Authors Electric

           Hello, Dear August and Eminent folk, this is me: I live in Southampton with husband Niall and one of my three grown-up children. We've been here over 40 years but I'm still a hick at heart.           I grew up in East Sussex, high up on the Downs and that's at the heart of all my writing. I work with a very small group of friends, 'the writers', who are brilliant, no-holds-barred critics. We've been meeting and writing for over 20 years. We all write different things.           I can't remember why I wrote children's books rather than anything else - I think Tattybogle fell into my head one day and that was the beginning. I now have around 20 children's books to my name; a mixture of picture books and storybooks for younger readers.           In around 2003 I went indie. It was a...

Remember Ossian? Well, recently there's a new poet on the block. This one is called Seoras. Some while ago I came across this which he wrote on a subject which is close to many writers hearts and I thought it might just give folks a laugh...  A writer's earnest plea. Sock Puppets and Trolls are a pest With their one star reviews and the rest Why can't they be true In their words of review And realise their game's not a jest? As writers we do what we can To entertain each hard won fan And we know that our style Though in vogue for a while Is only a flash in the pan So give us a break, Puppets, do And Trolls, write reviews that are true Be honest and fair When reviewing our ware, 'Cos we give of our best, unlike you And so, now to you, clever Dick To respond to this wee Limerick Try to be smart Using words as an art And prove that you're not dim or thick Writing reviews is addictive I'm not being bad or vindictive... (over to yo...

In October last year I wrote a post called ‘Gatekeepers and Validators’ which was subsequently chosen for ' Sparks, A Year In E-Publishing - An Authors Electric Anthology2011-2012 ’ . The gist of it was that there had been a power-shift in publishing. Twenty years ago, just a couple of handfuls of people in London and New York decided what the English-speaking public got to read. They were the editors, marketers and accountants of the ‘Big Six’ publishing houses, and the book buyers for the centralised bookselling chains. If these people didn’t like a book, then there was precious little chance that anybody would ever read it. They controlled the gates to the front tables of Waterstones, WH Smiths, Borders, and Barnes and Noble. Without their approval and validation - and without a place on those tables - the number of books that an author would likely sell would be counted in dozens, rather than tens of thousands. This situation has changed completely; Borders has go...

Two months ago I wrote about getting my first book published and the experience that led up to it.   Last month I wrote about winning the Smarties Book Prize.  Now I want to write about what happened after that. I remember having supper not long afterwards with Jenny Nimmo, a fellow Smarties winner – and Carnegie winner too – and her husband David Millward, with whom my family and I have spent many a happy New Year’s Eve.  I was inclined to brush off the Smarties, thinking it would soon be like yesterday’s news, quickly forgotten and quickly over. But not so, Jenny said. ‘lt’s your CV. It will remain with you forever,’ she said. And she’s been right. After winning a major book prize, finding publishers for your books is easy. Once they were like gold dust.  Now suddenly they’re all over you. And agents.  I’ve had two.  The first brought me disappointment, and that’s all I’m going to say.  The second, however, has been the sort of a...

Chris Longmuir and Nev Fountain on Panel at Crimefest I’m shattered, worn out, and just want to crawl into a corner and sleep! Why? Because I’m just back from Crimefest, Bristol ’s own convention for crime writers. Why do I do it? Why did I trot off to Crimefest again this year? Well, it’s simple really, because as well as being a shattering experience, it’s also a stimulating one. There’s a buzz at this crime conference that you don’t get anywhere else. The place hotches with readers, writers, editors, publishers and agents. Some writers attend hoping to attract the eye of the latter three, but I’m afraid my interest is mainly the readers and writers. Since going my own way I’m no longer interested in a publishing deal or agent representation. I’m happy to be independent. The panel I was on, aptly named ‘A Suitable Job? Diverse Characters in Crime’, was moderated by Adrian Magson, and he did a brilliant job. The other panel members were Mary Andrea Clarke, Roz Southe...

No more monkey business. You’ve only to spend a little time in the real or virtual company of writers to hear some version of accepted wisdom. We all need editors, kill your darlings, less is more. I used to agree. And there’s a part of me that still does. I’m all for editing as a process, although there’s a difference between proof reading for typos and punctuation – which is generally better done by somebody else – and editing in the sense of somebody telling you that you need to rewrite your manuscript and how you ought to do it, occasionally going so far as to try to do it for you. I’m a compulsive reviser. Just about everything I write, but especially fiction, goes through many drafts, sometimes more than a dozen, sometimes more than two dozen. I revise on paper as well as on screen. Partly it’s because I fall in love with my characters and can’t bear to leave them. Mostly it’s because I love the process of honing and refining. I began my writing life as a poet and paring d...

          The market for short stories is even more limited these days than it was in the past, to say nothing of the market for poetry. Gone are the heady days of the daily story in the Evening News . That was my first taste of paid publication, and it was a terrific outlet. The only requirement was that it had to be between 1050 and 1100 words, and not be offensive. So I did science fiction, historical, contemporary…  Capital Radio had a slot where you could do weird surreal stories there, of a similar length. The short story competition has filled some of these lamentable gaps, and poetry competitions are invaluable for undiscovered bards who are notching up rejection slips in three figures from magazines.             The first competition I ever entered was Bridport, in 1987, and I came third. These days they publish anthologies, which gives you an idea of the sort of thing th...