Authors Electric

  Doody goes by many names: kaka, poo, poop, dog do or shite, to give just a few of the faves. And one thing we all have in common is that we come to fear it throughout our lives in different ways. When you’re trying to write a first novel, you’d damned well better fear going out to market it with doody all over your shoes: typos, grammos, hackneyed phrasing, slothful pacing, etc. Then, when it’s time to pitch the book, be sure: it’s frighteningly easy to send off a query that’s reeking of poop. But even later on, when we're somewhat established, we may feel threatened by the stink of many names. One day when we hear Duty call with what may be our big break we know we're right to tremble though we pray there's a chance that we'll end up with this:   Enough of generalities. Here’s my true scary story.    For over thirty years, I’ve had a thing for the ancient Roman and Greek classics. As I wrote in last month’s blog, I grew more and more intrigued by the study...

We recently spent 10 days on the west coast of Scotland; a week in Oban right by the harbour, and the rest of the time in Fort William so we could go on the steam train to Mallaig over the Glenfinnan viaduct. Here's an Oban sunset: From Oban we had a sea safari and saw a whale, rocked about in the Corryvechan for a while (nothing like as fright/sick inducing as I’d feared!). We also went island-hopping (Mull, Iona, Staffa), some of us on a RIB and the sensible (or feeble)people, of which I was one, on proper CalMac boats.  It was magical! I kept on thinking it ought to remind me of western Ireland, what with the sandy beaches, bays and islands off the coast – but it didn’t. It is as beautiful, but somehow seemed more grounded in the rocks. I don’t know what comparisons there are in terms of height, etc, between the hills of the Ring of Kerry and Glen Coe, but the atmosphere is completely different. Something about Glen Coe is dwarfing and chilling, even wit...

It’s week 16 of the 52 poems challenge (write a poem a week for a year). ‘How’s it going?’I hear you cry. A bit mixed, if I’m honest. The idea is to spend AT LEAST an hour a week reading poetry (no hardship!) and at least an hour writing. I also had what I thought was the bright idea of keeping a week ahead to allow for unforeseen spanners in the works. I still think it is a good idea, except that it makes me panic if I can’t keep it up. Not so good. Each week, there is a theme, a writing prompt and some illustrative works – ie poems on the given theme by established poets – all to get the juices flowing. Sometimes the illustration poem is so good that it’s hard not to get discouraged from the start, but I’ve been trying to counter that by heading off in as different a direction as I can. So, for the ‘Weather’ poem (Ted Hughes ‘Wind, Anon ‘Westron Wynd’, John Donne ‘The Sunne Rising’) mine is a first person comment from a snowflake. I have no idea whether it’s good, bad or indi...

The announcement of the death of poet Derek Walcott reminded me how much I love and have been influenced by his amazing epic poem Omeros.   The influence is of a particular kind; when I was writing picture book texts my brain would get scrambled if I was reading certain texts at the same time, and I couldn’t then get the rhythms right. I had a day job then, which involved reading a lot of academic stuff. Fine for its purpose, but too lumpy and unrhythmic (I hope that’s a word) for me with my other hat on. After a day of scientific papers I couldn’t free my head up from the downbeat factual style and write poetically. It was like having an earworm. I needed to read something else to re-set my brain and fire my imagination again, and Omeros did that to perfection.  Omeros is set on Walcott’s home island of St Lucia. In its seven books, Walcott interweaves modern St Lucian versions of characters from Homer’s Iliad with autobiographical material and the history of ...

October 8 th and we are heading north. It’s that time of year; the annual gathering of a group of friends brought together by Di, no longer with us and much mourned. We come from Southampton, York, Alnwick, Berwick-on-Tweed, drawn by powerful associations and the beauty of the Cumbrian lakes and fells. On a cloudy, moonlit evening we visit Di’s grave in Dacre churchyard. It overlooks fells where the larches are always standing out against the other trees, as if marching to their own individual beat of time. Her Lakeland slate headstone is dwarfed by the Norwegian maple now. Fourteen years ago it was a spindly sapling. We toast Di in Bollinger and pour a libation. It disappears rapidly into the earth.  Usually, at this time of year, we meet autumn as we drive northwards. This year, the colours in the trees are hardly changed. It hasn’t been cold enough yet to work the magic of turning green to gold, russet, scarlet. When we’re there, on the shore of Ullswater, green is st...