Authors Electric

Being an autodidact, I was not aware until a few weeks ago that Charles Dickens had written five Christmas novellas in the 1840s, not just " A Christmas Carol " - all, he averred, with "a strong moral message."  Most UK schoolchildren probably know the other four as " The Chimes ," " The Cricket on the Hearth, " " The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain " and " The Battle of Life ." Each of them delivers, as Dickens put it, "a strong moral message" and all but the last come with supernatural twist. I came across this jolly factoid cluster while researching an idea for a sequel to my own Christmas novella: " Milagro on 34th Avenue ." That 2015 novella, about which I've written here previously , gives homage to my favourite Christmas movie - Miracle on 34th Street (particularly the 1947 original with Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O'Hara and little Natalie Wood, directed by playwright George Seaton). I ...

To counteract the horrors in London news over the last few weeks, I have been unashamedly posting my own local London image. In my suburban street there's a cow stuck in a tree, and she seems quite happy up there, semi-floating against a hot blue sky, although she clearly disliked being photographed because she kept bouncing. I wonder what the birds will make of her? With those slightly aggressive, horizontal udders, maybe she's begging to be milked? Maybe someone could send up an inflatable milkmaid with a bucket? I'm feeling that this is going to be a rather silly blog - put it down to the heatwave we're currently experiencing, or to the fact that I write picture book texts as well as more serious stuff. Take the story I picked up on Facebook today, about the misfortunes of a colleague, one of whose Birkenstocks went solo walkabout just as she was getting off a train, forcing her to limp with one bare foot through the ticket office. This confirms my long-held the...