Authors Electric

I recently discovered that AI is being trained to do something I want it to do even less than I want it to write novels or design book covers or publish social media posts. It’s organising travel. Although there is very little point in making travel plans myself at the time of writing, because, for various boring medical reasons, I can’t actually travel anywhere for a while, I am no stranger to the task of organising travel. I must admit that in some cases (though not always) the planning process has been quite a bit more fun, or at least very much less stressful, than the actual travel. In fact I am quite tempted to start planning a trip now even without making any real bookings, just to keep my hand in. Of course, the more complicated the trip and therefore the more fun to organise, the more potential there is for things to go wrong. I had several panic attacks in the time leading up to my ‘North American tour’ of October 2001, partly because I hadn’t flown since 1978 and partly ...

  I know, I know, I'm preaching to the converted here, but hear me out. In order to be a good writer, one must first be a voracious reader. Hands up if you agree with that. Perfect we are all on the same page then, so this will be a short post. Well, no, actually.  'What?' I hear you say. We do need to be voracious readers. Yes, you are right and before you think I am going mad, let me explain. I am a voracious reader. I've been reading since I was three years old -- I was an extremely early reader. I'd read my way through the entire children's section of the local library before I was ten and was fortunate enough to be given an adult library card. Don't ask how that happened. I think it involved sacrificing chickens and my mother spending many hours wrangling with the head librarian. To be honest, I think the librarian gave in just to get this mad woman out of her library.   Anyways, I had read my way through the following series -- Cherry Ames Nursing Boo...

I’m not a great traveller. I’ve been to a few countries in my lifetime, but I don’t have a bucket list, I don’t yearn to swim with dolphins or throw myself out of a plane and I have never liked the idea of backpacking. I tend to find a country I like and return to it on a regular basis, getting to know it really well.   As a family, we go to Spain and France a fair bit. However, recently, our second son began going out with a girl from Belgium so I’ve had to expand my repertoire of European countries. Belgium is a country you tend to go through to get somewhere else, which is a bit hard on its residents. I’ve been to Bruges which is lovely and I once listened to a Plastic Bertrand song, plus I do love Hercule Poirot. So I felt I was ready for my new adventure. You may remember the game, “Famous Belgians” where you had to name as many people who hailed from the diminutive country as possible. It’s harder than it looks. Here are a few to get you going:   1.   ...

I'm going to be honest here and say I was fresh out of ideas for this month's blog. The more I searched my brain, the more it said, "Get lost, I'm having time off." No amount of cajoling would make it change its mind. So here I was with blank page syndrome on steroids. I thought I would turn to previous posts from my own blog - Bookaholic. This one from 2016 immediately leapt out at me and I just knew I had to riff off that. It's perfect as the world is just opening up to travel again. Original Blog Post - The Joy of Constant Travel I've been flying around the world recently as well as chasing around the UK. Life as a writer is so busy and often I think that I don't have time for any of this. It's getting in the way of me actually doing any writing. But on a number of occasions I have discovered that travelling can also broaden and enrich my abilities as a writer. This morning I was on my way to The British Library. To get from where I was staying ...

  Over the last few weeks I've gradually got the feeling that we have come through the worst of the pandemic. This could well be an illusion, of course, and we certainly have other problems to deal with at the moment, to make up for the loss of the constant worry about catching a potentially fatal illness just by doing something that was previously normal such as boarding a bus. My first glimpse of normality was when my son and I travelled to Llandudno and back by train(s). Even this wasn't entire normal as we wore masks all the way, despite the failure of many other passengers to do the same, and there were seats cordoned off and a lack of refreshments even on the first-class part of the journey (Edinburgh to Manchester). There was more of a sense of adventure than usually accompanies travel within the UK, too.  This more than made up for the hassle of having to change trains three times on the way and three on the way back, and my son didn't grumble at all, not even when ...

  Yesterday my son travelled on a bus. I can't remember when he last did this. It must have been over a year ago, before he started working from home. His trip, across town to collect things from his old place of work before he started a new job, was the subject of a disproportionate amount of discussion between us beforehand. His first thought was that he would walk all the way there and back, but as the route would involve going up quite a steep hill and down the other side (and return) I tried to talk him into getting a taxi at least one way. He was reluctant to do that but at last decided to risk getting the bus. On his way back, another family member happened to see him waiting for the bus and gave him a lift home. As soon as he told me this, I began to work out whether there had been any risk attached to that option. Happily, the risk seemed minimal as the other family member had been fully vaccinated and they both wore masks. We have both avoided risk almost entirely by stay...

