Authors Electric

Bored of Brexit, I was wondering what to write about this month to cheer everyone up, when I noticed Sandra Horn's lovely post (yesterday) about Henrietta Branford and her books. Unlike Sandra, I never had the privilege of meeting Henrietta in the flesh, since she died the year my first book launched me into the magical world of children's fiction. But I have much to thank her for, since that first book -  Song Quest,  originally written as genre fantasy for adults - had just been picked off the slush pile by Barry Cunningham, who was then children's editor at Element Books following his high-profile acquisition of Harry Potter for Bloomsbury, and following publication it went on to win the inaugural Branford Boase Award. Branford Boase Award Apparently, Barry wasn't particularly looking for fiction at the time, so in some respects my ignorance in sending him my manuscript worked in my favour. After some sympathetic editing by Barry and editor Helen Wire to m...

I was ‘tidying’ the bookshelves the other day (ie moving things aimlessly around trying to find a non-existent space) when I came to my treasured set of children’s books by Henrietta Branford. I picked up her first one, Royal Blunder. It’s signed with love to The Horn Quintet – that’s Niall, me and the three offspring – and dated 1990. That gave me a jolt. Almost 30 years – can it be, really? Oh yes. I first met Henrietta at a creative writing class. We went to it for two successive years but it was getting to be very ‘samey’ and we had decided to give it up, but were reluctant to give up seeing each other and a few more like-minded members of the group. At the last meeting of the class we agreed to go on meeting informally ‘from time to time’. This turned out to be weekly, in my house (at first, we circulated later on). We were nervous and excited about where this enterprise would take us, but set down the rules straight away. Anyone with work was to bring copies fo...

Three things to celebrate this month Firstly the pARTyLines Literary Caberet on Tues 8th Oct at The Old Joint Stock Pub & Theatre.   This was organised by Writing West Midlands as part of the Birmingham Literary Festival. The range of performances was tremendous and depth from performance poetry to prose and songs You will notice I am not in the photo…    There is a reason for that. Those who know me well may recall that this is the third occasion when I have been called upon for curtain calls and the cry of ‘she’s in the bar’ has gone up.  Its becoming something of a habit! It sounds bad – but hand on heart I had one drink all evening and happened to be at the bar buying it at that very moment.  In my defence if the nerve wobbling act of reading to a full house (standing room only) and little old me being sandwiched in the running order between two professional actors didn’t earn me a large G&T I don’t know what would. But hey – no big d...

There’s a wonderful clip on YouTube that shows an octopus disappearing into the background and becoming, as a consequence, invisible. This is an attribute shared by other cephalopods such as the cuttlefish, one of which I met whilst snorkelling in Indonesia. The water there is very clear, and the colourful marine life is plentiful and varied. I had a great time, swimming through shoals of tiny iridescent green fish, followed by shoals of even smaller blue ones. The seabed was packed with anemones and clams and coral and seaweed, in every colour and design you can imagine. Absolutely beautiful. And then, it seemed to me, a part of the sea floor about the length of my forearm detached itself and started to move in a sedate fashion beneath me. The cuttlefish is bottom left, using a fetching brown attire, and its tentacles are facing right. Intrigued, I swam closer, only to realise that it was a creature of some sort, as it seemed to have some small tentacles at one end. Event...

There is always one thing you can guarantee in life, that being, change will inevitably come. The world is changing at a rapid rate. Technology is changing at a rapid rate. Life moves ever faster and often it feels that the changes are propelling us. The reason I am thinking so deeply about change at the  moment is because I own apple everything. iPhone, iPad, MacBook, iMac - there's an apple on the back of every piece of technology I own.  This forced me into a lot of change recently due to the fact apple has updated all its operating systems - IOS, the new iPad OS and OSX Cantana. If this sounds like double dutch to you and you're an apple owner, you'll soon find out what it means. How, I hear you ask, does this affect me as a writer. The first impact of this universal upgrade is the time it takes. I had a small window of opportunity, whilst I had a cup of tea, to upgrade my iMac. Or so I thought. I duly clicked download and, before my very eyes, a message poppe...