Authors Electric

Image Credit: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.  Writing exercises make me think outside of my usual creative box and help me mix up how I create a story.  Using Random Generators I use random generators a lot. These include generators for random words, pictures, objects, verbs, themes, questions - the list is almost endless. All make me respond to the challenge of getting a story from what was generated. Often I can generate something and get two different stories. I like that a lot. Double bubble and all that. I send one of those stories off to an online magazine I write for and the other I use for my YouTube channel so I get to tick the submit a fresh story and do some marketing boxes all at the same time here. I like that a lot too.  First Drafts and Warming Up When I run workshops, I set exercises. For a recent one at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, I prepared my material but deliberately didn’t draft my “answers” to the exercises I set. I wr...

  I've been thinking a lot about consistency recently. Probably because a recent book tour of the states has had me being somewhat inconsistent. An exhausting schedule and different time zones meant that a couple of my podcast episodes got missed as did a couple of blogs, including this one. So, in what ways should we be consistent and how does it help us to be better as writers. This one will not come as a surprise to anyone reading this blog - it is important to show up consistently to write every day. In order to be a writer it is necessary to write. Yet, often writing can get pushed out by all the other things necessary in the business of writing. Writing every day is what helps us to be more creative, to complete our manuscripts and to release books. So, why do we so often let it slide? If this is you, pull out your diary and block out time every day that is sacred writing time. Being consistent with our writing is part of our contract with our readers - an unwritten contract ...

It was my younger daughter’s birthday this week. She turned eleven and was beyond excited. What fun, you probably think. Well, it was but only marginally so. Miss E was the first to actually get excited about something ahead of the day. It was for her fourth birthday, I think, that I tucked her in and she wriggled in her little bed. “I’m so excited about my birthday tomorrow; I don’t think I can sleep!” I just stared in shock. For years we had had no anticipation, no excitement for birthdays or Christmas. Holidays were way too stressful to cause excitement for anyone but me. We never had the ridiculous o’clock wake-ups by bouncing kids announcing their birthday had arrived. Of course, we had happy faces once presents were found, although that brought a different kind of stress. We had thrilled-looking faces when the cake was handed out although singing happy birthday was incredibly traumatic and accompanied by utter terror from one of the children. Now, nine years later he actually...

Say we all contain two sides--the Impractical and the Practical--and they're seldom evenly balanced.    And they're never more out of whack than they are with writers. From the get-go the pressure's on to give the P's the upper hand: good grades lead to better schools which pave the way to better homes, cars, marriages, credit scores, job advancement, etc. And the debates grow shorter and shorter between such staid P's and wild writerly I's like sexual adventure, wanderlust, wild living, bucking the Establishment, etc. From Byron to Pushkin to Hemingway to Mailer and on and on and on, wild and crazy role models call to us like Sirens. Self-destructive lifestyles still make for boffo Post Mortem book sales and movie tie-ins. But the publishing industry's changed now. And more than ever IQ and PQ are on everybody's minds. Wild men and women are far less in demand. The powers that be demand higher IQs: media savvy, Facebook presence, fanatical convention at...

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that I became a full time writer on 1 st January this year. It was terrifying and wonderful all at once. The minute I did it, my biggest client had an internal change around and stopped sending me work. “Never fear!” said I, looking for new and creative ways to encourage a few pennies to roll into my account. “I shall diversify!” Ten and a half months since I took my leap, I’ve got a whole new selection of writing services to offer. I critique and polish other writers’ MSs. I give informal one to one workshops on marketing and social media (more formal workshops planned for next year). I have booked myself into craft fairs and events all over Suffolk, beginning in Kesgrave in March where I learned that people don’t necessarily realise that the person selling the books is the one that wrote them and ending with a mini Christmas market in my own village on 17 th December. Since I started, I’ve sold 126 books, added to my following on all t...

I was doing an everyday task when this title popped in my head as the blog post for this month. I smiled as I fondly remembered looking forward to the readers digest magazine as a young adult. I wonder if it’s still in circulation today. However, this blog post does not refer to that awesome magazine, but instead to how readers digest books. Book anatomy 102. *image from wikipedia. As an author, I’m an avid reader. I try to read widely and regularly, especially when I’m getting ready to write another book. I find that it stirs up my writing muscles as my mind is more open, but I also find that at this stage, I’m most critical of the books I read as I move from reading for pleasure, to reading to learn. These last few weeks, I’ve been intrigued with autobiographies and memoirs. I devoured two books in quick succession and thoroughly enjoyed them that I was on a look out for more. One of the books I listened to was over eleven hours long and somehow I managed to listen to it in my car in...

  What is it about dragons that fascinates and sparks the imagination? These mythical reptiles are found in cultures as diverse as those in China and the UK. They are the staple of story and legend and their presence can be found in the most unlikely places. It is the prevalence of dragon imagery that sparked off one of the threads that runs throughout “The Adventures of Letty Parker”, my series of children’s books set in an alternative Victorian world. In my Bristol, dragons are to be found on roofs, on the top of drainpipes, as sculptures and door knockers. During the day, they are inanimate, at night they fly over the city searching out dark deeds of “’napping, slitting and robbing” and reporting their findings to the gargoyles that await their news. I’ve always had a thing about dragons. When I was a kid I had to share a bedroom with my sister and at night I would tell her stories about Roostance, the dragon that lived under my bed. One of the first plays I wrote was “B...