Authors Electric

Me at work. Someone took my chair. ‘A truly shocking thriller for young readers.’ That’s my favourite bit of work from my old job, back when I made a living from writing sales copy for children’s fiction. I won’t tell you which book it refers to, but it did make me chuckle to see that line in the catalogue.   No idea what this is Most of the time, I promise, I gave every book the best possible write-up. Even if I hated some of them, it was my job to make each one look good. I worked for those old book clubs, you may recall their junk mail on your doormat: get half a dozen books very cheaply, and then we own your soul for the next ten years. It was all in the small print, which I helped to write, so there. Only very infrequently did a book darken my desk that was so bad, I had to give it a sarcastic review. I was doing that job, mostly seriously, for about five years. As a result, I like to think I know a little bit about marketing, especially when i...

How to make a coherent blog post out of my diverse writing-related experiences of the last few weeks - without resorting to a worn-out clich é of the kind favoured by politicians? Well, I'll try. I've just finished draft three (or is i t four ?) o f my sci-fi novel for adults and it's 'resting' (and improving, I hope, in the process...). I found it challenging to write, involving as it did an explor ation of the nature of consciousness, self, identity, cognition, coma, dreams... and the attempt to create a credible world of suitabl y advanced technologies for 2104. All that, plus a woman juggling children, separation, divorce and an academic career. Oh, and I should mention the ethics of artificial intelligence and robotics thrown in. Fun, but not particularly easy to write. Quite a relief to be able to lay it all aside for a few weeks and have a well-earned rest... Except that things never turn out that way. From nowhere, it seems, a new book has popp...