Authors Electric

Last month I went to an author event in my local town of Northwich. It was held at our new local bookshop Cover2Cover , which sells an eclectic mix of new and second-hand books, including an impressive array of classic science fiction and fantasy. Think Forbidden Planet in the late 1980s with all the American import paperbacks that you couldn't get anywhere else - remember we were pre-internet back then. So who was there? This was hosted by the very talented speculative short fiction writer Nemma Wollenfang . I've known Nemma for several years and her stories are superb - I can't wait to read her first novel.  The weather was appalling. Strong November wind and rain and I was remembering when I ran an sf writing workshop in Oldham several years ago in similar weather, and despite the tickets being sold out, only one person braved the elements to actually turn up! Always remember that the value of a 'free' ticket is precisely nothing. He did get lucky though, in tha...

It gets harder each month to contribute to a blog on writing. Mostly because I’m not doing any. Why is that?  I don’t know. The last ‘proper’ thing I wrote was a short story for an anthology that wasn’t accepted. No matter, I’ll place it somewhere – or at least I might if I actually subbed it anywhere. Apathy rules at the moment and I can’t blame everything on Covid, although not having the motivation of monthly writers’ group meetings doesn’t help. I can’t do Zoom; I mean I can , obviously – I have a laptop and I’ve used Zoom for work and other stuff – I just don’t connect mentally with online meetings. I don’t like the necessary enforced structure, the absence of body-language and being able to engage with everybody and not just with the image of whoever is speaking. And watching myself on screen is just horrible!  No, Covid and the resultant changes to the balance of life and society are horrific, but not the real reason. Nor is the fact that Andy cut down to 4 days a week ...

… Or not, as the case may be. I’ve never been able to find out much online about how being of a certain age affects one’s creativity – there’s plenty about physical changes and if you’re a bloke and don’t want to read on, that’s absolutely fine. But whether you are a woman or live with a woman or even just know a woman, know that there will come a time in her life when things Change, and not always for the better. I’m 55. For a variety of reasons, I’d expected all this a lot sooner, but last summer was the summer of change in many ways. We sold the big family home, downsized and cleared the mortgage; we bought a small flat to renovate; our daughter left university, got a job and rented a flat in Salford. We moved house at the peak of the heatwave and I put everything down to weather, stress and change in circumstances, but there came a point when I realised that I could no longer blame the heat for sleepless nights, nor stress for being a reason for wanting to kill people. So I t...