Authors Electric

 Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. One of my favourite books on the radio is the reading of Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time . This slim novel about Richard III is often a repeated reading on Radio 4 Extra and is accompanied by The Princes in the Tower by William Walton. Well worth a listen when it comes up. What I love is it is just a straight reading of the original book. I can see the point of adaptations but I want them to keep to the spirit of the original author’s intent. I don’t want adaptations “because we can”. That’s not a strong enough reason to meddle. I loved the Peter Jackson film adaptation of The Lord of The Rings , but there is no way The Hobbit has enough in it to justify being more than one movie. Just as there should be a good reason for a story (and any character being in said tale), there should be a good reason for adapting a work.  Every so often one of my flash fiction pieces is broadcast on an internet radio ...

I've not been too well since I got back from Madagascar (so no change there - I was very ill the first time I went), so forgive me for taking an easy way out and using lots of photos.  We can’t invent something that is beyond our senses to detect, as we don’t have the right vocabulary to describe it. We don’t have infra-red or ultra-violet vision, we can’t hear infra sound or ultrasound, we don’t have whatever sense it is that allows a murmuration of starlings or the synchronisation swim of a shoal of fish. What we do is to recombine bits of existing creatures, and when we’re after something scary it’s the predators that spring to mind. I used a hyena to create my sinistroms in The Divide. Dragons tend to be amalgamations of bats and lizards, and may well have originally been inspired by the bones of dinosaurs. Griffons are eagles and lions. When something was first described a long time ago, either in paint or words or, earliest of all, in stone, it pays to have a think about what...

  Regular readers of this blog will realise I am rather fond of travelling. In fact I am currently coming to the end of a three month book tour of the USA, taking in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Washington DC and Memphis. I'm having a blast and it has been an opportunity to meet readers, introduce my books to new readers and, quite frankly, have a jolly good time. However, three months is a long time to take out of writing time, so I knew it was important to carve out time for writing. This can be difficult in the midst of endless book signings and events, where every minute seems to be taken up and exhaustion sets in. Also, it can often be difficult to write when not in one's usual environment. What are my tips of doing this? 1.  Write whenever you can. It is amazing how much time you can carve out in spare minutes of the day. Twenty minutes here, ten minutes there, it all mounts up.  2. Write wherever you can. Since I started on this journey I have...

Why have Stephen King, his son Joe Hill, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez joined the ranks of those who've bounced from Twitter to the new platform Bluesky? In June 2023 users numbered 180K. As of September the number had risen to 1 million. Here, four Bluebies (Bluesky newbies) tell of their learning to fly the Blue sky. The four roundtable knights are: Debbie Bennett Wendy H Jones Reb MacRath Z: a legendary author sworn to secrecy. Bios and links below.  Were you an active member of The Other Place? What led you to move on? DB: Yes, I was a Twitterer. Or is it Tweep? Not that I've ever used it much. Back in the days when posts were limited to about five words (I'm joking--it was a few more than that), I could never quite see the point. Far from being a lesson in brevity, it just seemed to stifle any creativity for me. But I've never tried to 'create' on these platforms--simply to observe, watch and listen. I did follow the occasional Pitchfest and the thingies that...

  October is a month for sprits, ghosts, phantoms, ghouls and witches. This October for me is also the time for an angel – the Ice Angel to be precise. She is one of the characters in the eponymous final story of my series of children’s books “The Adventures of Letty Parker.”   Set in an alternative Victorian Bristol, Letty and her Associates solve mysteries and seek the missing, but this time Letty must travel out of the city where she has contacts and support and into the Land of Ice where she will have to face her angelic opponent on her own. Stories, like books, start with a seed of inspiration, or an idea which grows into a final product. Unlike fruit, however, books don’t grow by themselves, they need beta-readers and editors and proof-readers and in my case someone to format the publishable copy. A writing group that gives feedback and support is invaluable and if you’re very lucky, like I am, there is also an artist who has produced the picture for the cover and th...

  His Own Little Ship FB Harnack for Yachting Monthly September saw the publication of Uncommon Courage: the Yachtsmen Volunteers or World War II  in a paperback edition. It’s given me the greatest pleasure particularly as the publisher’s budget -- and editorial goodwill -- was extended to cover 16 extra pages for additional material as well as the inclusion of photographs. People dug deep in their collections to assist. Kate, at the Adlard Coles office, was endlessly patient as I continually wheedled more in; publisher Liz waved ideas through. When I hold its neat pocket-friendly shape now, I feel it's stuffed full of other people's kindnesses. The new frontispiece comes courtesy of Yachting Monthly magazine (thank you YM editor, Theo Stocker). It’s a drawing by FB ‘Fid’ Harnack (b1897) who served in both the first and second world wars. The figure of the officer gazing through binoculars at the yard where his yacht has been laid up, while his ship – is it a destroyer? – ste...

  Autumn always brings lots of literary festivals and my local one is Wimbledon Bookfest. They've opted to stay dry this year and have moved down the hill from the tents on the Common to Wimbledon Library and Wimbledon Girls' High School. The festival is quite eclectic and has a range of authors, such as, Clive Myrie, Alexander McCall Smith, Philippa Gregory, Sebastian Faulks and Katherine Rundell. I'll be there on Saturday 21st October at 4pm, chatting to Janice Hallett, author of The Appeal , The Twyford Code  and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels . If you've read any of Janice's books, then you'll know that she has a unique style of writing. I'm hoping to find out how she manages to write this way! If you fancy coming along to Wimbledon then tickets can be bought at  Wimbledon Bookfest Hope to see you there!