Authors Electric

I've not been too well since I got back from Madagascar (so no change there - I was very ill the first time I went), so forgive me for taking an easy way out and using lots of photos.  We can’t invent something that is beyond our senses to detect, as we don’t have the right vocabulary to describe it. We don’t have infra-red or ultra-violet vision, we can’t hear infra sound or ultrasound, we don’t have whatever sense it is that allows a murmuration of starlings or the synchronisation swim of a shoal of fish. What we do is to recombine bits of existing creatures, and when we’re after something scary it’s the predators that spring to mind. I used a hyena to create my sinistroms in The Divide. Dragons tend to be amalgamations of bats and lizards, and may well have originally been inspired by the bones of dinosaurs. Griffons are eagles and lions. When something was first described a long time ago, either in paint or words or, earliest of all, in stone, it pays to have a think about what...

I’m often asked how to invent a human character. Of course, you can use someone you know, or a facet of yourself. But sometimes that simply won’t fit, and you’re floundering around for inspiration. Really memorable characters aren’t just about outward appearance, they’re about personality and motivation and idiosyncracies. Appearance is important, though, and we all know that people are meant to grow to look like their dogs… You can be quite subtle about it, or completely blatant, as in this line from my book The Divide : Tansy always reminds me of a stabber-bird, thought Betony, with her long nose and her snaky neck. And it’s fairly clear that this imaginary bird in a magical dimension was based on one from our own world. So here are a few ideas for animals you could use, taken from my own photographs. The crane hawk - an elegant and efficient killer The Gorilla - a family-minded gentle giant The tortoise - a thick-skinned survivor The chamele...