Authors Electric

Collection of 8 short stories featuring Brer Rabbit Back in 2003 a friend (Felix Cobson) introduced me to Anansi the Trickster Spider. My writing ‘love affair’ with trickster characters was born. Since that time I’ve written and published two collections of Anansi stories ( volume one and volume two ) and one collect of Brer Rabbit stories . Whilst researching Brer Rabbit I came across another trickster character, Coyote. I’m now half way through writing the first draft of eight Coyote trickster stories. Also during my research into each of these trickster characters I came across several versions of the hare and the tortoise story. Sadly I’ve only been able to use one version in my own published short story collections. So I wasn’t surprised whilst researching Coyote that I came across yet another version, which is my favourite one to date. As I’m unable to use it I wanted to share it with you (call it my festive present to you all). Planned cover for latest collect...

On the 4th and 5th of this month I decided to give away my eBook: Anansi - The Trickster Spider ( UK link - US link ). Although numbers downloaded were not huge my book did appear inside the top 50 Amazon books for a period, which I consider a result.   Now I've been asked why do authors give away books?  The answer is simple - marketing. In order to gain loyal followers we need to encourage people to read our books. One of the issues with ePublishing is many believe eBooks are badly written, poorly edited etc. etc. The only way to overcome this preconceived idea is to prove (by giving away books) our books are the best we can create and as good (if not better in some cases) than traditionally published books. By giving away one of my Anansi books I'm hoping I prove my stories are worth paying for and readers will pay for and download my second title Anansi - Trickier Than Ever ( UK link - US link ). However I'm not just relying on giving away entire collect...

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...