Authors Electric

The days of reliable editors in publishing houses and magazines are long gone. Although many of them are still excellent, the changes in English teaching here in Great Britain over the decades have taken their toll. I notice far more mistakes in professionally-published books than I ever did forty years ago. And if you’re considering the self-publishing route, you need to be your own editor which is very hard work. Always remember that writing is about communicating; if you cannot express yourself adequately, without waffling, you won’t achieve the impact you want. In the commercial world, word-count is very important. Magazines have specific slots to fill, and children’s books may be part of a series with a house style that doesn’t vary. Competitions will have a maximum word-lengths for short stories, and if you run over you’ll be disqualified. It is always possible to cut, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Honestly. For the first pass, look at ways of eliminating repetitions...

Most of us take for granted the fact that we can read and know what it's like to enjoy a good book. But how sad it is for those who have never known the pleasure of reading either because they are dyslexic or they struggle with reading for some other reason. It's so rewarding to a writer regardless of the genre of book they write, when they get positive feedback or a good review. Even more so when the reader is a child or teenager who admits that they don't like reading - yet they loved a particular book that you'd written. But the idea of actually writing for the market of reluctant teen readers was something of a challenge - but also a great experience, and one I hope I'll get the opportunity to do again. It's only something I've been doing for the last six months or so. I was excited to be asked by the publisher, Badger Learning if I would like to try for a series of horror books for 12-15 year olds with a reading age of around 8-9. Wh...

I've been thinking about this question a lot recently - mainly since giving my younger son a Kindle for Christmas. (OK, I'm a slow thinker.) Up until then, pretty much the only two books he'd read for pleasure were  Hurricane Hamish:Calypso Cricketer and Hurricane Hamish:The Cricket World Cup, by Mark Jefferson, which he polished off at the age of ten . Nothing else seemed to compare to those two. Twelve years later and post-Kindle, however, he has been devouring books almost continuously. The screen seems to have turned books into a pleasure, rather than a chore which he associated with his parents' generation. Recently I was talking to the boyfriend of a young cousin, just back from a tour of duty with the RAF in Afghanistan, who said the same thing: he never used to like reading but now he loads up his Kindle before he goes and finds it passes the time brilliantly. (It's also easy to carry in a uniform pocket and resistant to sand and glare.) Schoo...