Authors Electric

  I’m not long back from a few days’ break. Nothing too exciting, just a wee trip from Scotland to Yorkshire to spend a few days with my parents. The original idea was to take one of the kids with me and use up some of my annual leave before the end of the leave year. Due to various factors beyond my control, I ended up going on my own, and for five days did very little apart from eat, drink, and generally relax. No laptop, or anything like that – the plan was not to write for a few days and spend quality time with my folks. But a couple of things happened whilst I was down there – firstly, I met their cleaner, and it turns out she’s a writer, too. We had a very engaging chat about writing, and the wider process of publishing including book design, illustrations – she writes for small children – and so on. What occurred to me was, despite the fact we write in completely opposite genres, a lot of the considerations we had were the same, albeit sometimes arriving there ...

 I had the idea for the following story when listening to a programme on the radio. The music was Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique, but it was the interval feature that really piqued my interest, talking about the great writers of Gothic fiction. The premise dropped into my mind almost immediately, and the subject matter gave me an opportunity to try and write in that style. It was harder than I'd expected - much more exposition and over-writing than contemporary fiction; once I finished the first draft, the challenge was to pull back some of the padding, but still try and retain a sense of the period. I thought this might make an interesting read for Halloween, so without further ado, please enjoy 'Reflections'.   Reflections There are moments in one's life when two unrelated and seemingly disparate ideas come together in a moment that makes one sit up and take notice. Out of such moments can come great works of science, or art, or literature; it all depends ...

Why do we tell each other stories? That’s a huge question and many, many reasons have been suggested, including the need to understand where we come from (in a cosmological as well as a personal sense), to explain natural disasters, to comfort, entertain and keep ourselves from boredom, to come to terms with the things life throws at us, to explore the ‘what-ifs’ of our lives, and, of course, for the sheer joy of creation. You can probably think of at least a dozen more. Another fascinating question is when, in an individual child, does storytelling begin? As a besotted grandmother of Daisy, who has just turned two, I can report that she is already telling stories of a kind. Her current favourite involves a small plastic doll, known as ‘Lady’, who gets ‘in’ to her bright pink, daisy-spangled car at least five hundred times a day in order to ‘drive to Aldi’ (other supermarkets are available, though not, apparently, to Lady), to buy apples, pears, bananas, bread and (impressive, this...