I know, this title reads like a children's story. If only. Life has got a bit serious for many of us: the tribulations of a travel writer are nothing when compared to so many. I'm fortunate. I don't need the income from my travel writing to put food on the table. For those who do - life must have become impossible. Where can they go? What can they write about? We are used taking our safety into account: we generally give serious social unrest a wide berth and don't put ourselves in the path of animals that might eat us. (Well, I did, once - but not deliberately). Speaking for myself: I am fascinated by the minutiae of people's lives - wherever they are and whatever their circumstances. I will oppose poverty tourism (gawping at mud huts or rows of metal beds in orphanages) till the day I die, but will defend anyone who spends hours round a fire listening to singing, and dancing, and telling stories. For me, those stories are the life-blood of travelling. But what...

I've been reading with interest some of the reports and social media jokes about home schooling during the pandemic. My sympathy goes out to parents who have been suddenly forced into this situation, although I think in many cases they and their offspring will benefit from spending more time together. Two of my work colleagues are finding it a struggle to work from home, as we are all supposed to do, with children around all the time, and I feel for them particularly. When we were plunged into home education, as it is more often known here by people who choose it rather than having it foisted on them, the circumstances were rather different, partly because it was forced on me not because of an unexpected and sudden government decision but because I had a child who voted with his feet not to go to school. I mean that more or less literally - it was even possible to drive him to school and then have him refuse to walk the thirty metres or so to the door. If we ever did get ...

I've just spent a few days in Madrid. It's one of my favourite cities - and I've spent this morning trying to work out just what I love about it. I can highlight things like way people sit about in cafes for hours, as if they have no work or homes to go to. I can highlight the magnificent art galleries - I could happily drown in art here. I can even wax lyrical about the traffic, which often crawl sat snails' pace but without the cacophony of hooting that besets many other European cities. But it's more than that. Somehow the city gets under my skin, far deeper than the place where words hide. I simply feel at home there. Nevertheless, with this blog post to write, I felt I ought to try to be a bit more specific. And so I looked at my photos - I took very few on this trip, and so maybe this selection can tell me something about why I love this city. I'll begin in Plaza Mayor: The Plaza is vast, with plenty of street cafes and street entertainers and to...

I’m in Lanzarote - not travelling, for a change, but just dossing about having a holiday. The sun is lovely and warm, the beer is lovely and cold - so all is well. (Apart from the Brexit shambles, of course.) Except for one, very minor, event - and the stories I have told myself about it. When I came to get ready for bed last night, I couldn’t find my nightdress. In an attempt make sense of its disappearance I concocted several stories: I must have put it somewhere stupid. So I checked the bathroom, all drawers and cupboards. The fridge. No nightdress. The cleaner must have put it somewhere stupid - the bathroom, all drawers etc. No nightdress. The cleaner had stolen it! Why do such a thing? It’s a ratty old nightdress! I’ve has shampoo and toothpaste stolen before, but never clothing. How dare she ...  Then, in the middle of the night, it occurred to me that it might have been swept up with the laundry ... how could I have thought ill of my lovely cleaner, she woul...

I've been back from Sri Lanka for two days. This was a very different trip for me - usually I travel alone, and for 4-6 weeks. This time I was with my brother and sister-in-law, for two weeks, and our trip was organised around cricket (England are playing Sri Lanka at the moment.) It's too soon to find the right words to describe these two weeks. We packed a lot in - and I need to digest my notebooks and let the story evolve before I can begin to find coherence in it. Besides which I am mildly jet-lagged, which makes writing in complete sentences something of a challenge. And so here are some pictures. In time I'll find time to describe the sheer weight of an elephant: Or the appeal of a baby monkey (doesn't the mum look tired!): Or the tangy smell of spices: Or the peaceful smile of a Buddha: And then, of course, there was the cricket: By next month I'll be able to manage words. But if you need some now, try my website:  www.jocar...

I've followed British politics for decades - often with mixed feelings and complex opinions. The House of Commons shenanigans seem to veer from comically farcical set-pieces (Prime Minister's Questions) to the momentously important ... dare I mention it ... Brexit. This is not the place to explore the rights and wrongs of any decisions. But I have, as a writer, been intrigued by the process - and what we can learn from it. We can think of it in terms of a traditional three-act structure: Act One: the decision to hold the referendum the campaign, with lies told and believed (by some) the crisis: the result and resignation of the Prime Minister resolution: we have a new Prime Minister Act Two: the triggers of Article 50, separation discussions begin the apparently insurmountable problem of the border with Ireland rears its head. (No one explains why this was not noticed at the campaign stage, even though 'ordinary people' had raised the issue) undeter...

