Authors Electric

Three little pigs, three bears, three fairies in the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty. The number three seems to have a resonance that it almost magical, or is there something hard wired in the human brain that responds to a triple repetition? Religions all over the world centre round the concept of Trinity. The Christian Church worships God the Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost, while in Hinduism the Trinity is Brahma Vishnu and Shiva. In Classical and Medieval times the world was divided into Earth, Heaven and Hell and such is the universality of this concept that the Cherokee Indians had their Upper World, this World and Lower World. There is also the rhetorical aspect of the number three. When kids are taught to write persuasive essays they are told to use a word three times for maximum effect. For a writer there is another significant three, the trilogy. In theory a great idea, in practise very hard to pull off successfully. First of all, you have to get the balan...

This month I'm sharing the info on my upcoming book launch. All are welcome! Here's the blurb from the Facebook event : Official launch of the Zombies v. Ninjas book series by R.A. Barnes, published by Kilkenny company Marble City Publishing and printed in Ireland. MC for the evening will be local author and Francis MacManus prize winner Patrick Griffith. This trilogy of paperbacks features characters that are surprisingly similar to the members of Evolution Martial Arts Academy as they battle to save Kilkenny, Ireland and the World from the Undead. Suitable for all ages from 10 to 110. Ruby Barnes and the Evolution Team members will be signing books on the night. All Marble City profits from the launch will go to Fundraising for Evolution Martial Arts Academy for the team to compete in America in 2017. More about the books here at rubybarnesbooks.com and I'll be writing a series of blog posts on that site about the background to the rise of the Undead i...

     Ambrosi...saw the shape of a great and beautiful tree, winter-bare of leaves. It rose out of the empty dark with the pale, pale sheen of steel by moonlight, faintly outlined against the blackness and the stars.      The stars shone through its branches, like brilliant, unseasonable fruit... Other sounds, distant and eerie, crept to his ears. The stars, every one of the thousands of stars, as it spun in darkness, spun its own crystalline, icy, piercing note that... wove and interwove with the note of every other star. Cold, thrilling, calling harmony: poignant discord: the music of the spheres.           This is an extract from my book, Ghost Song. The World Tree         It's said that one of the questions most often asked of writers is, 'Where do you get your ideas from?' Well, I know exactly where this description of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, comes from. When I was ...

San Sebastian, La Gomera I'm working on a new version of an old back-list novel. I began by thinking it would involve typing up the manuscript, revising as I went along, but it soon became obvious that it needed more than that. Major changes were in order. The book was originally bought by The Bodley Head and published by Random House a long time ago. I think the central story is fine, but I’ve matured as a writer. Just as well, really. When I reread it before starting work on it, my chief emotion was a sort of horrified embarrassment and NOT, I might add, embarrassment at the significantly erotic content. It was more a question of writing technique and not the other sort. What, I kept wondering, was I thinking about? More to the point, what was my editor thinking about? Happy days on board Simba When I look at the novel now, I can see so many elements of it which need work, not least a confused and confusing perception of point of view. It began as a tale told from a ...