Authors Electric

A few years ago my career as a writer was in crisis.  I was nearing the end of a long biography of Katherine Mansfield and my publisher became one of the first victims of the economic crash.  They were taken over by another publisher, my editor left, and there was a new editorial policy that didn’t include literary biography.  A significant number of other publishers made similar decisions. Then my agent went on maternity leave and announced she was ‘slimming down’ her list.  As an author without a contract I was gracefully dropped.   Enquiry letters to other agents went unanswered.   Worse, Virago told me they wouldn’t be reprinting my most popular book A Passionate Sisterhood, even though it was still selling a respectable number of copies. It felt as if my life as a writer was over.  No one wanted me.  The feeling of despair was terrible.  My partner N,  who’s a resourceful, practical kind of bloke, said ‘Well, why don’...

Ancient cities needed walls for defence. The Long Walls of Athens were the inspiration of their great statesman, Themistocles, who persuaded the Athenians to build in the teeth of Spartan hostility, enclosing not only Athens itself, but the port of Piraeus and the road between the two. When the Spartans invaded Athenian land, as they did many times during the long Peloponnesian War, they were forced to camp out at the base of these Walls. Athenian watchmen at their posts could look down upon the cooking fires of the invaders, perhaps roasting livestock stolen from Athenian farms. As the weather turned cold, the invaders would withdraw, only to return the following summer. When the Spartans finally destroyed the Athenian navy, the Long Walls allowed the Athenians to withstand a lengthy siege. Blockaded from the sea, they were starved into submission at last, and one of the conditions imposed by the Spartans was the destruction of the Long Walls. This humiliation was carried out by ...

Authors are not publishers for two good reasons. The first being that writing a decent book leaves very little creative energy or time for anything else. The second being that most of them haven’t a clue about marketing. Since my first e-book Spellfall has now been available for Kindle for five months, and my sales are still a bit shy (poetic licence) of 1 million, I thought I’d read John Locke’s book How I sold a million e-books in 5 months in the hope of picking up a few tips. This is a great book to get your hands on if you’re a marketing virgin like me, but it doesn’t claim to wave a magic wand. First of all, note that clever title " How I sold …" Not " How to sell …" or " How you can sell …" John Locke is not saying that reading his book will enable you to mimic his success, yet those sales did happen for him, and he shot to fame for being the first independently published author to sell a million e-books. This book gives an honest account of how h...

Today's guest is Xavier Leret who is of Hispanic, Cuban, French and also, apparently, Jewish and Arabic stock, although looks-wise he has inherited everything from his mother’s Irish/North-of-England roots. His family on his father’s side were all taken out on the first day of the Spanish Civil War and shot. His grandfather survived the firing squad three times, only to die of a smoking related illness in 1977. After fleeing a monastery, his father (pursued by the Vatican) landed on the protestant shores of England, where he met Xavier's mother. Before each of them gave it a second thought they got married, and it was not long after that Xavier Leret was born. Here he talks about his first e-book HEAVEN SENT and finding a publisher... I was half way through sending my novel, Heaven Sent, to agents and publishers. Some copies made it into envelopes and one or two got as far as the post office. But I stopped. It was just after Christmas and I thought, what am I doing? Why...

This post has been published in S parks, A Year In E-Publishing - An Authors Electric Anthology 2011-2012 . It has therefore been temporarily reverted to draft status to comply with amazon KDP Select's requirements.

I've almost finished updating and re-publishing my late 90s thriller for 9-12 year old girls: TWICE TIMES DANGER. Most of the updating involved technology. Feisty young girls, complex families, greedy, silly adults and Mafiosa-style villains have always been with us, but our ability (and desire) to communicate wherever and whenever does affect both me, and the characters in my stories. I've just finished reading Hilary Mantel's WOLF HALL, with all its political complexities, but no other means of communication apart from the spoken and written word. How profoundly has email, mobiles and social networking changed us, and is changing us as human beings? I really want to explore this. It's been Monsoon season here in London. Some of my green things are loving it, but some are not. I love the visual drama of rainstorms, the building-up of clouds and that special smell you get when it rains after a long drought (not applicable this time in our strange non-summer). At the w...

'Overheard In A Graveyard' - £1-71 kindle download                 Susan Price has been a professional writer for 40 years, and has published 60 books, for every age from nursery to adult.   Her first e-book,   Overheard In A Graveyard (£1-71p) is available for download here . Below, she talks about how she came to write some of the stories in the collection.           I remember the exact moment that the title story, Overheard In A Graveyard , arrived.  I was watching ‘Silent Tongue’ , starring River Phoenix as a simple boy whose Native American wife has died.  Grief-stricken, the boy stands guard over her body, scaring away birds.           The woman’s ghost appears to him: and the film handles the ghost very simply, but effectively.  She appears from the edge of the frame, or dashes acr...