Authors Electric

I'm back from my travels. And I know that some people will be waiting for me to write about the mountains and jungles of Ecuador, and the astonishing islands of the Galapagos. After all, that's what I do, isn't it - go walkabout and then come home to write a book. If only it were that easy. But 'woman has wonderful time in Ecuador' isn't a story. I can flesh that out a bit - 'woman stays in a lodge in the jungle, climbs a volcano, stays in an old city or two, potters round a market, flops about on a beach and then spends a week on a boat in the Galapagos' isn't really a story. Indeed, I can feel you glazing over as you trawl down that list and then you'll see my point. It's not that hard to write about what I did. But finding a thread that holds it together in a narrative that takes it beyond a written version of your neighbours' holiday snaps, that's the hard bit. I did meet some interesting people, so that helps. And I had ...

Last month it took me far too long to discuss metafiction , though I must admit that I'm now halfway wishing they'd reboot Moonlighting . They're doing it for The X-Files and Twin Peaks , why not Moonlighting ? I mean other than that David's womanizing might seem creepy now. On a side note, I could toitally get behind a reboot with this new casting . Anyway , let's start right in on the countdown , shall we? 2. Fables - Bill Willingham (author) various artists This title is a shoo-in for this list. It's very premise about metafiction: Characters from fairy tales, fables, children's literature, and other folklore are  literally aware that they are characters in stories. They have moved into our "mundane" world as refugees from a murderous tyrant, known only as the Adversary, who has conquered each of their worlds (each of which is part of a loose conglomeration of fictional universes called The Homelands). These refugees, who call ...

Cross-channel confusion Last autumn I had a disturbing experience. Well it wasn’t too bad because I was only sitting in front of the telly and no blood was spilled, and you know how it is when a character appears and your immediate reaction is ‘oh that’s so-and-so from what’s it’s name,’ because with any actor worth their salt you’re bound to think of them as their most recent persona.  But this time it got out of hand.  I was watching the dramatisation of Capital by John Lanchester  and couldn’t miss the fact that city financier Roger Yount was actor Toby Jones aka Lance from cult BBC4 comedy The Detectorists . But then Roger’s wife Arabella turned out to be Rachel Stirling who happens to be the wife of the other guy in The Detectorists , Lance’s mate Andy. Confused? No, not exactly, but it didn’t help with my suspension of disbelief. Then there was Nicola Walker (great actress, loved her feisty farmer in Last Tango in Halifax ) playing two different d...

Here's a secret that most authors know, but most readers and aspiring authors apparently still don't. Having a book published does not mean you will automatically become a millionaire. It does not mean you are rich, and it does not guarantee you a living in the long, or even the short, term. I did okay for the first seven years of my career, better than okay for a couple of them (such as when I signed my seven book contract with HarperCollins), and then the publishing world changed. Everything I knew was wrong. That's where Joanna Penn's book How to Make a Living with your Writing comes in. I must admit that, although I enjoy books about creativity, I'm not really a great fan of 'How to' books, especially not the 'How to make a million dollars in six days' kind (rob a couple of banks springs to mind) or 'How to write a novel in 24 hours' (I tried this once for the World One Day Novel Cup and ended up with an embarrassing novella I del...

Physiology and Biochemistry were compulsory subjects in my Psychology degree. The lecturers in both subjects were a considerable shock to us, used as we were to our laid-back Psychology lot – the Prof, wonderful Marie Jahoda, would bum cigarettes off the students, but always insisted on paying for them because smoking was a bad habit and she shouldn’t be doing it. Some of the others were happy to move teaching sessions to Bettina’s, the coffee shop round the corner. The Biochemist, on the other hand, expected us to sit up straight, raise a hand if we wanted to speak and then wait for permission, and not to argue. We could hardly believe it. The Physiologist was a woman of such extreme refeenment that she would have made the Queen look a tad common. After giving us a technical term, she would say, as if the whole idea gave her a pain in the unmentionable, ‘or, in common parlance...’   I have what I now think must be a false memory of her saying ‘crud’ as an example of said CP, ...

Research, how much is enough? And how much do you use? You would be as well asking how long is a piece of string, with the answer being as long as you need it to be. There are, of course, different types of research and researchers who do it. There is the academic who consults primary and secondary sources before writing a thesis which is beyond the ability of a mere mortal writer of crime fiction to understand. At the other end of the scale is the writer who puts pen to paper and flies by the seat of his or her pants. But, in the main, a writer has to do some research, although that may be dependent on how much knowledge the writer already has. Coming back to different kinds of research, there is the overall background research required before putting pen to paper. For example, in my historical novels, I need to know what was going on in the world at that time, what aspects of that were important for my characters, and what it was like to live then. I need an understanding...

Earlier this month, Alice Jolly’s interesting post for AE on ‘voice in the novel' gave me so much food for thought that, rather than posting a brief comment, I thought I’d contribute to the discussion more usefully by writing a post from my own perspective. Having published The Physic Garden , a first person narration historical novel (although not my first historical novel) a couple of years ago, I then found myself contemplating the challenge of writing a new historical novel, more or less set in the same period, late 18th and early 19th century Scotland, for the same publisher. But I knew almost immediately that this wouldn’t be a first person narration – although it could have been - and this post will attempt to explore some of the reasons for my decisions. I’m generally comfortable with first person narration because – wearing my other hat as a playwright – I’ve written a number of dramatic monologues: vivid first person narratives, with a strong voice and a strong...