I’m home from my travels. So surely I should be returning to the blank screen with renewed vigour, shouldn’t I?  Why doesn’t it work like that? I’ve a big project I want to get my teeth into. I should be refreshed by five weeks up mountains. I should be rising from my bed at sparrowfart and tapping away at the computer as the cocks crow. Oh the best-laid plans. And I’ve been away often enough to know it never works like that. The reality of a long journey, heaps of washing, and an empty fridge means that ordinary self-care must come first. Ah, self-care. I had plenty of time to reflect on that while I was away. I had an apartment in Pokhara, with a sunny balcony and view across rooftops to the hills and mountains. From there I could watch as the women of Nepal worked to meet the basic needs of their families.  Unpicked, that can be reduced to: keeping warm, keeping clean, and keeping well-fed. None of which is too difficult for those of us in the UK with enoug...

When writing is difficult - and I don’t mean those days when we stare at a screen or open our notebooks and there we are, a couple of hours later, with nothing but a few deleted sentences to show for it. We all have days like that - and some of us deal with them better than others. Hey ho, that’s just how it is. Nor am I talking about days when we are so overwhelmed by Life that we need all our creative and emotional energies just to keep the show on the road. We all have those days too - they come and they go again. No, I mean when there are huge physical impediments to writing.  When I arrived in Kathmandu, last week, it was seriously cold - not freezing, but cold enough for poor people without warm clothes or blankets to die. I’ve been here several times, and - though I knew in theory that Kathmandu could get chilly at night in the winter, I’ve not known cold like that here except in the mountains. So I huddled myself in the thermal clothes I’d worn to leave the UK ...

I'm home from Malawi, and have begun the process of teasing stories out of the scribbles in my notebooks. For there are stories - of generous, welcoming people who spend three rainy months of the year working their socks off to grow food, and the rest of the time eking out whatever they have grown. There are stories of people starting schools under trees. There are stories of people trying to provide health care with no running water. There are stories off illegal logging and people trying to plant new trees. There are stories of aid agencies, with their baseline studies and conferences. There are stories of lions and hippos and fish eagles. So you can see why I might be struggling to shape this into some sort of coherence that can hold together in a narrative. Bear with me, I'll get there. Meanwhile, I think these three pictures illustrate something of my dilemmas. This is the M1, previously known as the Great North Road. It is the main road north from Lilongwe,...

I'm in Malawi - lucky me!  I'll try not to go on about the scenery or the weather (or the snakes and leopards ...) As ever, I scribble in my notebook all the time I am away. I filled one exercise book (narrow lined) in the first ten days I here. I notice as much as I can, the big things and the little things and the strange things, and I reflect on how I feel about them all. The plan, when I get home, is to go through all this twaddle and see if I can find a story. For instance: my guide is called Everlasting. Surely his name a story in itself. Lilongwe, the capital, is divided into sections each with a prescribed function and housing density. Those in low density areas live behind walls and security, with gardens and swimming pools, and shop in one of the new supermarkets. The high density areas are alive with markets and people and bicycles. Is this the story? I stayed in Luwawa, where there is a huge pine plantation (planted to feed for a paper mill but abandoned) a...

What do you look for in a travel book? One of the most memorable pieces of advice I was ever given was 'don't write about things people can see on the telly'. And so I have never written about hearing Rigoletto at the Sydney Opera House as both can be found online without too much difficulty (even though it was wonderful). That mentor also told me make sure I involved my own experience - which meant writing about things I hadn't told my daughters about. I'll never forget steeling myself to tell them about the man with a gun in Lucknow. But my last trip took me to Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands. I spent a few days deep in the upper Amazon basin, where caimans hide in the shallows and tarantulas creep up the hut walls. Google any nature site and it's easy to see pictures of the Amazon (though they can't capture that wet mud smell, nor the wake-up call of the howler monkeys). I took a road trip through the mountains, where the ground trembles for so...

I'm back from my travels. And I know that some people will be waiting for me to write about the mountains and jungles of Ecuador, and the astonishing islands of the Galapagos. After all, that's what I do, isn't it - go walkabout and then come home to write a book. If only it were that easy. But 'woman has wonderful time in Ecuador' isn't a story. I can flesh that out a bit - 'woman stays in a lodge in the jungle, climbs a volcano, stays in an old city or two, potters round a market, flops about on a beach and then spends a week on a boat in the Galapagos' isn't really a story. Indeed, I can feel you glazing over as you trawl down that list and then you'll see my point. It's not that hard to write about what I did. But finding a thread that holds it together in a narrative that takes it beyond a written version of your neighbours' holiday snaps, that's the hard bit. I did meet some interesting people, so that helps. And I had ...