Authors Electric

On the surface, this will seem to be blatant marketing, but it isn’t. Honest. As I’ve probably said before, my marketing skills are as finely developed as my belly-dancing (which I’ve never tried). No, this has been triggered by the discovery of some notes I made (intended for a blog) before beginning to write The Likeness . The latter now exists, has been well reviewed and won a couple of awards, but when I wrote what follows it was a dull gleam in my eye. The notes, (suitably tarted up to make them easier to read), ran as follows: ‘I’ve been researching various aspects of life in 1841-2 to fill in details of the lives my characters lived. The cogitations have so far produced four main threads to the narrative. Since it’s a sequel to The Figurehead , it’ll naturally be concerned with the making of ships and all the carvings that involves, so the setting for the action is Aberdeen harbour and the business that goes on there. ‘The first thread is part of that business...

120 years ago a new writer ‘burst onto the literary scene. He had, of course, spent the obligatory 10+ years honing his craft before his ‘overnight’ success. Birthplace It was 1894. The height of  the Victorian era and the cult of celebrity was very similar to what it is today. The only difference was the means of dissemination. Instead of ‘social’ media, the popular media of 1894 was the periodical (if you were middle /upper class) and the monthly, weekly or ‘penny dreadful’ magazines  (if you were middle/lower class). The distinction between ‘literature’ and ‘fiction’ was still being thrashed out (in said periodicals and magazines) and genre fiction was pretty much still an ‘out there’ concept. Our man fell foul of this many a time and oft.  Especially with his ‘historical fiction’ writing. There was a split between those of the ‘old’ order who still believed that literature was essentially the province of the ‘educated’ and those of the ‘new’ order who be...