Authors Electric

  In this post I bring you a little taste of hope, and an example of the joys of working as a team. In case you are wondering where I’ve gone and who has hi-jacked my blog, I must confess to having watched a few seasonal movies, mostly terrible ones, in my efforts to stay awake long enough to complete the blanket I’ve been knitting since last February. So some of the spirit of Christmas might have infected me despite my long years of resisting it. I’m writing this 5 th December post on the 4 th , which goes against my earlier resolution not to leave it to the last minute in future after being out of action at the exact time when I had intended to write the April one. This month I planned it like this, because I wanted to report back on the Christmas Fair that took place at our local community centre over last weekend. Of course, I had half-expected things to go wildly wrong at that event, and to have a tale of disaster and mayhem to tell here. However, not only did things not ...

  As I may have mentioned, on 1 st January this year I took a leap into the abyss and became a Full Time Writer. This was at once terrifying and thrilling. Yes, I had my well-established freelance writing career, but just as I laid down my other source of income for good, one of my biggest clients changed things around and I haven’t had any work from them since. I got writer’s block for the first time ever while trying to write my third novel. My elderly parents needed even more care and attention which sapped my mental strength and even though I’m a fairly brave and optimistic person, I sat in my Palace of Creativity in the cold, dark days of January thinking to myself, “Ruth, how on earth are you going to make any money?”   A fellow writer, the magnificent Sheila Robinson, had mentioned years before that she booked herself a space on local craft and book fairs and sold her books directly to the public. This seemed like a splendid idea. Having spent twenty years running my...

A “platform” is the most important attribute a writer can possess. (Having the ability to write could be argued to be more vital, of course, but then us ghostwriters are always available to sort out any lack in that department). Two books have brought this thought to the front of my mind. One of them comes with quite possibly the greatest author platform in the world, while the other has – like most of the rest of us – had to rely more heavily on serendipity.  Barack Obama is arguably the man with the most interesting autobiographical material available at the moment. Not only did he come from virtually nowhere to be the leader of the free world, he also held onto his integrity to a degree that in the current political climate is almost impossible to envisage. On top of that he is a fabulous writer. I admit I am biased and there is a chance that he has faults which I am too starry-eyed to see, but I think almost half the world’s population thinks roughly along the same lines ...

‘Buy me!’ yelled the cover. ‘This book is for you.’ One of my all-time favourite covers  - and books  What is it about a book cover that makes you want to read the book? Like much of advertising – for, of course, that’s at least partly what cover design is about – the process is shrouded in mystery to many of us mere authors. You can often see which bits of you a particular cover is getting to – part of it is genre and sub-genre information but I think there’s more to it than that. Those new(ish) style moleskin-like covers have the feel of ‘quality product’ about them, perhaps with the attendant ‘you’re worth it’ and ‘you deserve it’ connotations which, even though we can see what’s happening, are hard to resist. Some book covers have tactile appeal – ‘Stroke me!’ – and of course, once you’ve checked to see if anyone’s looking and then run your finger across the front cover and received the thrill, it’s difficult not to take a respectful peep inside or at lea...