Authors Electric

I was recently asked to adjudicate a competition for crime stories, and the entries turned out to be a mixed batch. Some stories were a good fit for the crime genre, but others were of a more general nature, probably a better fit for the general or literary short story with a crime as part of the plot. It had me thinking again about the nature of crime fiction, and what diffentiates a crime story from other types of story, even if they include a crime. For the purposes of the competition I decided to use the broadest, most basic definition which was a short story which included a crime. However, my mind kept ticking over on the conundrum of what constitutes crime fiction, and I recalled a similar problem when I was researching for my nonfiction book CrimeFiction and the Indie Contribution . What I found out when doing this research was that defining crime fiction was not such an easy task as I had assumed. Before I started writing the book I thought I knew what a ...

Well, did he? This is my second Kindle Christmas. In 2011 I got so fed up waiting for Santa to bring me one that I gave myself a Christmas present, a lovely brand new Kindle which I quickly clothed in a swish red leather jacket. I was in book heaven, and my fingers just itched to load it up with books. Then this Christmas, the 2012 one that’s now just a memory, I decided I’d been such a good girl I deserved another reward, so I bought myself a brand new Kindle Fire. Now I get to see all the books in my library in their full colour covers. Not sure if it makes the reading experience any better, but it does make my Kindle library look awsome. So, I imagine that if Santa was good to you and brought you a Kindle, whether it was a keyboard one, or a Touch, or a Paper White, or the newest of the new, the Kindle Fire, you’ll be looking forward to filling it with books. Well, you’re in luck because Amazon has loads of reasonably priced and free books in their Kindle store, some of the...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an indie author in possession of a manuscript must be in want of an editor. Or several. Few writers question this. Not in public, anyway. Although you might be surprised to learn that privately, a great many experienced novelists disagree. I could name (but I won't. Your secrets are safe with me) a number of well reviewed, nay celebrated, novelists who - perhaps I should be whispering this - self - edit. Mostly. Although they are not afraid to ask for professional help as and when they need it. And will even pay for it if necessary. Beta testing anyone?  When the number of editors is legion, unpaid volunteers, they are sometimes called Beta Readers. The original Beta Testers were, and still are, groups of people invited to use a new software product or video game and report on irritating faults or bugs. So - conventional wisdom goes - you find yourself a group of readers, let them loose on your manuscript and follow their instructi...