Authors Electric

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. AI images avoided.   Fiction reflects life in all its shades of grey (I believe someone once thought there were fifty of those and then considered there were another fifty after that). At either end of the spectrum, fiction has its light and dark sides.  I’ve written both kinds in my flash and short story work. Indeed when I was putting my debut flash fiction collection together, the moods of the stories inspired the title, From Light to Dark and Back Again . This was also useful as the moods of the stories helped me with my ordering for this collection.  I always prefer writing and reading the lighter side of fiction but know that for some of my characters at least, the darker side of the spectrum is where they “fit”. This is due to their being of a darker nature or their situation is such the likely outcome will be on the darker side. The important thing here is it will ring true and that truth matte...

  In Isfahan                                                                                Chehel Sotoun Palace, Isfahan In Isfahan is the title of a short story by William Trevor and I turned to it after watching TV pictures of the war raging across Iran and tried to make some sense of the destruction that I was witnessing.   Isfahan is a beautiful city. In the words of its governor Mehdi Jamalinejad:   “Isfahan is not an ordinary city. It’s a museum without a roof…In none of the previous eras, not in the Afghan wars, not in the Moghul conflict, not even during the ‘sacred defence’ [the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war] was this ever done.   “This is a declaration of war on a civilisation. An enemy that has no culture pays no heed to symbols of culture. A country that has no hist...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.  One thing which makes a character, and their story, more real to me is when they have memories. I  think it is a great way to ensure your characters aren’t cardboard cut outs. A character recalling a memory is showing something of themselves, which shows they have more than one dimension. Memories can be played on by the character to generate sympathy. Memories can be used against a character to make them fall into line with what someone else wants - emotional blackmail. Characters can use memories to blackmail others in the more traditional ways too. Sometimes, as in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, memories can be used as a tool for redemption. Scrooge didn’t want to face up to his past but until he did, he could not move on.   In The Lord of The Rings, memories dictated what elf leader, Elrond, wanted to happen to the Ring of Power. He knew it was what should have happened before but, due to the weakn...

  Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. How easy do you find coming up with ideas? I’m always on the lookout for new ones. I write flash fiction and blog for online magazines, so I always need a stock of ideas.    As well as writing on topics of interest to me (and I hope other writers), I use random generators to trigger ideas. These work especially well for fiction but I have used things like a random question generator to give me a blog theme.   I also use prompt books and have contributed to a couple. I like the challenge of rising to a theme set by someone else and bringing my take to it. With the random generators, I can do this via variety of means.  I have used the following:- Random word/object generators. Random noun/adjective/verb generators. Random name generators (a recent story of mine was accepted for an online magazine and the idea for it came from the generated name). Random question generators. (Great for use as...

  Image by  Vinzent Weinbeer  from  Pixabay I’m a great fan of audio books. I’ve been a member of Audible since a month long stay in hospital at the end of 2018 and I’ve had a story on the go ever since. Listening to stories on long car journeys goes back even further. When the boys were small, we borrowed story cassettes from the local library for our trips up and down the A1 visiting family. We were particularly fond of the Diamond Brother books by Anthony Horowitz. Then progressed to his Alex Rider stories (at the same time as we made the technological leap from cassettes to CDs) which made the miles fly by. When my son was home from university at Christmas, we watched series 1 and 2 of the new TV adaptation. I only had a vague recollection of the storyline even though the general plot is the same one I heard years ago. “Can’t you remember that bit?” my now grown-up son asks almost indignantly. He has the advantage that he has also read the books. I am dis...

  *When this goes out on 20 th , I should be in the Lake District, the latest covid restrictions permitting. Who knows? Of the group of old friends we meet there every year, two are shielding and two are effectively in lockdown in Northumberland. If we get there at all, we could well be rattling round in the converted barn on our own and eating at home if the pubs and restaurants are shut. Still, we’ll be in a place we love; a place full of memories. The cover of my book Passing Places was developed from a favourite photograph Niall took some years ago – a view across Ullswater at the Glenridding end.   We don’t go in for heroic driving these days; we’ll have an overnight stop in delightful Sandbach on the way, and then grit our teeth for the horrors of the motorway, until we are past Preston and at some point the traffic eases dramatically, the landscape changes, we spot the first drystone walls and then look out for the heart-lifting first sight of the Howgills. I grew...

I'm opening this post with a little publicity for a Pipeline Theatre production, currently on tour. It's called "DRIP DRIP DRIP, and it toured the South-West of the UK last year. Now it has its first London booking, at The Pleasance Theatre, Islington, so I'm hoping London-based followers of our blog will come.  My daughter is an active founder member of the very successful Pipeline collective which has already showcased work in the Edinburgh Festival. It specialises in bringing our attention to difficult and often challenging subjects, and "DRIP DRIP DRIP" is no exception, taking a very hard look at racism in our NHS medical system, especially now, when the UK has split from the European Union, and following every performance there's a discussion panel if you feel like taking part. Pipeline routinely gets excellent reviews, so if you can, please go. Oh, and there's a discount on the ticket for anyone working in the NHS. I was given books for Ch...