Authors Electric

January, named for Janus the two-faced god: the traditional time to look back and look forward. For me, he can close his eyes on 2023, which wasn’t the best year by a long chalk. We had bereavements of a particularly painful kind – the sudden and unexpected deaths of very dear friends we had shared most of our lives with, who died within days of each other. Then there were various ‘bits dropping off’ – old age galloping on apace!  Sonnet: Old Age I saw you from a distance in those days The days of carefree, self-regarding youth The days when ‘how I want it’ stood for truth Your world unfocussed in my shortened gaze   What were false teeth, what walking sticks, grey hair? What was a ‘span’ of three-score years and ten? Beyond a fleeting frisson now and then Your presence was ignored: not my affair.   But since I have long passed the given span My vision is corrected, no short sight Can help me to avoid your company You’re here now. First you crawl...

Yesterday morning, my husband woke up from a particularly vivid dream in which he was driving a traction engine. He had no clue about what might have triggered it. His conclusion: ‘My brain has a mind of its own!’ Oh yes, Papa Freud! The brain/the Muse is a funny old duck. Capriciousness isn’t in it.   Sometimes walking wakes the Muse up, especially in a special place, like the salt marsh at Keyhaven, which I’ve written about before. There’s something about the rhythm of the movement and the air in the surroundings…but it’s never predictable and can never be forced. Sometimes there’s an out-of-the-blue inspiration that doesn’t seem to relate to anything. Sometimes a long fallow period that can’t always be accounted for either. Thank goodness I now have the inestimable luxury of writing for pleasure rather than trying to earn my living by it (although, in fact, I never did. It was always the jam in the sandwich rather than the bread). Now, we are giving books away as fast as we ...

Everyone, at present, seems to be sharing the delights of Spring - that feeling of renewal, the flowering, Spring blossoms. Someone on Facebook invited friends to share, in one word, their response to this season, and out they popped, like seedlings resurrected by the sun - crocuses, daffodils, budding leaves, snowdrops etc etc. There was only one negative word - 'death'. It was mine. Stravinksy saw Spring synonymous with violence and death. Somebody - was it him? - described the sound of the ice cracking on the Volga as being like the slashing of a blade. And then, we have THE RITES OF SPRING, and, of course, Easter, which isn't really about bunnies and chicks, but about a horrendous form of death followed by the myth (or not, depending on your beliefs) of the resurrection. Spring, for me, has always been about death and violence. Yet I was married in Spring, and our two children were born in Spring.  Then the man I loved died suddenly, two years ago, in Spring - so f...

If no one had said 'Spring's here! ', if I’d not been able to see the light and the primroses and hear the birds shouting, I'd still have known. Spring! What a good word for it!   Today I sprang out of bed at 6am and,  eschewing the usual slorming about in my pjs until after the post’s arrived,  sprang through my ablutions and into my clothes. Primped, prepped and ready.  ‘What’s got into you?’ asked my partner. ‘Are you going somewhere?’  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘It’s just that I want to be ready. I don’t know what for, I just do.’    Did he know something we don't know?  Deep in the limbic Neanderthal recesses of my brain, something stirred, a bright blood compulsion to clean out my nest, and my thoughts and my life, to make all clean, clear and fresh again.        Do you suffer from SAD? Seasonal Affective Disorder. Disorder? Really? But, isn't this alteration from low to high spirits, as the year moves from wint...

How to make a coherent blog post out of my diverse writing-related experiences of the last few weeks - without resorting to a worn-out clich é of the kind favoured by politicians? Well, I'll try. I've just finished draft three (or is i t four ?) o f my sci-fi novel for adults and it's 'resting' (and improving, I hope, in the process...). I found it challenging to write, involving as it did an explor ation of the nature of consciousness, self, identity, cognition, coma, dreams... and the attempt to create a credible world of suitabl y advanced technologies for 2104. All that, plus a woman juggling children, separation, divorce and an academic career. Oh, and I should mention the ethics of artificial intelligence and robotics thrown in. Fun, but not particularly easy to write. Quite a relief to be able to lay it all aside for a few weeks and have a well-earned rest... Except that things never turn out that way. From nowhere, it seems, a new book has popp...