Authors Electric

This odd little image is of a fake snake artfully placed, by me, on the remains of one of last year's hanging baskets, in the hope that it will scare off marauding and destructive magpies. From my kitchen window, I've been watching them swoop down and make off with the last of my little over-wintering plants plus chunks of the container, so having had enough, I went online and discovered this amusing deterrent - irresistable, at least for me, so I walked up to our local toyshop and asked to be shown some fake snakes (I chose the most aggressive and poisonous-looking one). But of course, being in one of my writing personae a picture book author, the two words grabbed me, and I fell instantly in love. 'Fake' rhymes with SO many words, and I began playing. How about a 'fake cake', made from pink and green kitchen sponges topped with white emulsion? A 'fake hake' made of silvery fabric and caught in a net could hang from my ceiling. A 'fake lake'? ...

          Someone once said to me, in that withering kind of way, ‘Oh, Sandra Horn Sandra, you do fall in love!’          He didn’t mean I was serial adulterer, perish the thought, but that I tend to have great passions about various things.          It’s true! Discovering an artist, writer, place, piece of music sets me off on a wild-eyed quest to find out more, revisit, bore the pants off anyone who’ll listen to the latest enthusiastic outpourings – have you HEARD Sans-Saens’ Introduction and rondo capriccioso?           Have you READ Alice Oswald, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, etc. etc.           Have you BEEN TO that church in Dorset with windows by Whistler?           Followed by rant rant rant until my listener’...