Authors Electric

 How was your summer? It's probably the question asked most in September as people head back to work and school after the holidays. Of course, the expectation is that you've had a good time and are rested to face the rest of the year. My answer to this question though is that it was a bit crap. More than a bit, actually. It started on a high with attending the Theakston's Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate but I caught Covid and things plummeted from there. My husband caught it from me. We were both ill for over four weeks. It wasn't an easy time for our kids.  We had to give up Proms and theatre tickets. We watched a LOT of TV, including the Prom we had to miss. Thankfully, we were well enough to go on holiday to Croatia last week. Croatia In amongst all of this, I was waiting for an email from my publisher. The book I spent all of last year writing had finally gone in to a different editor. Unfortunately, the news wasn't positive. Lots of things to like but not f...

I’m in a delicate place. My new novel is finished, professionally edited, proofread and ready to be published. Yet, I’m undecided which route to go in terms of publishing (self or hybrid) so I’m in a season of waiting.  I don’t like this place so much, I don’t do well in silence. I’m not a very patient person when it comes to achieving my goals. It feels like I’m staring at a new baby that I want to bathe, dress up in cute outfits and show the world how beautiful she is, but I’m not allowed to touch her, she's not quite ready yet - It’s frustrating. Can anyone relate? I hear it can take many weeks and sometimes months to hear back from an agent or a publishing house and beyond that, several months or even years before the book is actually published. The thought makes me break out in a sweat. Literally! I’ve self published all the books, devotionals and journals I’ve written to date. I find the process exciting and over the years some what easy that I have started to help other new ...

Tuning pipes When I was a child, my parents had a family friend who was, in Fast Show parlance, a little bit whoo, a little bit wha-hey. He came by things. He wheeled, he dealed, he knew people. But however whoo and wha-hey he was with other people (I really don't know the details) he was great to us. (And I loved his dogs as I wasn't allowed to have a dog.) Me and my siblings were always in need of drawing paper and the friend would turn up unexpectedly with boxes of pencils, enormous rolls of paper and once, two big rolls of shiny metallic foil, one gold and one silver. On another occasion, he handed a cavalry sword to my brother, albeit a broken, rusty one. He was a picker-up of unconsidered trifles. When I won the Children's Literary Prize, I came home from school on a Friday afternoon, with a cheque for fifty whole pounds. (Note: this was in the early 70s. Banks closed at 3pm and didn't open at weekends.) By lucky chance, our friend rolled in that same ev...

We are on the downhill side of my list of ten great self - published   books . By now, hopefully those who doubt the worth of self-publishing are beginning to rethink it, and those who have long supported self-publishing are feeling appropriately justified. This list could not come at a better time for self-publishers. It seems that every time self-published authors begin to gain new grounds in respect, something happens to undercut those gains. Just last month, for example, The Georgia Writers Association ended a long tradition of allowing self-published authors to be nominated for their Georgia Author of the Year Award . This is a curious decision considering a goodly portion of the Association membership (though clearly not the board of directors) are indie authors. This decision is also ironic and sad considering that seventeen years ago, the Association received accolades for being so inclusive of indie authors . I find this particularly disheartening conside...

I started with this, drawn on a sheet of scrap paper, copied from a photo of a stuffed fox. I scanned it into the computer. Before I adjusted the contrasts, you could see the type showing through from the other side. Then I opened the ink sketch in Photoshop, took out the white background of the scrap paper and added a dark background layer. Coloured the drawing, added a title and a screamer. This is only a try-out for the front cover. I can't do the complete one until I've finished laying out the interior and know how thick the spine will be.      I used various photos for reference, sometimes using the 'eye-dropper' tool to get an idea of what the colouring should be.      I was so pleased with the result that I hailed a passing brother. "Cop a butcher's at this," I said.      He came, he looked. A long silence. Then, grudgingly, "That's pretty good. Come out of it."      He took over my chair. He over-laye...

