2014 A to Z Challenge: A

Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams was an English writer, humourist and dramatist. Wikipedia says,

Adams is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which originated in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a “trilogy” of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime and generated a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams’s contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy’s Hall of Fame.

Adams also wrote Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990), Last Chance to See (1990), and three stories for the television series Doctor Who. A posthumous collection of his work, including an unfinished novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.

Ailsa Abraham

Ailsa Abraham is the first of several Crooked Cat authors who will be featured in these posts. From the Crooked Cat website,

Writing under two pen-names, Ailsa Abraham is now the author of five novels. Scots/Irish in ancestry, she has lived in France since 1990. Her life revolves around her chaotic farmhouse, nicknamed “The Bingergread Cottage” as it is an upside-down witch’s home. Passionate about animal welfare, motorbikes and crafting in yarn, she is also fascinated by all religions, having been trained in Wicca to the rank of High Priestess but now follows a solitary shamanic path although she is also a member of the local Roman Catholic rosary team who are glad of her healing skills.

The Link

Ailsa says,

When Miriam Drori invited her fellow Crooked Cat authors to find another writer with the same initial I wanted (no, I desperately wanted) to find that I shared something with one of my all-time favourites.

Douglas Adams author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy amongst other work has been a personal hero of mine ever since I discovered that reading his work aloud to my dyslexic ex-husband (including all the voices of course) was a way of getting him interested in books. By the time we reached So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, he was reading it himself. This was way after I became a fan of the radio series that was broadcast late at night.

It turns out we do share some attributes although he had “a brain the size of a planet” and I don’t.

What we share is depression. I’m Bipolar and Douglas regularly suffered from long downers. I imagine Marvin the Paranoid Android was drawn from his own experience. There is a memorable quotation from Adams: “I have terrible periods of lack of confidence [..] I briefly did therapy, but after a while I realised it was like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can’t fix the weather – you just have to get on with it.”

One other coincidence I discovered was that Douglas Adams and I shared a love of wildlife conservation. He was brought up in an RSPCA refuge run by his grandparents. I worked for years as a volunteer with the French equivalent, the SPA.

Oh – and I also get these terrible pains in the diodes all down my left side!

Thank you, Ailsa, for starting off my author posts in such an interesting way!