Authors Electric

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos  Every year is special in some way to us all but I hope 2026 will prove to stand out for all of the right reasons.  I reach a milestone birthday in a few days time after this blog goes out - the big 60 - but it also reminds me of another anniversary.  This year will mark thirty years since I took up the pen seriously. It did take a milestone birthday and another life changing event (the birth of my son later in 1996) to make me realise if I wanted to get stories written and out there somehow, I ought to get on with it!  Despite setbacks, and the proverbial rejections (more than enough to cover several walls and possible The Great Wall of China itself), I’ve kept writing since. This year is also due to see the publication of my third flash fiction collection, Seeing The Other Side too. I hope to have physical book launches as well as online ones for this.  When my last book, Tripping The Flash ...

May 2018 be a good one for you, folks! Peace, love, joy and creativity in ample measures! Here are some early daffodils to lift your spirits. So far, 2018 hasn’t really lifted my own spirits. I can only hope it will get better. I’d had a burst of energy towards the end of 2017 and had sent out several poems and short stories and a children’s novel, mostly in response to call-outs and competitions. The rejections/non-acceptances came in thick and fast with the new year. There was one really nice one – just about the nicest rejection I’ve ever had, from an agent: ‘Thank you for giving me the opportunity to consider your work. This was a difficult decision as I was really impressed with your submission. The writing is engaging, the idea is appealing and you write with real energy and imagination. However, while there was a lot I enjoyed about your submission, ultimately I did not feel convinced I could find a publisher for it.’ She went on to say she’d be keen to read anyt...

As I packed for the move to Seattle this fall, I made decent progress on all but one front: a, mountain of personal papers. Imagine 3000-5000 pages--everything from old love letters to leases, poems, resumes, professional correspondence, contracts, published articles, ancient receipts...Okay, now imagine all of that thrown into a barrel with 600 rejection letters dating back 20 years--picture all of this shaken wildly, then removed in handfuls and tossed pell-mell into boxes. I faced something like that. And I suppose I could blame it on a half-dozen cross-country moves...or on a crushing divorce. But I think the truer answer may lie in the staggering number of rejections received over the course of two decades (after I'd published four novels preceded by twenty more years of rejection. Or to put that another way: twenty plus twenty years of failure with five years of success in between). I believe I numbed myself in ways I never knew. As I started to sift through the wreckag...

Astonishing 100 year old colour picture of the Ukraine by Prokudin-Gorskii It was May 2011.  I still have the email. My epic Polish historical novel, The Amber Heart, had finally been sent out by my agent, and he forwarded the first rejection. It went like this: 'With real reluctance, I am going to have to pass on this. I loved it, while thinking some editorial work needed to be done. But the one other person who did read it just didn't really love it - infuriating. I am sorry, but you can't fly solo in publishing.' It was, as rejections go, quite heartening, although it was followed by a deafening silence on all fronts. But it was also - as it turned out - the straw that broke this particular camel's back. The email came soon after a BIG birthday. One of those birthdays that make you sit up and take stock. I duly took stock. Firstly, I was sitting on a huge inventory - lots of finished or almost finished but unpublished work, in the sh...