Authors Electric

Get this: over the course of a couple of days two handfuls of distinctive words soared above my news feed like wildings of fireflies. The first one took me by surprise. It had nothing to do with writing. And it was  almost buried in comments on an ad for a pricey cardio test. But, at a glance, the author's personality stood out...she took a stance against the medical establishment...and ended with a war cry: I don't need this. I eat fruit and vegetables. So stuff your test. I came across these words  in the lobby of a Tucson cardio medical mill, where scores of us were processed, billed in advance, and then herded to assorted rooms for exam--then scheduled for further batteries of tests when some of us at least were feeling reasonably well. While I thought about this, I reflected on how these 13 words had led me to seek out the author's FB page, where I filed a Friend request quickly. The next day I chanced on a quote from a poet mourning 'a San Francisco that sadly is...

Some years ago, another writer, whom I respected said to me, “You have a distinct voice.”  She had read a couple of my books, and at the time, I was writing erotic fiction. Her words caught me off guard.  “Oh?” I felt somewhat ambivalent toward her statement. “I guess my writing’s become predictable.”  “I don’t mean that,” she said. “I mean you have a certain way of telling a story.”  She was offering a compliment, but in that moment, I couldn’t fully appreciate what she was saying. I took it to mean she had read enough of my stories to notice a recurring pattern, a particular style of writing. I filed away her words in my brain, confident I’d eventually understand them more clearly.  To have one’s own style isn’t a bad thing, right?  I’ve been reading erotic fiction for years, so it’s not a stretch to think I’ve adopted stylistic details from authors I’ve admired. At age eleven, I read Pauline Réage’s Story of O . I didn’t understand all of it, but it made...

Casting around for what to write about as we begin the Silly Season, my mind turns to the irritating grammatical errors indulged in by People What Ought To Know Better…. Jacob Rees-Mogg: like Ko-Ko in Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado , he's got a little list, he's got a little list... ... and lo, that great Jim Lloyd* of politics, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has beaten me to it.  And the wooden spoon goes to... whoever fails to use imperial measurements.  I’m not going to repeat the Mogg’s Little List, as spelled out in The Times on Saturday 27 July, but it did strike me as an odd collection of: 1. Genuine grammatical mistakes 2. An obsession with how to address an MP (4 rules apply to this alone) 3. A personal dislike of well-established English words that go back - not just to Gilbert and Sullivan (see caption above) - but to Chaucer and beyond ( got ) 4. A refusal to modernise beyond 1971 ( Use imperial measurements ). To be fair, it’s...

Good morning, class. Our lesson today, for your edification, is on Brazen Boobies. And if you belong in this classroom, you've already started to wonder which sort of boobies we'll discuss. Do we mean the mammaries that delight the memories of Jan Needle's tribe, the Needle-ites? Or do we mean nincompoops, also known as boobies? Have you fallen for the sort of misdirection prized by the Kirtonians, founded by Bill Kirton? If so, take comfort in knowing that the real game has only begun. For now that you're here we can turn to word one. That's right, let's focus on It's worth a close look for two reasons: 1) Adjectives, like adverbs, are commonly forbidden. 2) Brazen's dual use here lets us to study when adjectives work or do not.. Brazen Boobies #1  w ill draw in a certain crowd but the phrase is unemployed. We could just as easily write Luscious Tatas or Supremo Patooties. Brazen Boobies #2  works because it  does  work. After lea...