Authors Electric

A couple of months ago, I wrote a charming article about how you can help your favorite author . It was a nice little piece, and I'm very proud of it, but almost immediately after posting it, I began thinking of different ways the desire to help can backfire. Sometimes people can take their love of an author a bit too far. I'm looking at you, Fifty Shades of Grey folks out there with your handcuffs and metal beads. This can, in turn, cause an unfortunate backlash onto the work you are trying to promote (I'm looking at you, Trekkies who are overly contentious of the new movies because they are action-packed and all non-talky). And don't get me started on this abomination. Who knew the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would be riding My Little Ponies? However, intense fan reaction, though it can seem silly and many may consider it demeaning to the original source of the fandom, ultimately helps that original source. If you're already a national author, the...

It was March 2012 when I wrote my first introductory blog for Author’s Electric, so this must be the 22nd time that I’ve posted to these pages. It will also be the last. I think I mentioned back in July that my wife and I had recently had a baby boy. It’s the world’s oldest cliché, but it changes your life. The most immediate effect is the reduction to zero of the amount of time available for anything other than earning money and childcare. Sport, trips to the movies, literary podcasts and even reading books have already been victims of Aiden’s arrival. Sunday night’s episode of Homeland teeters on the brink. I’m even struggling to find time to work on my new novel – shoved down the priority list in favour of things that turn a dime just that little bit quicker… When you’re struggling to write a new book, it becomes really difficult to justify spending time writing about writing books. In other words, it’s become very difficult to justify my contribution to this blog. I real...

          Dear old Rudyard...largely out of favour now, and thought to be a tad jingoistic - which he was, of course, but very much of his time. He must have suffered all the torments of hell when his son, who had poor eyesight, was killed in action after Rudyard had pulled strings to get him into the army after he'd been rejected. I don't know what his own eyesight was like, but his study at Batemans's in Burwash (pronounced Berish by the locals) in East Sussex, is a really dark and gloomy hole. There is an enchanting meadow of snakeshead fritillaries outside the house, although I don't know whether they were growing when the Kiplings lived there. I like to think so.           I didn't read his locally-set books, Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies, when I was young, but they have delighted me as an adult and they were lurking somewhere at the back of my mind when I wrote The Hob and ...

I was interviewed earlier this month by Anneli Purchase for her blog Anneli’s Place, and I thought I would share the interview with all my Authors Electric friends. You can see the original interview here at Anneli’s Place .   The questions are all about Christmas, and here are my responses to her questions. 1. Do you celebrate Christmas? Amy with her Santa sack - You can see she's a reader! I have Christmas dinner with my son and daughter-in-law at their house, but I have a post-Christmas dinner in January to which all the family are invited. There is always a Christmas story about Santa coming a cropper at Christmas time and having to leave a Santa sack with granny for the younger members of the family (there’s only 1 child eligible for it now). One year Santa tripped up and broke his ankle, another year he got lost, then there was the year he was arrested before he could make all his deliveries. And, of course, we can’t forget the year he got legless on mu...