Authors Electric

          The market for short stories is even more limited these days than it was in the past, to say nothing of the market for poetry. Gone are the heady days of the daily story in the Evening News . That was my first taste of paid publication, and it was a terrific outlet. The only requirement was that it had to be between 1050 and 1100 words, and not be offensive. So I did science fiction, historical, contemporary…  Capital Radio had a slot where you could do weird surreal stories there, of a similar length. The short story competition has filled some of these lamentable gaps, and poetry competitions are invaluable for undiscovered bards who are notching up rejection slips in three figures from magazines.             The first competition I ever entered was Bridport, in 1987, and I came third. These days they publish anthologies, which gives you an idea of the sort of thing th...

There are lots of reasons for re-illustrating a previously published book when you’re converting it for the Kindle. The originals, drawn by someone else, may not have been to your liking. It may simply be a matter of style – or the illustrator may have got some things fundamentally wrong, like the age of the protagonists, or whether one of your fantasy creatures has wings/horns/sharp pointy teeth. The best illustrations I have ever been sent were those of Miho Sataki, in the Japanese editions of The Divide , who read everything so carefully that each tiny detail was absolutely accurate. Her sense of design was wonderful, too. If the book was first published some time ago the drawings may be out of date; the shoebox-sized mobile phone of 1995 bears no resemblance to the smart phones in use today. There’s also the question of royalties – this way, you avoid those complexities altogether. The actual mechanics are remarkably easy. Make sure your illustration is a jpeg, and cent...