Authors Electric

In the last few weeks I’ve done several sessions with 10-12 year-olds in a very lively school (Finham Park 2, Coventry) that is deeply committed to instilling a love of writing and reading in its students. I had the pleasure of hosting four workshops, each with a group of eight children and the help of the wonderful school librarian. I’d like to think I encouraged them to some extent in their love of books, but I can say for sure that they inspired me.  I did something I’ve never done before – shared some early ideas with potential readers for a book I’ve just started to write. Possibly dangerous, I know. I used to be very wary of sharing new ideas with anyone, but it felt right this time, and this story is not exactly new to me anyway. It’s being doing the rounds of my head and a few other places for several years and had a number of knock-backs on the way, in particular from my publisher several years ago, who commissioned a series from me based on the idea and then, afte...

Every Monday morning I go to a class at my local Health club. The class is called Chi-Balls, and is a very satisfying combination of T'ai Chi, Yoga and Pilates. It's performed against a background mix of someone's idea of other-worldly and meditative music, which certainly works for me. One of the pieces it uses is the very-well-known "Gymnopedie No 1" by Erik Satie. If that sounds a bit obscure, google it and listen - the chances are slim that you won't know it, as it's used - over-used - in so many TV dramas, especially the mystical, atmospheric, and deeply psychological kind. We used to have an Erik Satie CD, but I seem to have lost it, so I thought I'd try looking for him in my local libraries and music shop with - astonishingly - no luck. I turned to the Web, where there is, of course, masses of information about him. I was grabbed by a performance of the ballet "PARADE" - a collaboration between Satie and Picasso. I knew nothing at ...

A whole heap of radio plays ...I'm lurking in there somewhere! Before I begin: if you’re somebody who gets pleasure from writing stories or poems purely for enjoyment or fulfilment or as a way of exploring human nature but doesn’t have any great need to communicate or disseminate the work or only to a select group of friends, then this is probably not the post (or rant) for you. There’s nothing wrong with writing just for fun. Lots of people do it, just as lots of people paint and draw or play sports for love and without any thought of turning professional, even though many of them are arguably more talented than some full time professionals. I remember back in my teens writing only because I loved what I was doing, although even then, there was lurking at the back of my mind the desire to make a career out of it. Along with that was the hope that somebody, somewhere, might pay me to write. And in fact quite soon, the BBC  did pay me to write a whole heap of radio plays, so ...

I'm opening this post with a seriously silly Christmas image of my totally anarchic Cornish family, very expertly photoshopped (they don't actually look like this!) There's something Lizzie Borden and rural America about it, and I do feel that one of the adults might be about to run amuk with an axe! I haven't yet played with Photoshop, but must, one day.  The possibilities it presents for serious mockery, or even libel, are endless.  The subject of serious mockery inevitably leads to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. We lived in Paris for two years, and have good friends there, so it felt very personal. Ruthless dictators, and the nastier of the invented deities, have one thing in common: they cannot bear to be laughed at - which is why we have cartoonists brave enough to do it. What a murderous, unfunny thug Hitler was, and such a gift for another Charlie - Charlie Chaplin.  Charlie Hebdo picks on everyone, not just Islamic extremists, and its style is bru...

To  continue the theme of publishers who nurture, or don't, my experience with Walker Books, my first publisher was very positive - in fact, I thought of them as my second family. Newspaper articles were written, at the time, about the experience - always positive - of being a Walker author, about being called, often at weekends, with exciting sales news or small publicity titbits, of the creche, of the private taxi service if you were working late with an editor (one of my most treasured memories was of being driven in a black cab from Vauxhall to Muswell Hill on an icy clear night, with all the lights of London town around me, and me feeling like a queen). Oh, and the parties - the unforgettable parties (do they still happen?) - the barn dance one where they brought in bales of straw, to celebrate their entry into the American market, the Halloween one where someone who shall be nameless turned up in a VERY explicit devil costume, and, of course, the Crystal Ball... Times hav...

In the beginning there were only storytellers and those who made up their audiences. Then the storytellers learned to write and the audiences learned to read. Next came the middlemen offering bags of gold and countless ideas on how to bring these two sets of people together more effectively. Some offered to print the words, design covers and transport the results to the audiences. Others offered to open shops where the stories could be displayed and promised they would be able to ensure that the stories were talked about and praised by all the right people. Then they offered the possibilities of displaying the most favoured stories on stages and screens, building cinemas and theatres for the audiences to come to and inventing radios and televisions which would carry the stories into people’s homes. All these services that the middlemen were offering were so useful to the storytellers and their audiences that both became lazy, willing to allow the middlemen to do all the hard wo...

I just had this email exchange: 'Hi Roz, I'm reviewing for the New York Journal so get your publicist or publisher to send me your books. We don't take self-published.' Let's pause for some naughty words.  There. Frustrating though this is, cherished policies are not updated easily. But the age of enlightenment is being held back by bare-faced misrepresentation from traditional publishing. I've seen two examples in the publishing press in the past month - and it’s time to call them out.  Misrepresentation #1 The first was a post on the blog of top UK literaryagent Andrew Lownie , where editors list what they're looking for.  Every one of them says they want new work that twists a genre, unique concepts and voices, unforgettable books that defy expectations and break the mould. Read this and you'd think all the exciting authors get the recognition they deserve. That those who don't are not special enough. What’s really ...

It might not be the most optimistic note on which to start the New Year, but I offer this cautionary tale on the subject of agents and rights. If I have one piece of advice to give – and this applies to all creative people, not just writers – never give away your rights unless you absolutely have to, and when you do give them carefully and in small pieces. I have always tried to live my life being fair. In contract negotiation, I aim for a win-win outcome. I like to build long-term relationships and would never shaft anybody, because I believe that what you give out you get back. In January 2007, I had the idea for the Sprite Sister books and approached Brenda Gardner at Piccadilly Press. I had worked with her before when she published my ex-husband’s first picture book in the 1980s. She liked the idea of ‘four sisters, four elements, four powers’, and a few weeks later offered me a contract for the first Sprite Sister story. The Society of Authors helped me negotiat...