Authors Electric

When I speak to people about my writing, if they haven't felt the urge to write themselves they usually express either blank disbelief - 'why do you do it?' - or mild interest in how I've managed to think of so many ideas. Some of the stories have their roots in real life incidents or situations, though I have only rarely attempted anything that actually depicts real people, so I doubt if I will be bothered by any libel suits in the near future. Actually the only example I can think of is a short story called 'Murder at the Drama Group' that I dashed off in a fury after someone annoyed me at a drama group for young people that I was involved in ages ago. I definitely won't be publishing it as it started with a (real) local council employee being found stabbed in the costume cupboard. I recently found myself using something that had happened in real life quite some time ago as the basis for a mystery novel. This isn't unusual, of course, though in this ca...

  The books I used - and the first novel... (older edition) (This blog is the text of a talk I was meant to give at the September 'Hawkesbury LitFest Afternoon Talks' this autumn - prevented by 'unforeseen circumstances' - adult children, even slightly over 40, should consult parents when they are wedding planning!) Reading Kamila Shamsie’s latest novel – Best of Friends – reminds me of my first inspiration to write fiction based firmly on the necessary research. And to be bold about it. Since then, and knowing some reader’s reactions – though not all – I have seen the sense of moderating for a wider audience. Although I still admire Shamsie, trained as a journalist and the daughter of a journalist mother, for her boldness in writing life as it is without giving offence but certainly with a moral boldness and realism.  A second influence on my writing has been the research I began to do. I had originally imagined a sci-fi tale based around the recent news (back then in...

Research... books ‘De-cluttering’ - as throwing out once-loved possessions is now called - is not really, as they say, my bag . That is, our home is set about with all kinds of delightful objects, all   much loved: books (in bookcases, more than ten, now I stop to count), and ornaments, cushions (great fun to throw around if you’re a visiting grandchild), paintings, pot plants, and of course, not forgetting, The Cat. None of these is ‘clutter’ except, perhaps,The Cat when he insists on sharing the screen and ‘helping’ with   a Zoom call. However, the delight when something precious suddenly moves from one category - necessary research - to another - old information never again needed! Having just spent an hour or so browsing through super-stuffed lever-arch files, casting a last look over wonderfully informative scientific articles and sociological comment pieces on lifestyle today, it’s possible to say of nearly all these that they’ll not be needed again!   Once much lov...

  It’s been a funny month for me from a writing perspective. I don’t feel like I’ve done much actual writing, in terms of getting words down on paper to tell a story, but I’ve still been busy doing ‘writer-y stuff’ (as my youngest calls it). I’ve spent the bulk of my time working on research for the Rigoletto follow-up I mentioned last month – jotting down ideas for potential scenes, then researching the time period to find half of them wouldn’t be possible. I don’t mind taking a little some small liberties for the sake of the story, but I need to keep it somewhat grounded in reality. I’m aiming for a gritty crime drama, after all, and not a fantasy. I actually quite enjoy running into these problems, if I’m honest. I find they force me to find creative solutions to the problems I place my characters in. I also find tight boundaries to be, paradoxically, quite liberating. Once I know where the limits lie, I’m able to plough on with the writing without worrying too muc...

 We had a great time on 20th October at West Barnes Library with our first in-person author event since January 2020. It was so nice to have an audience! David Young and Amanda Lees came to talk about their new WW2 books.  Death in Blitz City is set in David Young's hometown of Hull. After London, it was one of the cities most badly bombed during the war.  The Silence Before Dawn  is based in France, in particular, near Lyon. Amanda Lees wanted to focus on the female spies from the SOE who were sent to France to work with the Resistance. I wish I could tell you everything that David and Amanda said but my brain is like a sieve these days. So, I'll give you some of my personal highlights from the evening. One question I asked was about research and if there had been any surprises. David Young includes American GIs in his book and he was amazed to discover that the Americans had their own prison in the UK during the war. More than that, they dispensed their own justic...

