Authors Electric

You might well have heard of the Kennis brothers before. If you have, never mind. An excuse to look at their work again is always a good thing. The Kennis brothers, Adrie and Alfons, are unsettlingly identical  Dutch twins. They refuse to call themselves artists, though they are. They are also anatomists and anthropologists and they create the most startlingly original portraits of ancient people that I’ve ever seen. I was unaware of their work until my brother (and illustrator) Andrew, started outgrabing about a programme we were watching. It had one of those forensic recreations based on a medieval skull. The result always looks much the same, whatever skull is being used: a bland, expressionless face, rather like that of a shop-window dummy. “Don’t waste our time!” Andrew said. “Send for the Kennis brothers! There should be a law that only the Kennis brothers are allowed to do reconstructions!" I had never heard of the brothers Kennis, but once directed to their web...

I love big skies - I now live in a top floor flat with a view across rooftops to the distant hills. And above - magnificent skies. And I love words. I love the way they come out to play and surprise me. I love the way they creep up on me when I'm not looking. I'm a wordsmith - teasing away at a sentence until it does exactly what I need it to do gives me great pleasure. But I run out of words when it comes to my skies. Which troubles me - I'd like to be able to use the stories in skies as metaphors. I'd like to use more adventurous words than lowering, or shimmering, or azure. And so I'm going to do something I rarely do on this blog - give you pictures. Pictures without words. These are all taken from exactly the same place on my balcony. Please - can you find original ways to describe them? Believe it or not, I do, occasionally, stop looking at my skies and do some writing. You can find out more at jomcarroll.co.uk

I have spent a lot of time bemoaning the fate of self-published authors over the years, but sometimes, I admit, I often overlook the rose for the thorns. For example, I learned yesterday that Barnes & Noble will now stock self-published books on their shelves . However, as you can tell from the dateline on the linked article, this is not exactly breaking news. Apparently, I missed the original announcement of this development two years ago. Yay! A corporate bookseller that loves indie writers!-- Weeeeeeell, maybe. Still, this is a huge development benefiting indie authors as it lets them into the previously exclusive-to-traditionally-published-authors market of bookstore browsers and foot traffic. Sure some local B&Ns have allowed local self-published authors to hold book signings and special events at their stores, but even in these instances, any books sold were sold by commission. In other words, authors had to purchase their own stock and donate a cut of their proce...

Dry January is hardly a new concept and when I mentioned I had taken it on I had a few ‘underwhelmed’ responses, like, ‘I am doing it anyway and not asking for money.’ Not that I was asking for money for myself, but for the golf club's chosen charity of SCaRF . It was actually a spur of the moment decision taken on  Dec 31 st and one I quickly began to regret.  Customary tipple First of all I may not be a heavy drinker but for the past few years (starting with a job where I wasn’t happy and needed the six o’clock pick me up) I had become – despite giving up that job -   a very regular one. Some nights you just deserve it, right? Other times you just need it! So despite the eye-rolling from golfing buddies oblivious to my off the course habits, I knew it wouldn’t be easy.  A few people did issue warnings – January? The very worst month for self-imposed sobriety! And so much longer than February! Too late, the die was cast, a sponsorship list was already in t...

When I first saw the cover of this book, I knew I had to read it! The gorgeous orange flames, the mysterious golden horses, and the intriguing title all speak of an exotic historical setting, and possibly a bit of magic, too. As it turns out, this is historical fiction rather than fantasy, but Saviour Pirotta weaves a rich tale that brings the ancient city of Baghdad and its unfamiliar (to me) culture alive in a way that should appeal to both sets of readers. The horsemen of the title are part of the elaborate mechanism of a water clock presented by the caliph of Baghdad Harun-al-Rashid (he of the Thousand and One Nights fame) to the Emperor Charlemagne in the eighth century. There were twelve horsemen altogether, carved out of wood and gilded, which appeared through little doors to mark the hours. But who made this fabulous clock, and whose hand carved the horsemen? Meet young Jabir, whose father - a night fisherman on the River Tigris - has drowned in mysterious circumstances,...

The poet M R peacock has talked about the creative process as arising from that part of the brain where dreams are made, and she suggested that calm and quietness are prerequisites for both. That seems to me more like day-dreaming than the dreams that come in sleep: day-dreams, the slipping of a cog in the brain towards unfocussedness,   letting thoughts drift as they will. I’ve found that story or poetry ideas sometimes float through in that pleasant, what-looks-like-idle, state. They may just be fragments that float off again and never make it into wholeness, but occasionally they grow and settle into something worth working on. My children’s story Goose Anna came from that out-of-focus state on a long motorway drive (I was a passenger, I hasten to add) with a soft-toy goose on the back seat, and picture book The Crows’ Nest formed from a chilled-out evening (with wine) in a friend’s garden, half-listening to crows gossiping in nearby trees. Days out in the wi...

In writing the various Bunch Courtney books food and drink often seemed to play an important part. The discussions between Bunch and various characters sometimes take place over the traditional cup of tea and yet we all know that tea was rationed from July 1940 with each adult allowed just 2 oz per person per week. There is a lot that I could say about tea during ww2. It is a treatise in itself, but one thing that came as a surprise, and yet was no surprise to me, was that in 1942 the UK government — close to defeat on all fronts and close to broke, its reserves drained as Atlantic convoys were hunted by U-boats— made the decision to buy up every available pound of tea from every country in the world. (With the obvious exception of Japan.) It was estimated that government purchases in that year were, in order of weight, bullets, tea, artillery shells, bombs and explosives. German High Command fully understood the importance of tea  and one of the primary targets for ...