Authors Electric

My good friend Sheila Robinson, who writes as S.C. Skillman has a brand new book out and I'm fascinated as to how she blends this with her Christian Faith. I was delighted when she agreed to guest post for the blog to talk about this subject, one which I feel needs discussion. Thank you, Sheila. I know this will be good.  BALANCING THE CHRISTIAN AND THE PARANORMAL IN MY BOOKS Thank you, Wendy, for offering me this space on your blog to introduce my books to your readers. I am a Christian, and I write about the paranormal. Some may think it’s a bit odd for a Christian to be doing this, and a few have asked me how I reconcile my Christian faith with writing about the paranormal. But they are indissolubly linked with one another. In fact, I would argue, who better to write about the paranormal than a Christian? First let me define paranormal as strange events for which there is no scientific explanation. For my new book Paranormal Warwickshire (published by Amberley on 15th November...

I was stuck for a topic for this month’s blog until I read Griselda Heppel’s article on woodcuts (published 1 st November). Her blog reminded me of how important illustrations were for me as a young reader – for all young readers I imagine. Even now, I adore illustrated books. A few years ago I purchased a book called Waterlife , which is purely illustrations. It’s a treasured possession. Few novels, besides specifically graphic novels (which have become quite popular) are illustrated. 19 th century novels often contained illustrations but that has gone out of fashion. Now, only a handful of fiction books for adults have illustrations. Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy contains a small number. The Hobbit includes illustrations but Tolkien had trouble persuading his publisher to include his drawing of the The Book of Mazarbul in his Lord of the Rings trilogy. In fact it was not included in the first edition. The Silmarillion was illustrated but Tolkein did not live to see it in pr...

“The Awesome Adventures of Poppy and Amelia” would never have happened if it hadn’t been for lockdown. In those first couple of months, like so many writers, I found working on my current book very slow going.   A day’s work felt like ploughing through porridge. Very little got done and what I did write had somehow lost its flow. The impetus to write had also faded and most days I found it almost impossible to get going. Nothing much seemed to matter. While other people re-decorated, caught up with DIY or re-modelled their gardens I let the time slip past. Except for my four times a week Skype lessons with granddaughter Maddy. At the start of lockdown all grandparents had been roped in to help with home schooling and my brief was to deliver her English lessons. Having been a teacher in a middle school as well as in secondary education, this wasn’t going to be too hard. Or so I thought. Working through what the school had sent, however, was far from simple. No blame here t...

  Few authors venture to write in a language that is not their mother tongue.  It’s hard enough to write. Why make it any more difficult by adapting a new vocabulary, grammar and syntax? Some might even call it a betrayal of country, home, blood. The Chinese Typewriter My grandfather wrote in English. Born and bred in Shanghai, he spoke to his four children in the local dialect but wrote to them all in English. He typed each letter, keeping a carbon copy for his own records while leaving space open to insert by hand Chinese names and proverbs. Maybe he wrote in English because typewriters for Chinese characters were beyond the reach of mere mortals. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times Chinese typewriters look something like a cross between a deli-meat slicer and a small printing press. There are no keys, just thousands of little metal characters arranged in a grid system. Because Chinese has no alphabet and no alphabetical order, the operator ...

Frederick Norway (Nevil Shute Foundation) Nevil Shute Norway was born in 1899, part of the generation whose schooldays were overcast by the ever growing Roll of Honour as younger schoolmasters and older contemporaries died in the First World War. As a teenager he came to believe that ‘I was born for one end which was to go into the army and do the best I could before I was killed.’ ( Slide Rule )  His older brother Frederick did exactly that, leaving university in his first year to join the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and arriving in France at the end of December 1914. Fred survived the 2 nd battle of Ypres in the spring of 1915, but was wounded in trenches near Armentieres and died aged 19 in Wimereux hospital with his mother by his side. The Norway family were living in Ireland then: Arthur Norway was secretary to the Post Office and the depleted little family was thus directly involved in the Easter Rising of 1916. Arthur was briefly imprisoned in Dublin Castle as Patri...

  Over the last few weeks I've been sifting through a pile of short stories written by new, local writers. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first (and the most important) is to provide a critique that will encourage the author and help them improve their story. Secondly, I wondered if there would be any common themes identified which might form the basis of an article. Forty-three stories later (it was all short stories, 3000 words maximum - I am the first to admit I know almost nothing about poetry) there was a clear theme that stood out.   Dialogue tags.   Or rather, an over-enthusiastic approach to them.   I've read more ways to attribute speech recently than I care to think about: (S)he enthused, bemoaned cried, whispered, intoned, breathed, muttered, screamed, laughed, gasped…   I could go on. The point is, none of these options are wrong, when used in moderation. But if every sentence of dialogue has a different tag, it becomes hard to read, and...

An acknowledgement right from the start. I owe the inspiration for this piece to our fellow AE member (and my good friend) Eden Baylee. All will be revealed in due course.   Lochnagar My theme is the Scots dialect (or bits of it, anyway). I’m English but have been fortunate enough to live in Scotland for most of my life. You’ll have seen the images of the place – gorgeous, accessible hills and glens, lochs and rivers – heard the magical names – Loch Ness, Glencoe, – and you probably have your own ideas, positive or otherwise, about it. My focus here is on just one aspect of it, one which I, even as a Sassenach, appreciate as much as, or perhaps even more than some Scots do themselves, their language. What better word, for example, to convey the exact feel and nature of a dreary, rainy overcast day than ‘dreich’? Or what better label for a stubborn woman or naughty girl than ‘Thrawn besom’? (When I checked the spelling of this in my dictionary I couldn’t resist copying the exa...