Authors Electric

Last month I told you about choosing a cover for my memoir. This month I want to tell you about my book launch, or more specifically how to set out a display table for an event. In my past I have created displays for a charity shop window so I like to think I have a good grasp on how to make something look appealing especially when pulling together an eclectic mix of ephemera. This skill certainly came in handy when I had to make a display with NO BOOKS! I didn't even have enough Os to write OOPS! Yes, I held a bookless book launch. Maybe not the first ever but this is how to pull it off with aplomb. I must just say it was my own fault for not ordering the books on time but my memoir is about grief and loss following the unexpected death of my husband. It is about making the best of things when something goes wrong, searching for the lost glitter that sparkles. “It’s quite ironic really.” Said my youngest son, with a wisdom beyond his years. I started my display with so...

It can be hard to work out how much reality to incorporate in your fiction. I have just published (yet) another mystery novel in a lengthy series that is set in a fictitious small town on the coast of Fife near the very picturesque real-life village of Culross. Over the years I’ve drawn inspiration for plots and sub-plots from real life in several cases. For instance, a story that revolved around an inheritance was based on something that really happened in my own family, though happily without the murders I introduced into it in the novel. My mother was contacted out of the blue by a firm of solicitors who were trying to track down the relatives of one of her first cousins who had died intestate. The task was particularly tricky because of the number of cousins and the extent to which they had dispersed across the globe. In the novel I brought many of the cousins back to Scotland for an ill-fated family reunion. In real life, however, they just stayed where they were and waited for ne...