Leading Questions #authorselectric #fiction #favouritebooks

My blog for Authors Electric is up>

“I was recently sent a Q&A interview by a publisher for an upcoming anthology Into the Night Eternal: Tales of French Folk Horror, (which (shameless plug) will include my novella‘A Small Thing for Yolanda’). As always that online interview sheet included that old chestnut ‘Which books have influenced your writing the most?’ And, as always, I was at a loss for an answer.

The books that had any effect on us at age four are never going to be the same at age fourteen, or forty-four, or sixty-four.  That said I am not sure that books read in adulthood ever affect us in the same way that they do when we are young…

To read the rest of the post go here!

 

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Authors Electric post for March

My March post for Authors Electric is up for reading here

Begins: “You know how it is – somebody mentions a particular subject on Facebook or Twitter, which sparks that domino effect of comments, which often stray off topic, interweaving with the original post but following trains of thought from a dozen, two dozen and more people…”

2017 Round-up

Here we are with the usual round-up for the year.

Moving house took up a great deal of 2017 so my output was not what it might have been but by far the biggest event was the launch of my crime novel, Winter Downs. My maiden voyage into crime fiction at novel length.  Winter Downs is a golden age crime set in January of 1940 where a body is found on the snow-covered Sussex Downs.

In the realms of short fiction ‘Taste of Culture’,  was reprinted in In the Footsteps of Dracula, Pegasus publishing. ISBN 978-1681775340 (First appeared in The Mammoth Book of Dracula 1997.)

I was lucky enough to have two Sherlock Holmes stories in print this year,

‘Curious Case of the Sweating Horse’, MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories VII: Eliminate the Impossible: 1880-1891, MX Publishing, ISBN: 978-1787052024

‘‘The Curious Case of Mr Marconi’, MX Sherlock Holmes VI, MX Publishing,  ISBN 978-1787050877

Also this year, after many delays and problems, saw the production and publication of Dr Who script, which I wrote along with Sam Stone, Debbie Bennett, Raven Dane, Suzanne Barbieri and David Howe.  The Daemons of Devil’s End, DVD, Reel Time Pictures 2017 ASIN: B06XPHPZG6

This is a 3 disc set. One disc has the film itself, a reprise of the White Witch, Olive Hawthorne character from the 1970s Dr Who story arc of The Daemons; played then and now by the inimitable Damaris Hayman. The other discs are interviews and extras. A must for any Whovian!

Also out this year is the anthology written by myself, Sam Stone, Debbie Bennett, Raven Dane, Suzanne Barbieri and David Howe which retell the DVD action as short stories.

There are two editions:

‘The Poppet’, ‘The Daemons of Devil’s End, Telos Press, 2017,  ISBN: 978-1845839703
which is available from all the usual retailers, and  ‘The Poppet’, Olive Hawthorne and the Daemons of Devil’s End, Special edition 2017, ISBN: 978-1845839697 which is only available from  Telos Press . The special edition has been produced in the same style as the old Target books of the 1970s and contains stills from the original Dr Who sets not previously available.

That is about it for this year. 2018 will see the arrival of the second Bunch Courtney crime novel provisionally titled In Her Defence, plus a few projects that are still too hush-hush to mention as yet! Also with an editing hat on the much awaited weird/horror anthology from Alchemy Press.

Until then it just remains for me to wish you all a Happy Solstice, Good Yule, Merry Christmas and a truly prosperous New Year!

A little rant

Whilst shopping today in the local high st  what can only be described as an ear splitting wail of sheer despair rose up above the crowd. It was a chilling sound that brought the street almost to a standstill as we all searched for the source of that heart-rending cry.

Some distance away, across the main square, a young woman was fleeing from the bank (?- may have been a shop), with a handful of papers, yelling  at the top of her lungs in obvious distress. She scuttled across the square and into an alleyway between shops on the far side, but her anguish could still be heard quite plainly. This was a full scale melt-down in progress.

Short changed or over charged?

I dropped into the local unisex hairdresser today to enquire about the price of a haircut.

The prices on the door were ambiguous – quoting at least five totals for a ‘hair experience’. That phrase alone should have rung warning bells!  This is a shop, I might add, which seldom appears to have customers when I walk past.)But as it is local I thought I’d give it a try – support local businesses.

Me: Hello. How much do you charge for a dry cut?
Proprietor: That would be £25.
Me: For a dry cut?
P: Well… £20?
Me: How much do you charge men for a dry cut?
P: £12.5o if its me – or £9.00 if its the trainee.
Me: Why the big difference?
P: … er… well women’s hair takes longer.
Me: A dry cut should be the same surely?
P: (looking bewildered) well… no. Women’s hair takes longer.
Me: Okay. Thank you…  (*leaves without making an appointment)

I don’t mind paying £20 if that is what the haircut costs at that establishment.  But being charged around twice the amount for the same service purely on the basis of my gender?

The question that immediately springs to mind is:
Are the men being short changed because the stylist is giving them less time and attention? Or are we women really just being exploited?

Answers on a postcard…

Displacement Therapy

House moving looms and we find that BT are unable to supply a telephone line until 14 days after the current house owner has moved out, and can’t supply us with a telephone number until then. Our internet provider cannot supply us with a connection until we have our new number – and there is a ten day wait. Well that was the first rendering. My other half spending half a day on the phone has resulted in shortening those time scales a little, with luck, but only time will tell by how much.

Authors Electric : Missing H #writing #authorselectric

My post on Authors Electric this month concerns those pesky silent letters.

A recent Facebook thread was discussing the pronunciation of A in conjunction with an invisible H at some length.  I suspect we have all come across that old chestnut of how to enunciate ‘bath’ (or ‘grass’, ‘class’, ‘pass’) and whether it/they should be pronounced with or without the unseen H as in ‘b-ah-th as opposed to b-a-th.

Though the originator of the Facebook post now lives in California he is a Brit by birth, and, his original question was to his US counterparts on how they heard those invisible  H sounds.

Read the rest on the AE site Here

http://authorselectric.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/invisible-h-by-jan-edwards.html