Authors Electric

In nine days’ time it will be the 534th anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth, often viewed as a turning point in English history. It’s when the medieval period is deemed to have ended and the early modern age begun – with the fall of the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, and the victory of Henry Tudor, first in the dynasty that bore his name. King Richard III of England Of course, history is never quite that simple, but it’s handy to focus on a specific date marked by a climactic battle, such as 22 August 1485, rather than have to chart the decades-long transition between medieval and modern to be found in religious changes or the gradual move from rule based on personal loyalty to a more modern, bureaucratic state. Either way, this coming weekend, the event will be commemorated in the annual Bosworth Medieval Festival on the fields of Leicestershire, with its re-enactment of the battle itself by hundreds of modern-day ‘knights in shining armour’. [The alternat...

Reviews. They’re a new thing for me. Being on the receiving end, anyway. Some authors don’t read them apparently. A. L. Kennedy, writing in  The Guardian  some years ago, said, ‘They emerge months, if not years after the book is done with, so they're not that much use to the author. If the book's a car crash, it's already happened and we've walked or crawled away long ago.’ Maybe that’s just traditionally published authors. It may be a different scenario for those of us who have published independently. After all, we’re told how important it is for sales for our books to have good reviews on Amazon and GoodReads, or from the many bloggers worldwide. We use snippets of them on social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, and in our blogs and websites as part of our never-ceasing promotion. A review is not just about helping readers find new books – it’s about authors actively helping them do that. New books? And, let’s be honest, a good review can ...

Здравствуйте . As Rabbie Burns said, ‘ The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley’. Not that my schemes were particularly well laid. Perhaps I should have stepped back and thought, ‘You’re going to Russia for the World Cup for ten days in June. Is it really wise to publish a book just three weeks before that and arrange events to attend all through the summer – including every remaining weekend in June and July?’ If I had, I might have come to the conclusion that it wasn’t all that wise. And then add into the mix the serious illness of a close family member... I had been planning this blog post to be all about my trip to Russia and my impressions of the country thirty-odd years after my last one – when it was still part of the Soviet Union, albeit already changing under glasnost and perestroika. And of course this time I was going during the biggest party on the planet – in the country that had inspired my love of football all those years ago.......