Authors Electric

  The broch of Mousa: by kind permission of David Simpson. A bit of a departure, this month. Instead of a blog about writing, a broch blog. Brochs fascinate me, partly because no one knows who built them, or why or what they were for. And where no one knows, that's where the writer gets in. Mousa is a small island off the coast of mainland Shetland with a Norse name. The 'a' at the end, as in many British place-names, means 'island.' 'Mous' means 'mossy.' The 'Mousa boat' ferries you across to the mossy island. It's a nature reserve now, and well worth visiting for the birds and seals alone. But what I wanted to see -- what I'd wanted to see for years -- was already ancient when the Vikings called the island mossy. The Broch of Mousa. It did not disappoint. The first glimpse of the broch is a striking: a monumental tower, against sky and sea, its walls gently curving like those of a modern cooling tower. Towers in the North by Armit A...

     Frances Thomas, writer and reader, said:  "No! You must publish! Ebook if you have to. You have two readers waiting in this house for starters, and I'm sure there are many many more. A bas les publishers! We want Sterkarms!!!"            Jenny Alexander, writer and reader, said: I feel the market is really pushing us to self-publish by being so 'narrow and risk-averse.' Feedback for the dream-book I've been working on for two decades has been entirely positive about the book but the killer-strike is that it's 'too niche' for t he market. I'm so sorry to hear you've taken the same hit, Sue. At least if you self-publish you should sell to everyone who's loved the first two Sterkarms, as well as new readers. And having been doing it for a while now, I personally don't think anything's wasted in the writer's life xx. "           Mary Hoffman , writer and reader, said: " That is so ridicu...