Authors Electric

Back in the nineties, I was editor of Diablo , a glossy, monthly San Francisco East Bay "lifestyle" magazine. My coworkers and I used to call " Diablo " Hell's Home and Garden  published for Satan and friends.  Except for a few years in parochial school, I've never been very religious. Up until now, that is.  Even Presidente Trumpy and his corrupt MAGA cultists haven't gotten me to church -- much as I would find it comforting to believe. But the Mr. Incontinent, Orange Diaper Man, has succeeded in getting me to believe in Satan.  I don't think Satan has a Faustian deal with the Rump. That would give Dump too much credit. The devil has too much style for the phony likes of Fatso Wiggo.  Rump does get away with all manner of crimes and corruption at the moment. But his house of Fool's Gold is crumbling and will soon fall. Meanwhile, America's  Orange Fascist provides the devil a handy tool to bamboozle the greedy and ignorant, pry civilization...

 My Brilliant Career Revisited   The recent screening on Netflix in six episodes of My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin caused me to look out the two books of hers that I had purchased in second hand bookshops. The first, the title book itself, I found in a shop in Sherborne, Dorset, which I have been frequenting for many years. It is run by Claire who stations herself in a downstairs room, her person eclipsed by a mountain of books waiting to be catalogued or bought.  I discovered the book, attracted by its superbly designed Virago cover, in the upstairs paperback room. It was asking to be read and so after browsing further I took it down from the shelves, went back down the stairs, paid the relatively small amount written in pencil on the title page and began.    The story, which was based on the author’s life, is that of a young girl growing up in the Australian outback at the end of the 19 th  Century. It romps along, telling how Franklin’s alter...

Comedy, we’re told, is the hardest thing to write.  Well it must be, because frankly there’s so darn little of it around nowadays. And while I await outrage from the Edinburgh Fringe and the innumerable standup comedians and their audiences up and down the country (all eager readers of this blog, obvs), I’ll try and explain what I mean.  Dark comedy there is. Self-deprecating individuals telling their difficult life stories on stage, one wise-crack after another at their own expense (because no one can have a go at them if it's their lives, after all)… legion. Witty, cleverly written TV ‘sitcoms’ centring on a tortured heroine’s hapless attempts to negotiate some way of living… yup, those too, ever since Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s groundbreaking Fleabag . Which, I maintain wasn’t a sitcom, as the Guardian dubbed it , at all, nor even a comedy-drama , but a novel. A novel released in 12 instalments, perhaps the modern equivalent of how Dickens’s works first found their readership....

                                                                                Spoiler alert: It is genuine. In this article I seek to demolish this sensationalist bit of telly with some real facts. Strictly speaking, this piece is not all about writing, creating or being an author. But it IS about something someone wrote and made a ‘documentary’ about, which has inspired a great deal of written response. And I’m a writer who has a personal interest. So, having watched ‘The Great ADHD myth?’ broadcast on Channel 4 on August 18 th , 2026, I must respond.   Before it even went out, I and many others took issue with the title. Putting a question mark after the provocative word, ‘myth’ is not a get out of jail free card, Channel 4. Let’s start with ...

Last month, I wrote a piece on my favourite god, Hermes, the god of thieves, liars, athletes, scholars, merchants, the home, dreamers and travellers– even those travelling to the next world. Oh, and all those of us who earn our living by words. I also discovered that the worship of the Olympian Gods is no longer a thing of the past. Like Druidism, it’s been revived, as ‘Hellenism’ or ‘Hellenic Worship.’ While skipping about on the internet, I happened on a forum where present-day worshippers swop tales of how Hermes has helped them, and exchange photos of their home shrines. There are useful tips. For instance, suppose you are an American teen, part of an orthodox Christian household, but secretly worship Zeus and Aphrodite. You want to set up a shrine to Them, but can’t face dealing with the uproar that would cause. What can you do? Well, make yourself a ‘traveller’s shrine.’ This is a lidded tin that will fit in a pocket or bag. Inside the lid, put your image of the pagan...

The Man Who Listens To Horses by Monty Roberts The Man Who Listens To Horses is part autobiography, part equine training manual. It details Monty Roberts' upbringing in the tough world of cowboys and rodeo competition. From a very young age, the boy Monty was entering rodeos and winning prizes on horses his father had 'broken' (i.e. trained using the traditional and rather brutal cowboy method of the time). These days, we tend to talk more of 'backing' or 'starting' a young horse under saddle, which involves winning the horse's trust rather than using force and fear to produce results. As he grew up watching his father and the other cowboys work, Monty began to suspect that young horses could be trained more quickly and better by speaking their language... the non-verbal language of Equus. To develop his new technique, he followed and observed groups of mustangs in the wild, noting how the herd was always led by a mare who was responsible for disciplini...

Image Credits:-   Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. AI images avoided. Photos from The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick were taken by Gemma Owen-Kendall on behalf of the school or by me, Allison Symes. Many thanks to Babs Trevitt for the image of me taking part in the Swanwick Open Prose Mic Night. When this goes out, I would have had my first book launch for Seeing The Other Side at The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick . A recent development has been to allow delegates to have their launches as part of the school events in the year of first publication.  I enjoyed this opportunity. It was wonderfully set up by a launch co-ordinator who, amongst other useful things, took pictures on my phone and theirs, so the school and I can use these on social media. See the pictures. Given my last launch was in 2020 when everything was online due to the pandemic, it is a joy to hold in person events again.  Many thanks to Babs Trevitt for taking this photo. I lo...