Authors Electric

Writers all: Bow your heads and have your offering of wheat cakes and olive oil ready. Here, I introduce you to your patron God.  Herald and Messenger Back in the day, Our Hermes— or Mercury, if you prefer— was a busy lad. He was the Gods’ Messenger, or Herald, divine representative of all those mortal heralds with the fraught job of carrying messages along dangerous roads, to equally dangerous people who might be extremely pissed off by what they had to say. As the Gods’ Messenger, Hermes had to give the hard word to characters even worse than the average human king: to giants, witches, monsters and other Gods (who could be so difficult). Hermes was a diplomat, a fast, smooth talker, a charmer, a deft bender of the truth. As no doubt human heralds were. Each herald carried a version of the God’s snake-wrapped staff, as a sign of the God's protection and a reminder that you really did not want to mess with the Olympian Gods. (You could end up as a shrubbery, or an interesting ...

  As I understand it, the point of any art is that it's based on, and grew from, real human experience. What happened to you, and how you felt about it-- whether it was good or bad. What you learned from it. Or failed to learn, as failing to learn is a very common human experience. These experiences involve an immense laboratory of bio-chemicals and hormones, acting on actual 'vital' organs -- that is, living organs vital for living. The ones that hurt when you're disappointed, or embarrassed. It involves organic memory, which is bio-chemical, and involves vision, forgetfulness, imagination... Human experience involves dreams, both in the sense of ambitions and day-dreams, and the mysterious, little-understood visions created by our brains while we sleep -- and these visions can involve all our sleeping senses, and be as vivid -- that is, alive -- as anything we experience while awake. So much so that some cultures have maintained that we actually enter another world wh...

  My Dad used to say to me that if I was in a room on my own, I would argue with my finger-ends. He said, "If somebody says 'Up,' you say, 'Down. If somebody says 'Straight', you say, 'Crooked'. You can't help yourself."  Later, my partner would get quite exasperated at finding himself suddenly having to defend an opinion he'd assumed I shared-- and which I often did. But no matter. He'd rashly put the opinion into words -- 'Singer Sargent was a great artist' -- 'The M6 is a busy motorway' -- 'The Sun comes up in the morning.' I would immediately contest it. "Why have you always got to argue about everything?" I have to admit that I have often listened to people making a point that I absolutely agree with-- or did, up until then-- while in the back of my head, forming an argument against it. I then often argue myself round to my original viewpoint, although not always. But I think I know when and why th...

Wikimedia It's nearly Christmas and we're all even shorter of money than usual, so -- what to give as Christmas presents? BOOKS! Books, of course. And here's a link to BookShepherd, a site where you can find books recommended by 'authors and super-readers,' people who really know a good book when they find it. Book Shepherd You can even tailor your search by consulting such lists as 'The best books by journalists which capture a moment in time or history' or 'The best books that show life in the big city isn't all glitz and glam.' Recently, Book Shepherd asked me (and even some other writers) to report the best three books they'd read in the last year. Here's my Book Shepherd three... Follow the link to read the reviews There's also Book Shepherd's   '100 Best Books of 2023'   -- as voted for by '1,021 writers and super-readers. And the winner is.... You have to go and find out for yourself. But if you're buying ...

  Regular readers of this blog will realise I am rather fond of travelling. In fact I am currently coming to the end of a three month book tour of the USA, taking in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Washington DC and Memphis. I'm having a blast and it has been an opportunity to meet readers, introduce my books to new readers and, quite frankly, have a jolly good time. However, three months is a long time to take out of writing time, so I knew it was important to carve out time for writing. This can be difficult in the midst of endless book signings and events, where every minute seems to be taken up and exhaustion sets in. Also, it can often be difficult to write when not in one's usual environment. What are my tips of doing this? 1.  Write whenever you can. It is amazing how much time you can carve out in spare minutes of the day. Twenty minutes here, ten minutes there, it all mounts up.  2. Write wherever you can. Since I started on this journey I have...