Authors Electric

Macbeth: unlikely to turn readers into mass murderers Today’s post may well raise a few eyebrows, coming as it does from a keen fiction writer and reader. Because I want to talk about something that’s increasingly been bothering me: the power of fiction to corrupt.  I don’t mean that reading Macbeth might turn you into a mass murderer; nor am I talking about mingling fiction with history to make a better story (eg Netflix’s The Crown )  –  though that habit is problematic in the way it plants events in the public’s unconscious that never took place.  What’s got me going is a superb series on BBC 4 called Wild Brazil . The programmes are beautifully made, with extraordinary photography, closely following animal activity in the stunning Pantanal and wild mountain regions of Brazil, focussing on three species in particular: giant otters, coatis and capuchin monkeys. Giant otters  So what’s my problem?  Here’s a clue: the BBC website describes the series as ‘an...

Last month, Authors Electric’s Bill Kirton wrote this very interesting post. He was talking specifically about the fantasy genre, but he made a point that I think is relevant to all fiction: "We carry all these race memories, dreams, imaginings; we can release people and things from their restricted functions. Maybe fantasy is simply a means of relaxing our grip on experience, a way to deny chronology and inevitability. Maybe it’s just a less uptight reality." It seems to me that whenever we write fiction – whether it’s fantasy or not – we are, in effect, doing much the same. Fiction is a lie, but it’s not untrue; and that seeming paradox may be at the heart of what we do. “Reality is not the same as the truth” is the tagline to my novella Loving Imogen , and reflects the protagonist’s following thoughts: "These are the things that he remembers from that summer, the things that have always stood out. There are things, no doubt, that he has forgotten ab...

After being so pleasantly surprised by the number and nature of comments provoked by my first Authors Electric blog, the pressure is on. And yes, that’s a deliberate example of a hanging participle because it gives me the opportunity to show that I know what a hanging participle is. Anyway, as I was saying ... the pressure. It seems that by speculating on the ‘literary’ aspects of our trade I was offering some sort of relief from the traditional (and, let’s face it, crucially important), topic of marketing, increasing sales, raising profiles and the rest. I can assure you that, had I been any good at selling, I’d have written about that, but I’m not. So, at least to begin with, I’ll try to fill the role of a specific archetype in this village-like online community. Villages have vicars, pub landlords, squires and postmistresses, but there’s only one role that includes the word ‘village’ in its title – idiot. However, despite Danny Boyle’s plans for the Olympic opening c...