Authors Electric

I had an interesting virtual conversation with John Logan the other day, which I’d love to refer to but can’t find in my new technology nightmare. I’m running three computers at the moment – big desktop Mac (never liked Big Macs, fries or no fries), which is old and slow and infuriating, a laptop Mac, which is good but prone to sulking now and then, and losing things I haven’t yet saved, and a PC laptop the bloke over the road gave me. This one’s good, but VERY old, and throws enormous wobblies if the document I’m working on is more than twitter length. The doc I’m working on at the moment is about 300 pages. Serves me right. John and I were conversing about nasty reviews on Amazon and why they happen. I’d had a couple of humdingers, which appeared to have a slightly orchestrated tang to them, and I think he was impressed (can’t check, sadly – see above!). But his idea was to embrace them with love and affection, because if they went on it would make an interesting...

I once read a book by Gwyn Thomas called The World Cannot Hear You. I can’t f o r the life of me remember much about it (except that I loved it), but the title has always lurked in my mind. I t seemed to me to epitomise the writer’s (or writers’) tragedy. You write, or read, these wonderful books, somebody reads them, or maybe not, and then they are gone. I used to drone on about Gerald Kersh, whom I thought was fantastic. Nobody else had ever heard of him, which I bitterly resented, more on his behalf than my own. Before and during World WarII he was enormous. And now…? But sometimes, out of the blue, things get jogged. My phone rang not so long ago , and I was asked to take part in a Radio 4 programme about the writers considered to be in the van of the “new realism” in children’s books. My Mate Shofiq was mentioned, and Albes on and the Germans. Good God, I thought - I wrote them! And suddenly remembered being rung up by the headmaster of a school in Peckham to cancel my invitatio...