Authors Electric

I do love a bit of wordplay and those readers old enough to remember Jeff Beck’s 1967 chart-topper will appreciate the punning framework of my title today. Research is a huge part of my writing career but it falls into two distinct camps. Every time I get a new client, I have to become an expert on their subject. Ask me anything about Farrow and Ball paint, flowers, high-end property in East Anglia or unreached people groups. Go on. Ask me. My brain is fizzing with weird, unrelated facts, all of which are deployed for my writing at some point or another. I’m currently researching a tribe in Yemen, a country about which I knew nothing a week or two ago. There is never a dull moment.   Since I started writing fiction in the summer of 2020, resulting in two books and a third on the way, I’ve had to do a different kind of research. My heroine, insanely successful lifestyle blogger and Instamum Isabella M Smugge has her perfectly manicured fingertips in every modish pie going and as ...

  Cover detail by Michael Walters Years ago I was featured in an article in “Writing Magazine” which took writers who were looking to be published and analysed the steps they were taking towards their goal. At the time I was writing a play, while simultaneously working on a novel and mulling over the idea for a children’s book. The play was to be performed at the school where I was a drama teacher, the novel would be sent out to a list of agents and in the meantime I would begin the children’s book. The feedback when it came was not encouraging. Although I was commended for working hard it seemed that if I wanted to make it in the publishing world I needed to concentrate on one thing and one genre at a time. That way I could put the maximum effort into succeeding as a playwright, novelist, or children’s author.   I probably should have taken the advice, but over the years I’ve come to accept that this is my approach to writing and that having a number of projects on the go...