Authors Electric

Earlier this month, one of the earliest known books in existence was sold at auction by Christie's for more than £3m... yes, you read that right... THREE MILLION pounds! That's enough to buy a big house with a few acres in the UK. part of the Crosby-Schoyen codex The Crosby-Schoyen Codex  contains the first epistle of Peter and the Book of Jonah, making it the earliest known surviving Christian book (approx 300AD). It was written by hand in Coptic on papyrus, has 104 pages, and apparently took a single scribe 40 years to complete. Fortunately, the scribe lived in an Egyptian monastery at the time so was not trying to juggle a day job and kids as well. First editions of popular books in good condition might also buy you a house (if a slightly smaller one). First edition hardcovers of JK Rowling's debut title Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone are currently listed online for six figures (£100,000+), while first paperback editions of the same title are fetching five-...

Image Credit:  One photo taken by me, Allison Symes. Other images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. It has been a funny month. Had a fabulous Scottish holiday. Then came home after a swimming session to find I’d been burgled. Thankfully my dog was okay. They locked her in a room. We’re okay but it has brought home the joys of creative writing. I planned to write about this topic anyway but it is with more feeling I do so now!     Why? Because it was therapeutic to get back to writing after dealing with other matters. It was a relief to be creating characters for stories and working out ideas for blogs, including this one. It was good to resume my normal writing life. There is something about the creative arts which is good for us. I guess it is because they give us an outlet. I have yet to decide whether some nasty burglar gets their comeuppance in a future flash fiction story. If I do this, I shall enjoy every moment of writing it! I suspect you’ve seen the cof...

  Vera Rich was one of those extraordinary people who was a total one-off. Clever, funny, infuriating, multi-lingual and fiercely in favour of an independent Ukraine, she was a part of my life for fourteen years. She was revered in Ukraine and Belarus for her poetry translations, and I travelled to Ukraine with her on two occasions. Vera never needed to embellish stories – her life had been quite exciting enough. She edited the unique Manifold Magazine, and I remember her saying, oh yes, people who’d had a week’s holiday in Prague would send me poems about their extensive knowledge of the place. I spent a week in Prague hiding from the Secret Police in a circus… And then there was the time, after Poland was once again a free country, when they saw a police car broken down by the side of the road and stopped to help. The driver kept staring at Vera, until she asked him if he knew her. He stood up very straight, clicked his heels and said, “I had the honour to interrogate you in 1...

  'April is the cruellest month," T, S. Eliot lied in The Waste Land. An American in London, he'd never been to Tucson in the blazing month of June. If he had, he'd have been less poetic and howled with his brain frying. The average June temperature--dry heat, as they like to say--is about 100 degrees, with highs of 110 or higher..  Yes, we have desert rats riding their bikes without t-shirts or caps. Then again, in Alaska some like to jog or skinny dip when the temp is minus 80 degrees F. For the most part many on both coasts make what peace they can with the weather. Having spent half my life in heavily snowbound places, I know what it's like to hibernate for 4-5 months a year. But I had trouble adjusting to the desert's stifling heat. At first, I resented my staying indoors, dehydrated and exhausted. Even with air conditioning and an overhead fan, the writer in me withered. From mid-May to mid-September, I lost the city that I'd come to love. And I felt ...

  Over the years I’ve been posting here I’ve tended to write my blog very much at the last minute, this month has been the same only more so. Yesterday ran away with me and by the time I realised I was in danger of missing my slot I was too tired to think, yet alone write. Inspiration too was missing. When I’m stressed I find it almost impossible to be creative. However, there is always plan B, which is why I’ve modified a post from my own blog. Here’s hoping that’s okay. When life gives you lemons then make lemonade is very much where I am just now. I was busy planning the publishing schedule for “Friday Night at Rosa’s” starting with “Wedding Belles at Rosa’s,” the prequel to the series. My post went up on Monday during the Mslexia write-in hour, then Mike and I had lunch and went shopping to M&S. Supper was mushroom risotto, a favourite of his, then he watched the football and I went to do more work on my list of things to do before publication day. All these might...

Hi lovely   AE   readers, Dianne here. I run the publishing company Current Words Publishing, which is partner publishing company. In addition to doing partner publishing my company also founded and supports Old Scratch Press (OSP), a poetry/short form collective. In 2025 OSP and its members are going to open up more opportunities for people not in the collective to have a chance to have their work in poetry or short form published. Currently there are opportunities remaining this year through Current Words Publishing’s literary magazine INSTANT NOODLES . Recently Morgan Golladay, an author I have worked with many times, has recently won a few awards for both her fiction and her poetry,  and through OSP has just published her first book, THE SONG OF NORTH MOUNTAIN which she both wrote and illustrated.  I sat down to talk with her ( https://www.facebook.com/morgangolladayfineartist )  about her book and her work.   Current Words Publishing (CWP):  Wha...

Anthologies are sickly things,’ wrote the historian Sir Francis Palgrave in 1851. ‘The splendid bouquet decays into unsavoury trash, and as trash is thrown away.’ The word ‘anthology’ is derived from Greek and means a collection of the flowers of verse. Ten years later his son, Francis Turner Palgrave, picked possibly the most famous bunch in the English language. Sir Francis died in the month that The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and  Lyrical Poems in the English Language was published. In his life, from difficult beginnings -- possibly attributable to prejudice against his Jewish ancestry -- he had achieved eminence as Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office and had played a key role in ensuring that the national archives were properly catalogued and stored. His son’s success may be thought of as storing lyric poetry in individuals’ heads and establishing a distinctive poetic tradition as part of our cultural heritage. Sir Francis's oldest son, Francis Turner Palgrave was...