Authors Electric

As many of you know, I've been to Nepal. It was evident, within a few hours of my arrival, that many tourists have deserted Nepal. Talking with friends there, it seems that cancellations began the day after the earthquake. One big quake, it seems, is enough for most people to believe the country is shaken to the core - and will carry on shaking. While a few backpackers are making their way back, the big tour groups are still staying away. Without tourists - and their foreign money - Nepal cannot earn the income she needs to rebuild. 'It's the journalists' fault,' Ajay told me. 'They were here for two days, took plenty of pictures of the earthquake damage, and then left us to it. No one has come back, seen how things are now.' He's right - anyone who saw those images might think that the whole of Kathmandu was flattened. I took this picture from his balcony, looking over the rooftops of the city: Does this look flattened? Disasters make goo...

I am going to interrupt the countdown of metafictional comics this month to say a few words about one of my favorite holidays: Thanksgiving (I'm afraid, though, that Groundhog Day has pride of first place in my holiday hierarchy). I don't know if they celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK. Maybe the Canadians do (Any Canucks out there want to chime in here?). Maybe y'all were thankful for the extra space once we left. Maybe you were thankful for all the cool stuff we sent back. I mean, you have to admit that potatoes, corn, and kidnapped Indian maidens are pretty damned awesome. Or maybe you were just thankful to have us gone. Either way, I suspect that even if Thanksgiving is observed over the pond and beyond, it probably isn't given the gluttonous extravagance we make of it over here. All day eating all the turkey and dressing you want. Turkey sandwiches galore until yuletide? It's a gourmand's dream. Sure it's no Christmas or Halloween, but that...

Not long ago I blogged here about the possibilities open to writers of performing their work and I admit that I was thinking at that time that in view of the sudden death of my WIP, performance might be my next ‘career move’ (at least on the days when I consider myself as having a writing career!) However a few weeks ago when our writing group was invited to the Bristol Flash Slam , it felt like a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’. It’s not that I have too much of a problem with standing up and opening my mouth, but flash fiction? In my writing life I may have come up with a couple of very short pieces, but I was never sure if they were truly ‘flash fiction’ or what they needed to do to bear that label. Flash is not something I read much, although I do like hearing it. It has to be clever – yes? With flashy wordplay, a stonkingly original premise, brilliant execution and ‘an explosive ending’.  Luckily the flash slam was a team event (and competition!) so I stood...

Don't panic, I'm not author David Wailing's auto... so far autos haven't been invented (or so he assures me), which is probably just as well because I'd be a rather scatter-brained one. However, I'm delighted to bring you this interview with the man himself, author of the fascinating  Auto series of books set in London in 2022, when everyone has a digital personal assistant app known as an auto that handles all their online business and social activities... you know you want one! David Wailing (not an auto) Hello David, thank you for joining us today. H ow many books have you written/published? And which is your favourite to date? DW: In total I’ve written nine novels, not counting a few that were started then abandoned. But only five of them have been published as eBooks. The others remain safely incarcerated in the attic like deranged family members we prefer not to discuss. As for my favourite, right now I think the book I haven’t started wri...

A good while ago now, when I was a very junior Psychologist, still working under supervision, I was given an office recently vacated by a Social Worker. In order to make the change clear, so that I wasn’t bothered all day long by people looking for her, my boss commissioned a new sign for the door. The hospital carpenter interpreted the instruction ‘clear’ to mean letters about six inches high. I came into work to find PSYCHOLOGIST screaming across the door. I couldn’t help thinking of Lucy from the Peanuts cartoons, sitting behind her orange box under a sign which read THE DOCTOR IS IN . This wasn’t funny, though. I felt a total fraud – hadn’t even completed my finals at that point. It should have read trainee psychologist. Now, w henever anyone asks me what I do and I say, I’m a writer,’ that writ-too-large Psychologist sign flashes into my head. If I had a sign on the door here, it would read Writer? This was brought to mind by a recent post on Facebook – words to the effect of...

In last month’s post I talked about my reading tour of Dundee , and what a brilliant time I had with the American tour group. As I said at the end of that post, my time with them was not over, and I was to join them on a visit to Auchmithie the following day. Click on Reading my Way Round Dundee to read last months's post. For those of you who do not know the area, Auchmithie is a historic fishing village on the east coast of Scotland . It is only a few miles from Arbroath where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1320. Arbroath is also famed for Arbroath smokies which are cured and smoked in the town. However, Auchmithie was actually the place where the smokie originated, maybe they should be called Auchmithie smokies. Auchmithie regularly celebrates their historic roots with the HAAR festival, which they organise every second year, and unfortunately this was not the year. But there was a surprise in store for the American visitors, because the tour guide, myse...

... supernatural, folklore, custom and belief ... When I find an author I love, I’m a binge reader. I’m reading my sixteenth or seventeenth Phil Rickman novel at the moment. I’ve lost count. I began with the Merrily Watkins series as recommended to me simultaneously by a couple of friends. This was before the television series, which I didn’t watch, because by the time it was shown, I had very definite ideas about the characters and I didn’t want to interfere with them. I enjoyed them all, although they did grow very dark towards the end of the series, almost too dark for me. And Jane, Merrily’s daughter, sometimes irritated me to the point where I wanted her to meet with a sticky end. But these were minor matters and I was never going to stop reading. From there, I moved smoothly on to Rickman’s backlist, novels written and published in the 1990s, big, meaty books, right up my street: earth mysteries, witchcraft and the supernatural, folklore, custom and belief, the occasional mu...