Authors Electric

The main topic of discussion in my house these past few weeks (at, least, in terms of book-related) has been trigger warnings, and whether they’re a good thing. I’ve never paid much attention to them, viewing them (rather cynically) as a marketing strategy – I’m reminded of when I was a teenager and a sure-fire way to guarantee a record would sell was to plaster it with stickers spouting text such as ‘Warning: contains explicit lyrics’ and similar. Of course, this all-but-guaranteed people would buy the records, because, well, forbidden… I’m aware there’s been a growing discourse on whether books should contain them, although I’ve not been following it as such – my social media presence is minimal to say the least, so most of what I hear is second-hand information. In my day job, I teach IT systems to healthcare professionals, and part of my remit is to look after mental health nurses. We often chat with them outside of training (and they’re a wonderful resource for a writer, but I ...

Richard & Judy. I remember them as the king and queen of daytime television in the year or so of my life with a small baby when daytime television kept me sane. I don’t know when they stopped presenting This Morning , but these days it’s all about books isn’t it? I’ve not done any Googling or other research to write this, but the R&J book selection seems to be everywhere and being selected pretty much guarantees a book a place on the best-seller lists. Are spots for sale or sponsored in any way? I genuinely have no idea of the integrity of the spaces on this list and I’d be interested to know.  Do I read R&J books? Yes. Not specifically because they are R&J-recommended – I personally couldn’t care less who shouts about a book or how loudly. I do wonder if the couple themselves actually read the books they promote, though. I note they each add a foreword in their books, but do they write it themselves? Or do they merely add their names to something written in their ...