Authors Electric

It was the day after the Scottish referendum when half of Scotland had been sorely disappointed, while the other half rejoiced, and I was off to Bloody Scotland at Stirling. I’ve been there before, but I wondered if this year it would be bloodier than ever. Bloody Scotland in case you’ve never heard of it is a crime writing convention for readers and writers of crime fiction. It’s a fabulous event attended by many of the better known, and a smattering of the lesser known, crime writers, and a massive choice of events with over fifty authors giving talks and interviews. The convention is spread over three days, and this year it was from Friday 19th to Sunday 21st September (the voting on the referendum was on the 18th September). As well as the speakers there was a masterclass on crime writing, a cinema presentation aptly named, Bloody Cinema, in the Old Town Jail, a courtroom drama in Stirling Sheriff Court, Medieval Murder in Stirling Castle, and a gala dinner where the ...

The new - and the really old! I used to have a favourite independent bookstore. This was many years ago, long before Amazon was a gleam in Jeff Bezos’s eye and it was run by a couple of people who loved books and writers too. You could go in and chat. They knew local writers and helped to promote them. They got to know their customers and could offer suggestions. Then, one of the big chains moved in over the road with their high staff turnover, their front of shop table displays for which publishers paid handsomely and their three for two offers. When they complained, they were told ‘business is business’ and that was that. Within a year they had closed. Those of us who resolutely kept on shopping with them were clearly in a minority. Cue forward some years. I’m browsing in the big Borders in Glasgow just along the road from Central Station. The cafe – Starbucks as I remember it – is nice. Sometimes I meet people there. The store is pretty good too. Back then I often browse and...

It’s easy to forget how storytelling in our own culture tends to obey particular sets of rules, which we take for granted. There’s usually a cause and effect story arc, and on the whole good triumphs over evil. Characters are explained for the benefit of those in the audience/readership who may not have the same background, and you’re left with a sense of completion, which is the culmination of a plot with a beginning, a middle and a conventional ending. That’s not the way it is everywhere, though!             I’ve recently returned from a holiday in Indonesia, part of which was spent on Bali. We were told we were going to see some traditional dancing, but this turned out to be a sort of play with an authentic gamelan band. Sadly, the Balinese youth of today are more interested in rock music, and it’s reckoned that this event will die out in five years as the performers become too elderly to continue. I reproduce below the han...

Alice is one of our newest members, and will be posting regularly on the 4th of each month - but a bit of a malfunction on October 4th resulted in her first post being up only for a couple of hours. So - as it's an interesting post, full of useful information, we're re-posting it here today. What makes a book or e-book sell? That’s a question that every publisher, agent and writer would Alice Jolly like to be able to answer. Of course, at present, due to the rise of e-books, the answer is changing daily. But still you would assume that the big publishing houses must have an extensive knowledge of who buys books and why. But they don’t. How can they? They might notice that the sales of a book or e-book rise after an article in the paper, a radio interview, or a flurry of tweets, but still they have no means of knowing anything much about the people who bought the book, or why exactly they bought it. Amazon, of course, claim to know which books we all lik...

Let's hear it this morning  for Radio 4 and too much wine the night before. I don't normally listen to Desert Island discs in bed of a Friday morning, because like all good conscientious writers I'm up and at my computer. Naturally. But the islandee, the castaway, was Sally Wainwright, and I heard her name luckily just before I hopped out of me pit to frighten off my hangover with a sunshine walk. I don't imagine that I'm alone in this, but I think Sally Wainwright is the best TV writer of series that we've got, and possibly ever had. No, that's nonsense. Come back Dennis Potter and Pennies from Heaven, all is remembered. And Tutti Frutti, come to think of it. She turns out to be a woman with a wonderful West Yorkshire accent in the Elland/Halifax mode. When she went to university to study French, the other students used to laugh at  the way she spoke the language. (How would a Parisien say Ecky Thump. I wonder? Not that that's Yorkshire, I suppos...

     First things first. Kay's visa unexpectedly arrived on Wednesday 17th, the day before polling day for the Scottish Referendum. We don't think there was any connection between the two events, though for us one was as epoch-making as the other. Did our campaign have any effect? Who knows? It may be that they suddenly sent it to rid themselves of a minor irritant.           We'd contacted our MP  and a message had been sent to a friendly reporter on the Oxford Mail and Times  which I quickly had to retract. It might  have been on the way anyway. Only sometimes do I consider the futile fantasy that our MP took my letter outlining the points I made in my last blog to Theresa May, saying, 'We've been rumbled.' However, we can't discount the possibility of this bureaucratic monolith having one or two nice people working for it. Nevertheless, I stand by every word I wrote except for one thing. Julia Jones in ...

Wander around any supermarket at the moment and you'll be bumping into witch, ghost, skeleton and pumpkin costumes as Halloween approaches. And they seem to get better every year. Couldn't help but smile at a skeleton outfit I saw the other day that had a moving jaw and talked. Now that my kids are all grown up, Halloween isn't something I usually bother with, although this time last year, Rob who I work with at his Tysall's Photography Studio, was asked if he could take some family shots at the customer's house. No problem... until we got there, and the guy met us at the door, all dressed up as Dracula, and soon informed us that actually he was a real vampire. We hoped he was joking! After the photo-shoot we came away giggling like a couple of kids, and still looking over our shoulders as we headed to the car. Still, it provided a nice little scenario for a horror story should one be needed. Although I love writing stories that send shivers up t...