Authors Electric

I don’t know if there’s a word for the condition of being just a teeny bit obsessed with place names, but if there is, I’ve got it. It might have started somewhere around Oxford, when I first saw the sign reading Milton Chilton Didcot Wantage. Lovely, yumpty-tumpty rhythm. It makes me smile and shout it out every time we drive past it. In case you’re wondering, I have not been ejected from the car. Yet. In contrast, in Laurie Lee country, there’s a sign at the end of a gloomy lane through overhanging trees which reads Cold Slad Only. It’s enough to strike chill into the stoutest heart. Who’d ever want to go there? Up towards Basingstoke from here there is Nately Scours. It’s what a very rafeened lady might whisper to her doctor about an embarrassing nocturnal problem. Somerset is a particularly rich source of these delights: Bishop’s Hull Within, Bishop’s Hull Without (what?); Nempnett Thrubwell (can one thrub badly?); Wumbrock (badgers?); Hammoon (wolves?); Ryme Intrinsica ...

Authors Electric. The clue is in the name. We are a collective of writers who embrace technology and the electronic world. We are not a bunch of luddites who turn our backs on anything electronic. Nor are we the kind of people who would not give house room to a computer, who shudders at any mention of the internet, and who would never deign to read an electronic book on an ereader. As the resident techno-geek who builds computers in her spare time, there is nothing I like better than exploring all kinds of software, although I will reserve my discussion today to writers’ software. Was that a collective groan I heard? It wouldn’t surprise me, because it became apparent from the comments on my last post , that not everyone is enamoured with writing software. In fact, the feeling is stronger than that, and the impression given is that you cannot be creative if you use said writing software. This was despite the fact that the post reviewed editing software, and editing is the pro...

You don't even have to pack a bag! Though I’m sure most of you will know what I mean by ‘blog tour,’ I’d hate to start my post by making assumptions, so a brief explanation wouldn’t hurt…           Think of an excited author travelling from city to city, bookshop to bookshop, eagerly waiting for readers to bombard them in their droves, desperate for signed copies of said author’s new book. Maybe even have a little conversation too. Well, ditch that image because a blog tour is quite different (although you’ll still have the excitable author).           A blog tour happens via social media – namely blog posts, Facebook and Twitter. Each day of your blog tour a blogger will hold their ‘stop’ on the tour and feature your new release on their blog. It could be a review, author guest post, book extract or giveaway. Or a combination of these things. Usually, the blogger will then share their post ...

When I’m wearing my tutor hat, I blithely tell poets that they’ll gain a lot by writing short stories and learning about narrative and structure. I tell short story writers that their dialogue will benefit enormously from writing a script. And I tell scriptwriters that having a crack at poetry will hone their language skills. I also tell students that the form should fit the idea – some ideas are too long and complicated for anything except a novel, others too short for anything other than flash fiction. Some are too visual for anything other than a stage play, others too sound-based for anything but a radio play. But it wasn’t until I read Manifold Manor , by Philip Gross, that the point of poetry sank in. At the end he says, “Really, the difference between poetry and prose isn’t to do with lines and rhymes. Ordinary prose can tell you what has happened, but poetry can make it happen to you now .”             For decades I was ...

I've been thinking about short stories recently. In fact I've been thinking about them a lot. There are a number of reasons for this including moderating the short stories for the Scottish Association of Writers Summer Solstice competition, and having had several short stories published in anthologies. It is an area where I would like to develop and expand my repertoire. Some time ago I read the book in the picture above. It is called Writing Short Stories A Writers' & Artists' Companion by Courttia Newland and Tania Hershman. This is not the cheapest book in the world but it is worth every penny. One of the chapter titles is Stories, those little slices of life . For me that sums up in just a few well chosen words, what short stories are all about. They are a small glimpse into another world, or a means of looking at the ordinary in a different and unexpected way. The writer of short stories must use every highly crafted and well chosen word to draw the ...

The more I write about history, the more I love it. Considering my school tried everything they knew to make me hate the subject, I consider myself extremely lucky that I got there in the end. Kings and queens meant nothing to me until a history lecturer at University – the great and sainted Ian Kershaw – told me that William the Conqueror fell off his horse and burst. Now that for me, is a proper kingly way to die. The real beauty, and frustration, of history is that an extraordinary amount of it is guesswork. That's why I've always been wary of biography. Somebody spends many years examining everything recorded about a certain personage, and is confident at the end of all that they have drawn a perfect picture. Sadly, that is balderdash. I don't even know myself why I do most things that I do, and looking back on them, the problem just gets murkier. Take Nelson. One of Britain's most authentic heroes, still revered, still cited in any naval argument. Then ta...