Authors Electric

I want to write about online porn this month, and this is why. A few days ago I was writing a post for My Tonight From Shrewsbury on the subject of punishments meted out in our town in the fourteenth century for ‘scolds’ – ie cantankerous women [always women] who refused to shut up, back down or desist from loudly and frequently expressing their opinions.   By a slightly circuitous route this led me to Google Images looking for appropriate engravings to go on my post.   Plenty came up, and a few I’ve used.   Amusingly, a photo came up, too, of a flame-haired Rebecca Brookes, whom I guess somebody must have seen as the modern incarnation of the medieval scold.   But also, and not amusingly at all - in fact unbidden, unwanted, unasked for and completely unexpectedly - up came two photographs in black and white. One was of the anal rape of a young woman with others looking on. The other was of what I can only describe from the equipment it included as the torture o...

According to a post on Problogger, my Undercover Soundtrack series might doom me to deepest obscurity because of new Google search algorithms. In a post titled Why Blogs that allow Guest Posts Will BePenalised in 2013 , Problogger explains that the term ‘guest’ and the use of multiple links are now likely to make Google bots condemn my content as spam.   In the Undercover Soundtrack, I host writers who use music as part of their creative process ( here’s a recent post that explains ). It’s guests galore.  Don't say 'guest' Problogger says: ‘Stop using the words “guest post,” “guest blog” etc. Oh dear. What other noun do I use to introduce a post that’s not by me? ‘Guest’ is perfect. Like ‘said’ in dialogue, it does its job and doesn’t get in the way. Anything else is absurd. Bad to link And what of the other major SEO clanger, links? They’re not all bad, says Problogger, as there’s a difference between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ links.  Her...

I don’t usually study the business section in my local newspaper, but a recent report on one of the big publishers, I won’t name any names, caught my eye. What the report said was – the publisher “reported increased operating profits during the final quarter. Despite a 2% year-on-year fall in volume, the publisher said margins had been boosted by the lower relative cost of publishing ebooks in the new digital environment. In turn, the increased proportion of online sales led to a reduced rate of returns.” The report went on to say “ebook sales continued to show increased market share in the UK, growing 58% year-on-year during the four months to the end of December.” Hang on a minute though. I’ve been eyeball to eyeball with various publishers and they all sing to the same tune when you confront them with the lesser costs of digital publishing. Not so, they say. There is no saving. There is still the editing, the proofing, the marketing, and the publicity (what publicity? I think...

Cover by the excellent Michael Doig By the time you are reading this, my new novel, the Physic Garden, will be published on Amazon's Kindle store, here . The book is finished, revised - many, many times - and now I'm formatting it, at the same time as looking for last minute glitches and the typos that will have got away from a handful of readers as well as myself. And writing a blurb. The cover artist is  Michael Doig.  Once again I have to say what a pleasure it is, as a writer, to be able to work with an artist to reflect the contents of the book so closely. The Physic Garden is the story of a close friendship and a betrayal so shocking that it pervades the whole novel, like the memory of a nightmare. The tale is narrated by William Lang who was once a gardener at the old college of Glasgow University. Now, William is in his seventies and widowed, but living with his family. He has spent most of his life as a cautiously radical printer and bookseller in the growing cit...

We had all this knocked through last year...   29 independent and independently publishing authors…   We built a website and you came - thank you for that. We're constant l y updating it. If you like a blog by one of our authors , you can nip over to the website and see all their books, and find out a bit ab out them . If you're interested in a particular kind of book, there are sections to help you find wha t you're looking for. Want a children's book for the kindle? Then this page might help. Looking for Romance for grown-ups? Have a look here.  A Historical novel a Young Adult might en joy? Crime and thrillers? Fantasy and Science Fiction  - for young adults ? Or for adul ts?   There's more too. We hope you enjoy looking around the various rooms and jumping from link to link. Back to our regular blogs tomorrow...