I’m a sucker for novellas. I always seek them out in the bookshops, although they are sometimes hard to locate, their narrow spines often lost between the thicker books on the shelves. Once popular, the novella has languished in the past few decades and it was difficult, as a writer, to sell a novella to a publisher or agent. But, today the novella is having a bit of a revival. Some American magazines will accept novellas, Bath Fiction recently had a competition for the novella-in-flash and there are now small publishing houses, such as Peirene Press in London, who publish novellas in translation and Melville House in the USA.  What exactly is a novella? It’s a short novel, yes, between twenty and forty thousand words - long enough for a reader to inhabit a world but short enough to be read in one sitting. But it is much more than that. A novella tends to focus on one view or one voice, highlights one feeling and portrays one psychological human trait. It zooms in on one asp...

Last month I picked up the award for the Arnold Bennett prize. This is an annual event run jointly by The Arnold Bennett Society and The Sentinel our local newspaper. Established in 2017, the prize is open to any writer living in north Staffordshire, or writing about the area. It was a lovely evening early in June and in spite of being hampered by a broken wrist, I dressed as elegantly as I could and was driven to the North Staffs Medical Centre for the award ceremony which was to be followed by dinner. Although I knew only one or two people there, I was made very welcome and was enjoying a glass of prosecco when the time came for the announcement of the winner. There were five books short listed and as there is no restriction as to genre they ranged from crime and thrillers, to non-fiction and a children’s picture book. As Dr Catherine Burgass, the vice chair of the society began her speech, my stomach did flutter and I crossed those fingers that still worked ...

Last month , I went on one of my rants about the bias against self-published books and challenged some common stereotypes many people have about self-published writers. The most common stereotype, however, needs more than a couple of paragraphs in a single blog post to disprove. Most people assume that if a book is self-published, it is because the work was not good enough to be picked up by a traditional or indie publisher. There are a few reasons, however, that a perfectly good book doesn't find a publisher: Most publishers require agents, but today, many agents won't take you on unless you can show proof of your own marketability. The work, while well-written and entertaining, may be too experimental for a publisher or agent to risk investing in. The market you are shooting for ( especially sci-fi or fantasy ) may be near glutted already, so publishers may be unwilling to throw money into such a large pool. Conversely, the audience may be so small that the publisher h...

A most delightful primary school near Gloucester will be performing Tattybogle the Musical for their Easter show, so they invited me to spend a day with the year 1 and 2 children, reading stories and answering questions. Year 1 had prepared written questions   – very impressive for such small people!   Year 2’s were spontaneous. My favourite was ‘What’s your daddy’s name?’ One smart little girl also worked out how old I was by asking how long ago I’d written Tattybogle and how old I was then. My absolutely top part of the day was a Year 1 written question: when did you becom the Other? It set me thinking about how much of ‘the other’ we are as authors. Are we a breed apart? A series of sub-species, rather, since there are several distinct types of writer? Or, can anyone and everyone write stories? The short answer is, I suppose, yes, anyone can, but whether or not they should, and then put them out for public consumption, is another matter entirely. I’ve been thinking a ...

There’s a watery feeling in my stomach. My head feels as if it’s not properly joined to my body and I keep forgetting where I’ve put things. All classic signs of stress, but I’m not taking an exam, or going for a difficult interview, or an unwanted visit to the doctor. I am just embarking on my marketing schedule for my new novel, “Shadows on the Grass.” I know that this is an intrinsic part of being a writer, especially so, if you are Indie published. It’s what I signed up for, so why is it causing me all this angst? There are, I think, a number of reasons. The first is the fear of getting it wrong. Marketing now is such a big thing and there are is so much to organise that, if you are like me and like to do things properly, the scope for not doing so is huge. When should I send out the review copies? When should I ask people to host my blog tour? Whom should I choose? Which of course leads nicely into the second fear. It’s not always easy to ask. People are busy, I...