Authors Electric

It can be hard to work out how much reality to incorporate in your fiction. I have just published (yet) another mystery novel in a lengthy series that is set in a fictitious small town on the coast of Fife near the very picturesque real-life village of Culross. Over the years I’ve drawn inspiration for plots and sub-plots from real life in several cases. For instance, a story that revolved around an inheritance was based on something that really happened in my own family, though happily without the murders I introduced into it in the novel. My mother was contacted out of the blue by a firm of solicitors who were trying to track down the relatives of one of her first cousins who had died intestate. The task was particularly tricky because of the number of cousins and the extent to which they had dispersed across the globe. In the novel I brought many of the cousins back to Scotland for an ill-fated family reunion. In real life, however, they just stayed where they were and waited for ne...

All over the world the climate is changing. But this is not a post about the threat that is global climate change. Rather a whinge about the vagaries of the British summer. There has, in recent years (2018 excluded) been a pattern of glorious weather while young people sit exams and then the heavens open as soon as the schools break up. Parents wrap must wrap little Susie into raincoats and wellies and try to look enthusiastic about trips to the park. But this year ... well, the initial pattern was the same, with the inclusion of serious winds and storms that sent even the hardiest parent scurrying for cover. However, there has been one major difference: the weather forecast, in recent years increasingly trustworthy, has become so unreliable as to be almost useless. I know that low pressure has dominated, and with it comes prolonged periods of rain followed by sunshine and showers - and so timings can be a bit hit and miss. This year, with such a forecast, I set off with my fleece...

I was thinking about the weather the other day. That's something British people are famous for doing, of course, as well as for talking about it. My late father-in-law used to panic about weather extremes, especially gales, which everyone found quite harmless and even amusing until a hypnotherapist helped him to work out that it was caused by post-traumatic stress following his wartime experiences driving ammunition trucks in the desert during sandstorms. However without even noticing it, I seem to have suddenly reached the stage in my life where I don't mind too much what the weather throws at me -- within reason, that is. I am not keen on the kind of gales we get sometimes which literally throw things at you, from trees to trampolines. I am also slightly baffled by the fact that during the various named storms we now have during every season except summer, the trains stop running somewhere in Scotland because of trampolines on the tracks. When I was a child the wea...

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...

Was there ever a bigger cliché in opening a piece of fiction? Way back in the when, I wrote a round-robin story with a group of friends; we each had to write a few paragraphs and then pass it on. The opening line was It was a dark and stormy knight. And our brave knight was indeed dark and stormy! I’m not sure what happened to the story – I’m sure there must be copies somewhere, but this was probably pre-internet. I’m writing this in the midst of the Beast from the East – the huge cold snap that seems to be taking up 95% of British news right now. Like we’ve never had snow before? Although the wind-chill of allegedly -10˚ is rare! We’ve even resorted to stuffing an old shirt in the airing cupboard vent, and the kitchen extractor fan is sucking in cold air. But weather in stories? Off the top of my head, I’m thinking that weather is generally used to isolate characters in fiction. The good guys are marooned on an island by a storm; the fog is so thick, we can’t see the bad gu...

It would be hard to ignore today's results from the UK's Referendum. Like most people I know, I'd assumed we would (and had voted for) 'Remain', but came down this morning to the news that the Farage tribe had succeeded. We now seem to be in bed with some very unlovely people - 'Approved by Trump' is not a sticker I'd want to flaunt, and as for Marine le Pen... I've just signed a petition to request a second referendum, which is gathering pace - apparently some of the people who voted Out are now regretting it. There's also a feeling that the Brexit team didn't ever expect to win this one, so making unrealistic claims was OK as they'd never be called on to implement them . My husband, David, used to say that there's an old Chinese curse: 'May You Live In Interesting Times'. Well, unfortunately, we do, we do. 'Another Flash in the Pen' came out recently . I'd already pre-ordered it, but forgotten, so its ar...

It's sunny as I write this. I can hear my neighbour cutting her grass. Bees hover on the rosemary by my window. All I want to do, if I'm honest, is to finish this and get out there. To sit in a shady corner with a book and allow the afternoon to pass me by. I recognise that I have an ongoing conversation with the weather. It's not simply that I'm British and we can be obsessed by it. It's that the weather can shape my day. Cold has me huddled indoors, hands curled around a mug of hot tea. The rain - especially if it comes with days of endless grey - leaves me struggling to find the motivation to do anything. Wind - ask any teacher of five-year-olds how she copes with children on a windy day. I know just how those children feel - wind seems to blow through my head leaving me reeling from one idea to another without managing to grasp any of them. I know myself well enough to recognise that there are days when I need to go with the flow of the weather, and others w...

I always had trouble with the phrase pathetic fallacy . It seemed like an extremely harsh condemnation of the British obsession with The Weather, and a wagging finger at attributing any sort of malevolence to it. We Brits all know The Weather has a particular delight in ruining Wimbledon fortnight, bank holidays and test matches. So it was with some surprise that I discovered the words have changed their meaning, and when Ruskin first coined the phrase it didn’t mean stupid misconception but simply emotional falseness. What’s wrong with the occasional foray into personification, if it’s deliberate? When I’m writing a fantasy involving a desert it’s quite nice to have a callous sun with a definite mind of its own. Writing has fashions, and the fact that a Greek chorus is as yesterday as a codpiece shouldn’t stop you using one if you feel that’s exactly what your story needs.             All that was just a way of getting me in...