Authors Electric

The sort of place which Dib might inhabit Let me tell you about Dib Gringe. It’s not a small, eerie village, with cowed residents slinking about, fearful of what new horrors may be inflicted on them by their evil landlord from his dank castle on the hill overlooking the swamp on which the village was built. It’s not the swamp itself, some modern equivalent of Conan Doyle’s wonderful Grimpen Mire, into which strangers have wandered to disappear with a gurgled scream, only to reappear at Halloween with dripping rags of flesh still clinging to their skeletal forms, moaning their souls’ agony into the echoing night. Nor is it a wasting disease with a much more impressive Latin name but with symptoms too nauseating to describe, brought back from the southern ocean in the late 1700s by the crew of Captain Cook’s barque Endeavour and transmitted to the inhabitants of the brothels of British ports and from them on to the towns’ residents. No, Dib Gringe is not an ‘it’, he’...

My ebook of sample chapters  Attention all parents! It struck me the other day that there's a simple answer to the constant parental dilemma What Books To Buy To Get The Kids Reading. Sure, you could stick with what's in Sainsbury's, or Waterstones, or the review sections of the Sunday papers, but don't forget that these are all required by law to feature only children's books which have a name you've already heard of on the cover. There's a far better alternative: yes, the good ol' Kindle! Give your kid a Kindle, or download the Kindle app for their iPod or smartphone, and let them loose in the wonderful world of SAMPLES. They can try the first chapters of dozens, hundreds, thousands of books, and all for free. Even the pickiest of readers is certain to find something they like! Since I've had a Kindle, I've definitely widened the range of stuff I read, all because I can download a couple of chapters at the press of a button. N...

When I first started writing professionally in the mid 1990's I produced non-fiction features for magazines. I still write non-fiction; in fact I had a title published last year, this being The Greatest Guide To Green Living . Research has therefore always been part of the writing process for me. Although I know the subjects I write about there are always new things to learn. So when researching for non-fiction I know what I need to know and research until I fill that knowledge gap. But when it comes to researching for my fiction I have discovered a weakness. I love researching. I mean, I really enjoy the process of learning new things, getting side tracked and discovering something completely unexpected. Take for example my latest early readers eBook Maras and The Fairy Rings ( Amazon.co.uk - Amazon.com ). I've always been interested in the natural world and had often wondered what produces the dark circles in the grass on our local playing field. Imagine my...

In 2003 I was asked to work on a project to help promote a local cultural venue called Aklowa. It was an African village in the middle of the Hertfordshire countryside, within minutes of Stansted Airport. A friend's friend, Felix Cobson had set it up some twenty years before. Originally born in Ghana Felix moved to the UK and had spent his life teaching children about African heritage. This included traditional clothing, cooking, music, crafts and stories. This is where I came in. I started my writing career writing for craft magazines. So I was asked to write a book that would appeal to children about African crafts. Knowing little about the subject I jumped at the chance to visit Ghana. I spent a wonderful week with friends visiting villages known for their pottery making, Adinkra block printing and Kente strip weaving. I also visited markets and talked to the makers of musical instruments and carvers of masks. Based on this trip I created a synopsis and approached The British Mu...