Authors Electric

Parents, teachers, friends and casual acquaintances have, over the years, noticed how untidy I am, and failed, with all their well-intentioned comments, to change me.  I LOVE chaos. I do! I’m averse to order and routine, especially that imposed by other people. I dislike plans and ‘organised’. It feels anti-life.  By the side of my armchair, my nest, is my ‘pile’ of stuff. Books, notebook, diary, address book, photo albums of my grandchildren, sweets, aspirins, knitting, the stuff of me.   Upstairs in my office, it’s the same : desk, shelves, floor, piled high with stuff, all of it precious chaos. My notebooks the same, my mind the same, a mish-mash of untidy thoughts, memories, anxieties, plans, regrets, what ifs and shoulds, as  well as those magical random moments, those beautiful experiences, usually for me in my garden, the flash of a goldfinch,  a new flower, a party of jays on the lawn. Are all writers the same? To begin with my books are extrem...

I think I must be not-very-visual, at least in some respects. I can devise colourful and (to my eyes, at least) pleasing embroidery designs, and am a passionate devotee of a range of visual arts, from woodcuts to sculpture to theatre design... The ability to create art leaves me speechless and humbled. It’s just that, when I’m writing, the looks of the characters I’m creating are ephemeral, dreamlike. Perhaps that’s because I wouldn’t be able to draw or paint them? I don’t know. The upside of this deficiency is the delight I almost always feel when illustrations arrive. I can still remember with a happy shiver seeing Ken Brown’s depiction of Tattybogle for the first time and thinking, ’Oh, yes! THAT’S what he looks like!’ The mice, the crows, all the woodland creatures, are not in my story but I use them in telling the story and how the book came to be. They add an immeasurable dimension, which has been further enhanced by Ruth Kenward’s musical script and songs.   When we saw...

The idea of making money from writing gets a mixed reception. Those who regard themselves as professional writers see no problem with this. In fact they expect to make money because of their professional status. Then there are the hobbyists who write solely for the love of creating something. They are quite happy to distribute their writing, whether that is poetry, stories or novels, for no payment. They get their reward from knowing their work has been read. But among the hobbyists are some writers who are developing their work and themselves into semi-professional status. These are the writers who are happy to charge for their writing in order to acquire a bit of extra income, although many of them do not make a profit. In among these groupings there are some who believe that writers should not be paid for their work. They should supply everything free to their followers and readers. While this is a noble concept it is not a realistic one. It is easy to say money is u...

I can’t think of anything except Robert Burns at the moment – well, Robert Burns and Jean Armour – since I’m deep into a new novel about Jean and becoming ever more absorbed in the lives of the couple. It helps that I’m living in Ayrshire and it’s summer and the landscape here is very beautiful and – once you get off the beaten track – not a million miles from the way it must have looked in Burns’s day. It strikes me that I could probably write a whole other book about researching this novel. This has involved not just online research, but visits to the various places where they lived and worked. I've also used various old books, collections of his poetry and other volumes of the time, even if the connection is fairly tenuous, like the beautiful little Old Testament below - most of them bought on eBay or in our local saleroom. Clarinda's husband's cousin's bible! There’s nothing quite like holding in your hands a book printed before or not long after the poet’s ...

Well, this is one for a start. Writing a blog post instead of knuckling down to chapter twenty-three. What excuses do you find for not getting on with that book you’re writing? There are all the usual ones, of course. Cleaning, cooking, gardening, exercising – and ironing, if you’re really desperate. The more specialised ones, like re-decorating and car maintenance and keeping up with your social life. The once a year ones, like… no, we won’t go there in case once a year translates in your house as squalor.             And then there’s wildlife.             For me, this is the killer. The frogs in the pond, the bird table, the nest boxes, the walks on the common. Two years ago we had great tits nesting a few yards from the house. Breakfast could be taken in the conservatory, watching the action. First of all there was the survey. This was extremely thorough, and invol...

I hope you will indulge me this month as I write my post. The second book in my DI Shona McKenzie Mysteries, Killer's Craft, is being released on Monday. Therefore my head is full of all things to do with launching and promoting the book. One of the things I have been thinking about is Giveaways. I belong to a Facebook group called Woman Alive Book Club which is affiliated to the Woman Alive magazine. This is a Christian Magazine for women. The books discussed in the group are mainly, but not exclusively, Christian. My books are not Christian but have been written for a crossover market. When Book 1, Killer's Countdown, was released the owner of the group asked if I would like to do a giveaway. I agreed and this involved emailing me the answer to a question about Dundee. In some ways this went well as it got people talking about my book. In other ways there wasn't much point to it as anyone who entered got the answer from the internet. I was fortunate that those ...

As we're all writers on this blog, it can't be breaking protocol for me to do a preliminary review/puff for Julia Jones's new book Black Waters. It's the fifth in her trilogy – or rather, it’s volume 5 in her Strong Winds series – and it takes her into ever-deeper waters. For me, it raises the perennial question: what is a children's book? But first, boringly, I'd better declare a supposed interest. Julia has extremely close connections to Private Eye, and neither of us would relish a knocking piece in that prominent and thrusting organ. Julia is also a publisher, and her imprint Golden Duck publishes one of my own books, Wild Wood. A Firefly on a run - they're faster now! So, down to brass tacks. Black Waters, like the previous volumes, is an adventure story with teeth, sinews and muscles. Nominally about one girl’s (young woman's) struggle against the unrelenting rivalry of top-level sport, it inevitably confronts racism, greed, and what I...