Author Archives: Mark

It has been an odd few months. I took early retirement at the end of July. Well then, you’re probably thinking, he must have been writing up a storm! No excuses now! Not that simple, I’m afraid! Firstly, we moved house in July and have been busy settling into the new place (while trying toContinue reading “Update on my short story anthology”

Well, What Festers Within was published about two months ago. I’m very pleased with the response! The book seems to have activated increased interest in the whole series, which is very nice to see. I won’t be running away to the Caribbean on the proceeds just yet, but things ARE on the up! Thoughts nowContinue reading “The Long and the Short of it”

So, Darkisle Book 3 has a title and has cover art too…

And finally, you get to the point in your novel where you place the final full stop at the end of the final sentence in the final paragraph. You sit back and look at that last page with a range of emotions. Some sense of achievement, a good deal of relief and – for aContinue reading “Now the hard work starts…”

When it comes to writing, there are good times and then there are less-good times. Looking back over the writing of my last two-and-a-bit novels, I can trace the good times to holiday breaks. For The Gathering of Shadows it was a long New Year’s Eve Weekend in a Reykjavik apartment. That yielded two chapters.Continue reading “On the finishing straight”

I don’t know how it is for other authors, but I find there comes a time in writing a novel when I feel that the initial uphill phase is done, that I’ve crested the summit and am now writing downhill, so to speak, with the slope helping me. I think that’s where I am withContinue reading “The Beginning of the End…?”

Josine felt that a celebration was in order, so after work we treated ourselves to dinner at our frequent haunt: Lumley’s Café on Oxford Road, just a few doors down from our office. We entered a little after six to find the place bedecked with paper chains, paper honeycomb bells and sprigs of holly. “Finally!”Continue reading “A Christmas smidgen for you all”

It was daytime. It was always daytime. Sometimes it was morning, with colours washed out to grey by mist. Sometimes it was afternoon, with the stark yellow sun in a crisp blue sky. Sometimes it was dusk, with the first hints of purple stretching out above and the moon starting to glow silver. This timeContinue reading “Forever Autumn”

Whilst I would never claim that my Darkisle novels should be classified as Historic Fiction, the fact remains that they are set in our world, during the 1920s. Very few people still living will remember that period, but all the same it’s a time we all know SOMETHING about . That means the reader hasContinue reading “The things they’d say… and wouldn’t say”

As such, it was a relief when the steamer made the sanctuary of Darkilby. The harbour was quiet, with no tramp steamers or colliers present. Even the large freighter called the ‘Sleih-Marru’ – something of a fixture during my previous visits – was absent. All there was to be seen was the town’s small fishingContinue reading “Another chapter, another smidgen”