Mark Stay's Blog, page 17
July 17, 2024
End of Dragons livestream with JM Carr
The End of Dragons has been out a few weeks, so here’s a post-publication chat with an update on the final part of the trilogy and a publication date for the fifth Witches of Woodville novel, The Corn Bride.
And I’ll be joined by the wonderful JM Carr, whose trilogy The Wonder Girls will definitely appeal to fans of Woodville. We’ll be talking trilogies, having hundreds of paperbacks delivered to your doorstep, selling your own books and much more! Join us on the link below on Wednesday 24th July, 8pm BST…
July 14, 2024
The Law of Consequences is out now
I was delighted to be asked to contribute a story to the Law of Consequences anthology, which is available right now!
The anthology is the brainchild of Steve Gowland, W.A. Leggatt and G.M. White who wanted to create a collection that celebrated the talents of followers of the Bestseller Experiment podcast. There are some breathtakingly talented authors in these pages, some you might know, others you’ll be encountering for the first time. I can guarantee that you’re in for a real treat. Here’s a roll call of the authors…
And the cover art is by Lizzie Leggatt.
From surprises in hessian sacks, pubs run by stone golems, a curious packed lunch, questionable drink choices, to copper urns (best avoided), dogs in space, horrifying boarding schools, families torn apart by war, brooding strangers and suspicious jars of marmalade.
Discover drama, treachery, love and the unpredictable, and often astonishing outcomes of our actions. Each tale in ‘The Law of Consequences’ reveals the delicate balance between destiny and free will, light and shadow. Enter with an open mind…
I have a story in here, too! It’s called ‘Horrible’ and takes a moment from The End of Dragons and tells it from a completely new perspective. You don’t need to have read The End of Dragons to make sense of it. If anything, you’ll probably enjoy this moment in Dragons all the more if you read the short story first.
You can grab your copy of The Law of Consequences by clicking on the big button thing below…
READ THE LAW OF CONSEQUENCES BY CLICKING HEREAnd while you’re reading, why not enjoy a game of bingo? My story is the one with the hessian sack…
July 1, 2024
The End of Dragons by Mark Stay
What comes after the end? Well, I have been impatiently waiting for five years to find out! The same time period has passed for the characters since …
The End of Dragons by Mark Stay
June 28, 2024
The End of Dragons is Out Now
Download on your Kindle (it’s also on Kindle Unlimited) or you can get a signed paperback from me here…
END OF DRAGONS SIGNED PAPERBACKEND OF DRAGONS ON KINDLE
June 24, 2024
Ten Years On: Robot Overlords BFI Test Screening
Long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve been looking back at my diaries from ten years ago, during the making of Robot Overlords. Some of the diary entries you’ll see are the ones featured in the back of the film’s novelisation (and if you want a signed and dedicated copy of the paperback, then please step this way and click here).
This was a magical day. to fully appreciate what I’m going on about here, I urge you to see the 1999 Frank Oz, Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy movie Bowfinger. Not only is it a wonderfully funny film about making movies, but it captures that magical moment when you see that thing you wrote up on a big screen with an audience for the first time…
Wednesday 25th June – BFI Southbank, LondonHad my CHUBBY RAIN moment tonight.
At the end of the movie BOWFINGER, Steve Martin’s character — a deluded and naive filmmaker (can’t imagine why I relate to him?) — gets to see his finished film CHUBBY RAIN with an audience. And it’s a magical moment as he hears the laughter and applause. Yeah, we’ve had test screenings, but never with a completed film, and always with an audience primed to give us notes. These guys were here just to enjoy themselves.
The preparation for this night has made me a nervous wreck. The plan was to invite as many distributors as possible, then surround them with children and hope that the good buzz heightens the film and gets us a distribution deal. But it’s NFT1 at the BFI on the South Bank… 450 seats to fill!
So we invited everyone we knew. I had about 60 people coming, including family and folk from Orion. But Harry had been inviting coachloads of kids and suddenly we were massively oversubscribed. So most of my guys were cut… then they weren’t (after some cancellations)… then they were again (more kids!).
I’ve been told that there will be more screenings for those who were cut soon.
I bumped into Jon as I came down the steps from Waterloo Bridge. I chatted with him, his dad (who’s in the film!), Piers and Jon’s agent Marc.
