Authors Electric

Recently I was lucky enough to have a short story chosen for the twice yearly Stroud Short Stories event which took place last Sunday and before this I'd already done two other reading 'gigs'  at Writers Unchained and Talking Tales , both in Bristol.  Reading at Talking Tales For all of these evenings I spent some time rehearsing my piece, especially for Stroud which has the biggest audience and called for a  story I hadn't read aloud before. As usual I found myself making small changes to my typescript - as I often do - to get the right emphasis or to smooth the flow of words.  Just to be clear, I had submitted these pieces in advance to a judge or judges as a document, but I justified these changes to myself on the grounds that spoken word and written word have slightly different requirements and none of these changes were substantial.  Or were they? After SSS organiser John Holland, reminding me that all SSS stories would go into a futu...

Since my recent post which touched on the early photographs of Hill and Adamson , I’ve not only paid a flying visit to St Andrews (my old university town and always a good place to go) but also been invited to read a selection of my historical fiction at the St Andrews Photography Festival . This is a huge thrill for me and has given me the nice job of making sure that by the time of my event on Sept 9 th . I've assembled the right words in exactly the right order.  Reading Silver Harvest in April at  Stroud Short Stories I’m planning to read five or six pieces which have already been written in one form or other, but I don’t want to read for more than 10 minutes at a time  - i.e. 1500 words max - and although the pieces are linked in theme, I would like each one to stand alone.  Looking at my raw material, only Silver Harvest fits the bill exactly. The others are either too long or, on closer inspection, betray their origins as fragments of a novel. ‘...

Not long ago I blogged here about the possibilities open to writers of performing their work and I admit that I was thinking at that time that in view of the sudden death of my WIP, performance might be my next ‘career move’ (at least on the days when I consider myself as having a writing career!) However a few weeks ago when our writing group was invited to the Bristol Flash Slam , it felt like a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’. It’s not that I have too much of a problem with standing up and opening my mouth, but flash fiction? In my writing life I may have come up with a couple of very short pieces, but I was never sure if they were truly ‘flash fiction’ or what they needed to do to bear that label. Flash is not something I read much, although I do like hearing it. It has to be clever – yes? With flashy wordplay, a stonkingly original premise, brilliant execution and ‘an explosive ending’.  Luckily the flash slam was a team event (and competition!) so I stood...

We come here to jam once a month with our friends in the swinging saloon called AE. Let me start off with this definition…so I don’t get in a stickier jam with those who think I mean jelly: A   jam session   is a musical event, process, or activity where musicians play (i.e. "jam") by improvising without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements. Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material (music), find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session . To some extent, AE’s unique structure precludes an exact parallel: 29 writers who post once each month does not precisely equal a group of six musicians who hook up every Sunday. True. But we have enough in common to pursue the metaphor. In fact, the metaphor’s enriched by another significant difference:   our ‘solos’ can continue in the Comments section to our posts…and we’re free to sound off in the Comments to our colleagues’ posts. In the...

Coventry Writers' Group, the wonderfully supportive and excellent writing group to which I belong, has just, for the second year running, put on a performance of our work as part of the Coventry Literature Festival. We performed at the Criterion Theatre, Earlsdon, Coventry, who very kindly hosted us and even made some of our costumes. We read and acted out a variety of short stories, short plays, poems, factual articles and timely advice from Coventry City Council on how to deal with a zombie invasion. And that was just the start! The photo below shows us in action at our dress rehearsal. Photo by Derek Medcraft My offering was a short and (I hope) humorous poem about the trials and tribulations of an aspiring writer who is rather premature in trying to sell her work. She is enthusiastic and slightly mad (so lots of acting needed there!) It has some slight relevance to what we Electric Authors are trying to do... so my apologies and please don't be offended, anyone. I...