Authors Electric

Spring has ... woops, it’s winter again. Is anyone else paralysed by difficult weather? - As I wrote that I struggled for the right adjective. Weather is simply weather; we describe it as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ according to our own construct of it. And that construct can change over time. For instance, the recent snow and ice saw me stuck at home. The path from the doorway of my flats to the street was sheet ice and I already have one broken finger - I don’t need a second. But if my grandsons had been here they would have been undeterred by a little ice (they would probably have made it slippier by sliding on it) and I would have clung to the railings beside them so we could reach the park to play snowballs. Snow, for most children, is a playground. For me, it cuts me off.  I know people who are comparably deterred by strong sunshine. The second the sun appears. I’m out there. The slightest glimmer and I’m smiling. But for some the heat is enough to send them to a darkened r...

As usual, once Christmas is over, New Zealand calls. Wonderful. And it looks as if Kay's protracted fight with the insurance company over damage in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake may be nearly over, with a result very close to a victory. Even better. Over the last two months, whenever my blogs haven't been in prophetic, apocalyptic or merely nostalgic mode, I've been talking of the projects I have in hand and my deadline to get them all sorted by the time we leave in the New Year for two months.  As I remember, they were (1) finishing  and publishing a short story collection, Yan Tan Tethera: five stories an d a very tiny novel , (2) finishing and publishing the second in the  Bright Sea, Dark Graves trilogy, The Nightmares of Invasion, (3) completing the editing and production of Dora's Story, written by Dora Ganeva, the indomitable nonagenarian who escaped from Communist Bulgaria to New Zealand in 1976 with her family, (4) writing the ongoing advertisin...