magical place I had ever visited, which is why I used it as the starting point for my children's fantasy ...