Authors Electric

Only Connect, Part Two                                                                 The Woodlanders                                                                   It could have been a change of medication or my final retirement from a long-cherished teaching role, or it may have been simply that I was getting older. Whatever the cause, I was  struck down soon after my last birthday by the most awful bout of insomnia linked to the anxiety that I had so often suffered from. I had tried a number of remedies – lots of exercise, further medication, daily sessions of yoga nidra, counselling - even rereading favourite novels in search of the bibliotherapy that had...

There is a plethora of book awards up for grabs each year. Most of us have heard of the Pulitzer and Booker prizes, probably two of the most prestigious and instantly recognisable in the literary world. Then there are the British Book awards, sometimes called the Nibbies because of the nib shaped trophies. OK I will admit I Googled that one. Others include the Kirkus Prize, Women’s Prize for fiction, International Dublin Literary Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Hugo Award, and the Paul Torday Memorial Prize. Each award has criteria to adhere to regarding date of publication, other specifications can be based on geography, gender, age, or genre. But most primarily reward those who have published through the traditional route with nominations from the publisher. The Ink Book Prize has been “created to recognise and celebrate the outstanding literary work of self-published authors in the UK and Ireland.” It has been established by award-winning author Abiola Bello and award-wi...

Recipes from My Garden This week author Nadja Maril released her collection of f lash prose, poetry, and essays inspired by her kitchen, garden, and family memories. I sat down with Nadja to ask her some questions about the book, and her process. It's interesting to note that Nadja comes from an artistic background: her late father Herman Maril was an artist, and his painting is the cover of her book. I have enjoyed Nadja's poetry and flash fiction for many years now, and I am very excited for her book! Dianne Pearce (Dianne): What inspired you to combine poetry, short form, gardening, and cooking in one book? How did these different forms of expression come together?   Nadja Maril (Nadja): In January 2020 I’d just completed an MFA (masters in fine arts) in creative writing from the low residency Stonecoast Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine and was in the midst of moving into a 100-year-old house. My husband Peter and I were the General Contractors. Both th...

Have you ever wondered how an audiobook is recorded? The processes involved? While I can’t give you a complete step by step guide I can share my own author experiences. Last month, I had the opportunity to record my memoir at a top-notch recording studio – Monkeynut Audiobook and Sound , in Hampshire. It’s not something you get to do every day, unless you work in the industry doing voiceover work. If publishing your words in book form is the icing on the cake, then recording them is the cherry on the top. After a soundcheck to gauge levels, speed and tone you quite simply you read your beautiful words with expression. But it’s not the same as reading aloud to an audience in front of you, occasionally gazing up into appreciative faces hanging on your every word. Or reading a bedtime story snuggled up close to a child. Although these experiences will undoubtedly have helped me develop my voice. You read from an iPad, to stop the sound of rustling pages and scroll at your own spee...

Last month I told you about choosing a cover for my memoir. This month I want to tell you about my book launch, or more specifically how to set out a display table for an event. In my past I have created displays for a charity shop window so I like to think I have a good grasp on how to make something look appealing especially when pulling together an eclectic mix of ephemera. This skill certainly came in handy when I had to make a display with NO BOOKS! I didn't even have enough Os to write OOPS! Yes, I held a bookless book launch. Maybe not the first ever but this is how to pull it off with aplomb. I must just say it was my own fault for not ordering the books on time but my memoir is about grief and loss following the unexpected death of my husband. It is about making the best of things when something goes wrong, searching for the lost glitter that sparkles. “It’s quite ironic really.” Said my youngest son, with a wisdom beyond his years. I started my display with so...

 How do you choose which book to read? Are you persuaded by a fabulous five-star review?  Or does it take the personal recommendation of a friend to convince you? Perhaps you choose a book because you have read something by the author before. Personally, I know anything by Kate Atkinson or Louise Penny are worth picking up, and Elly Griffiths’ series of Ruth Galloway stories are always a winner. some of my favourite authors But when you are confronted in a bookshop, library, or charity shop with a plethora of books by unknown authors how do you choose? Do you judge a book by its cover? What a book looks like is very important. Is the cover design eye-catching? Ultimately your first impression may lead you to pick it up, turn it over and read the blurb on the back. Then you may discard it or turn to the inside pages. Presentation, the overall look and feel of a book, can be almost as important as the words themselves. They need to complement each other. If choosing a ...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. The Hayes, Swanwick - photo taken by me, Allison Symes I was at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School in August, my annual residential writing week at The Hayes, Swanwick, Derbyshire. As well as learning a great deal, I catch up with friends I only see in person here. We stay in contact via social media otherwise. A lovely time is had by all. The Hayes, Swanwick, Derbyshire   I deliberately go to courses that are “left field” to my flash fiction and blogging. I learn more than I think I will from these and did so again here.   I went to the four part specialist course of Creative Non-Fiction by Simon Whaley. I found it enlightening as some of my blogs hover on this category of writing. (If you can go to his course, I highly recommend it. You will learn so much about observation and conveying the truth).   Creative non-fiction is factual work told using fictional techniques. Facts cannot be changed but i...

 ' People need to become the authors as well as the subjects of their own stories' I read this comment in a book by Ben Knights called The Listening Reader as I was completing this month's blog and I thought it summed up my own thoughts on the writing of memoir, a mode which I have used in previous posts. This blog is about a memoir I have read recently by Sam Mills and is called 'The Fragments of my Father'. It also relates to my ideas on The Companionship of Books from last month.   ‘The Fragments of My Father’ is a compelling autobiographical memoir by author, Sam Mills, who became the chief carer for her father after her mother’s death at 65. In this memoir the author tells of the schizophrenic illness that afflicted her father from an early age, and how it affected both her and her family during the long years from her childhood, through her growing up, and to her present life as an author and publisher. I read the book in three days without stopping, and it...

Life in rural England... I am a fan of The Archers… the Archers potters along, but I find myself these days hoping that something might have a successful outcome — why must the Archers mirror society, and more relevantly, does it?   The Rob and Helen storyline was exciting, moving, and telling, a warning about coercive control… now the Emma and Ed one informs about the desperate plight of a rural population struggling to make a home and living… but, if that crash lands in total failure, doesn’t it, somehow, also teach that there can be no escape, none at all, and leave listeners depressed and hopeless? I don’t know. I don’t believe in offering my readers  total ‘happy endings’ in terms of ‘getting what we want’, but I hunt for a bit of balance. I watch Call the Midwife for relaxation, fully realising that any   happiness achieved is not, of course, always an outcome in real life, but at least I am relaxed and entertained. I have friends who can’t  wa...