  How can you resist a writing blog that starts with a view like this? In case you're wondering, that is the Caribbean Sea, and that's me writing. Before you think I spent two weeks drinking cocktails whilst channeling my inner Hemingway, that wasn't quite the case. Let me backtrack. I was fortunate to receive a research grant from the Society of Authors in order to got to Antigua and research Nineteenth Century Naval History and Antigua in the Nineteenth Century. Therefore, I was actually out there doing research. Yes, I really was and what an amazing time it was. So, how does one go about doing research in another country? The perfect starting point is by realising that it's not going to flow as smoothly as it does in the UK. You really are on Caribbean time. Now, don't get me wrong, everyone is lovely and really keen to help and support, it just takes a little longer than when it does in the UK. The people in the archives were amazing, bringing out a microfiche a...

I do love a bit of wordplay and those readers old enough to remember Jeff Beck’s 1967 chart-topper will appreciate the punning framework of my title today. Research is a huge part of my writing career but it falls into two distinct camps. Every time I get a new client, I have to become an expert on their subject. Ask me anything about Farrow and Ball paint, flowers, high-end property in East Anglia or unreached people groups. Go on. Ask me. My brain is fizzing with weird, unrelated facts, all of which are deployed for my writing at some point or another. I’m currently researching a tribe in Yemen, a country about which I knew nothing a week or two ago. There is never a dull moment.   Since I started writing fiction in the summer of 2020, resulting in two books and a third on the way, I’ve had to do a different kind of research. My heroine, insanely successful lifestyle blogger and Instamum Isabella M Smugge has her perfectly manicured fingertips in every modish pie going and as ...

Someone recently reminded me that I had contributed a series of blog posts on the topic ‘Historical Novels: How much research is too much?’ to an online event, the Edinburgh ebook festival, seven years ago. As I’ve written a few historical novels since then, among other things, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the questions I asked some writers of historical fiction as part of my preparation to write the blog posts, and to find out whether my own answers might have changed in the mean-time. My grandmother in Edwardian dress The idea for the topic of too much research sprang from my attempt, much more than seven years ago, to write an epic novel of the English Civil War. I say ‘attempt’ not because I didn’t finish the thing, but because I felt it was overloaded with research to the extent that the end result was probably more or less unreadable. Certainly I came up against all the questions listed below, and have encountered them again over the years. Incidentally one of the...

I want to share an experience of no apparent import which has, nonetheless, proved to have a lot of personal significance. Many years ago, in a junk/antiques shop in Edinburgh, I bought a bundle of twelve old notebooks. They were some of the personal diaries of a lady called Joanna Hutchison, kept meticulously by her over the years from 1889 to 1921. I was fascinated to get to know whatever they revealed about the writer, so I learned to decipher her tiny writing and read through each one. It took several weeks and the personality they revealed left me with an even greater curiosity about her. Since then, they have sat undisturbed on the top shelf of one of my bookcases. Then, some weeks ago, a chance reference during a regular weekly online meeting with my five siblings reminded me of the diaries and, knowing the impressive research skills of my youngest sister, Lesley Taylor, I asked whether she could shed any further light on the mystery of Ms Hutchison, of whom I had only the f...

  Research. Love it or hate it, no matter what you write there's bound to be some element of research involved. In this post, I'll share some of the tools and methods I use. I write crime and dark fiction, and the old adage of 'write what you know' often comes up wanting. I've never abducted or murdered anyone (honest!), and my involvement in the criminal justice system is limited to working as an instructor in a prison and as a juror. Both gave me fascinating insights that I've filed away for future reference, but there are still a lot of gaps. This is where the research element comes in: I like to think of research as the glue that joins the gaps and gives a piece of writing some rigidity and authenticity. Writers of non-fiction will know where I'm coming from, as their work is underpinned by solid research. Lots of research… For fiction writers, though, it's less clear-cut: how much research should you do? There's no definitive answer, as each pie...

Latest in my research requirements for   Listed Dead , the third in the Bunch Courtney Investigation series, was the ‘right’ breed of dog. Simple you might think, and perhaps it should have been. The dog in question only appears for a few pages, so why would I go to any extended effort?  Simply put, (without plot spoilers) I had a list of requirements to be met that would make said dog both suitable and unsuitable at one and the same time. So down the research rabbit hole I went. Before I even started on filling in all my writerly tick boxes there was one large point to bear in mind.  Listed Dead  is set in 1940 and dog breeding was at an all time low. Why? Because in the summer of 1939 the UK Government produced a pamphlet on the topic which read: “If at all possible, send or take your household animals into the country in advance of an emergency.” It concluded: “If you cannot place them in the care of neighbours, it really is kindest to have them destroyed...