Authors Electric

Picture credit: laobc, via openclipart.org If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that it just doesn’t do to rely too much on technology. Just when you get to that point at which everything depends on a gadget, invention or app, what happens? Why, the blasted thing fails to work, of course! Our regular poster on the 26 th , Ruby Barnes, has very recently found this out to his cost. A combination of computer woes and travel plans have made it impossible for him to publish his regular post, so I’ve stepped in at the last minute. And, ironically enough, my replacement post will, after a fashion, concern technology. Two things have, of late, been taking up my meagre mental resources: firstly, the Authors Electric newsletter, of which I am the administrator; and secondly, my favourite festival, the fast-approaching Hallowe’en. I’m at that age where I should regard All Hallows’ Eve as a bit of fun for kids, but come this time of year I’m often to be found car...

c/o John Webber|Wikimedia Commons I’m old enough to remember a time when newsletters arrived in the post – the old-fashioned post, that is, as delivered by a postman. You know, post that was actually written down or printed out on paper and stuffed into an envelope. Post that took a few days, rather than a few nanoseconds, to arrive. How a few short years can change things, eh? The sight of the postman trudging up to the gate at the crack of dawn is becoming ever more of a rarity. It’s not yet quite extinct, since many organisations and businesses seem curiously reluctant to embrace the internet age. (I’m thinking here of some of the utility companies I’ve been forced to deal with recently, most of which seem to have a positive aversion to that newfangled techno-internet thingy, though strangely enough they have absolutely no problem bothering you with pointless telephone calls about five times a day. But I digress...) Just a few years ago, the idea of running your own...