Authors Electric

Preying on my mind I’ve had clichés on my mind rather a lot recently (and yes, you don't need to point it out - I know, and it was intentional) … they tend to come in for a lot of criticism from some; although it could be said that any critic who accuses a book of being clichéd is guilty of hypocrisy. Or maybe simply doesn’t recognise a cliché when it jumps up and bites them on the nose. Is there any such thing as a bad cliché? Personally I’ve always liked ‘It was a dark and stormy night’. Cliché or not, I’ve always thought it a perfect opening line to a book or a chapter. I mean, you read those words and are hooked – because you just know that something exciting and dramatic must surely be about to happen, so you keep on reading to find out. It sets the scene perfectly for some kind of knicker-gripping event … Bang bang So I just don’t subscribe to the view that the only good cliché is a dead cliché. I think they have their place – their very familiarity can be co...

It was a dark and stormy night when I sat down to write this blog post. I hoped that it might help to inspire me, but several hours later I still hadn’t got the foggiest idea and was still racking my brains for something to write about. As we all know, the only good cliché is a dead cliché and I had really hoped to avoid trotting out the same old trite and hackneyed phrases about the same old topics, but to be honest, new and original insights are my Achilles’ heel: what I’m good at is putting a new spin on things, at finding a different angle, rather than generating something genuinely innovative … The thunder outside had finally stopped and it was now raining cats and dogs, but I was still no closer to my goal: for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything and it looked as though I was going to have to pull an all-nighter to get my post written on time. But you live and learn, and in a flash I suddenly realised that the solution to my dilemma had been staring me in the fa...