Authors Electric

A very brief post from me this month, and a shameless plug for my new release. I have two main interests - writing and karate - and recently found a way to combine them. The novels I have so far punished the world with include an odd mix of drama, tragedy, human failure, sex and violence. It takes me one to two years to complete a book. This year I wanted to try and write something light and fast, giving myself a daily target of at least a thousand words, but I was lacking a subject. While ruminating on a topic for a new writing project, I threw myself into the world of karate which I have inhabited over the past four years. The club I'm a member of has an interesting mix of disciplines - sport karate (fairly traditional but without all the Japanese words), semi-contact sparring with full protective gear, weapons, self-defence, something for everyone who wants to work up a sweat and get rid of some day job aggression. My weapon of choice is the katana or sword. Samurai sword sor...

My very first YA book, Celeste has just been released, so I hope you'll forgive me for wanting to tell you a little about it, as the story has been rattling around in my head for these last 15 years! The spark of an idea for this story was lit way back when I was researching Coventry's 11th church of St Mary Magdaline – the city's oldest church which incidentally is still regularly used. While I was making notes about its factual history, another little compartment in the old grey matter was devising a fantasy story of a young woman realising she was hearing echoes from a past life. To begin with the story didn't get past the first page, and because I was busy writing articles and other books, this one got put on the back burner to be occasionally re-ignited when I'd nothing better to do. Slowly, in between various writing projects, the story began to form some sort of shape but then it would get shoved to the back of the queue and it would disa...