Inside, Tim and Hugo were handing out bags of sweets to the kids as they came into the foyer. I stepped inside to find the place pretty crammed already. I managed to find a few familiar faces (or they found me), and then Emily arrived with her Film Media Academy class from school. After a brief introduction from Jon, Ella and Milo the lights went down, there were some excited whoops and then the only noise as the lights went down was the hissing rustle of about three hundred bags of sweets being rummaged in.
90 minutes later…
The dug it. Lots of laughs and gasps, a big cheer when Smythe gets vaporised, a very big ‘Eww!’ as Alex moved in to kiss Sean, and a massive round of applause at the end.
Chubby Rain.
There was a mum with her two kids behind me who both declared it to be ‘Well sick!” and said they would definitely recommend it to their friends.
Ella was mobbed by the FMA girls in the foyer (Milo, who had come with his class from school, managed to get away!), and everyone was effusive in their praise. Piers reported that all the distributors that he managed to nab on the way out made positive comments, so it’s looking good.
Now it’s a waiting game. Will any of them bite?
Hung around afterwards with Jon talking sequel ideas.
A few days later…
Friday 27th June, 2014Been getting some lovely comments from friends and colleagues and everyone genuinely seems to have enjoyed the film. Then Jon sent me a paragraph from Damon Wise of Empire Magazine. He’d had a private screening a few weeks backs for the article he’s writing on the film. He said…
“Rooted in Hollywood’s joyously anarchic young-adult adventure films of the ’80s, Robot Overlords combines intense cutting-edge VFX spectacle with warm, fuzzy British humour to create a unique futuristic throwback that fuses the digital fantasy of Transformers-era mayhem with the heartfelt analogue pleasures of The Railway Children. It is the stuff of daydreams and nightmares, tears and laughter, hopes and fears – an intimate blockbuster with a keen sense of home.”
Well, you can stick a fork in me. I’m done.
And of all the films I thought we’d be compared to, THE RAILWAY CHILDREN would never have even made the top hundred, but a quote like this certainly can’t hurt any talks with potential distributors.
That’s the last entry from the novelisation of Robot Overlords. We’ve caught up! In the days following this, we apparently had distribution interest from some big names, but in the end no one bit. A big problem is that we’d made a film for 11-year-old boys, which is one of the toughest demographics to market to, especially back then. It would have meant spending millions on TV ads, transport ads etc, and no one was willing to risk that kind of money. I also learned that an influential industry person I thought was a friend stood outside the BFI screening and told anyone who would listen that the film didn’t make sense (gee, thanks, REDACTED!)…
Sadly, the film never really got the release it deserved. We did well on DVD (remember them!?), topping a few charts, but it never really made any impact and any talk of a sequel withered away. There was some serious talk of a TV series, but that came to nothing. I look back on Robot Overlords with a lot of pride and I still get nice comments at comic cons and the like from people who enjoyed it. Jon and I talk about what we might have done differently, and we did look into getting the TV rights back a few years ago, but it’s so tangled now that we couldn’t get them back. A shame, but I learned so much from the experience, not least to never give up. Onwards, upwards, keep writing!
June 19, 2024
Tonight’s Livestream is Bumped to Friday 21st June
Tonight’s Livestream has been bumped to Friday 21st due to “lurgification” — both me and Julian have been ill, and you really don’t want to listen to us coughing for an hour… Or do you? No, didn’t think so. Sorry about tonight, but will see you Friday night, roughly around half time of the Netherlands v France game!
Join the livestream on youtube here (but not till friday)
June 14, 2024
#TheEndofMagic by @markstay
Rosheen Katell and Sander Bree are two very different mages living in a world where magic is everything. Embark on a thrilling journey with Rosheen …
#TheEndofMagic by @markstay
June 13, 2024
The End of Dragons Livestream with Julian Barr
I’ll be going live on the internet for one last update before the publication of The End of Dragons!
The more eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that this livestream will be a little later than the previous ones. This is because my special guest is none other than esteemed author Julian Barr, who resides in the distant land they call Australia. The later time ensures that Mr Barr does not need to get up in the middle of the night where he might be attacked by Australia’s many deadly nocturnal fauna.
It also reminds us that we live on opposite sides of a rotating rock hurtling through the void of space around a sun that will eventually consume us all… so why not enjoy ourselves in the meantime and read more books?*
Julian is the author of the splendid Tooth & Blade trilogy and the epic Ashes of Olympus series, and he will have some exciting news about his forthcoming series. He was also a beta reader and proofreader for The End of Dragons and we’ll discuss the difference between those two versions of the book, giving you lucky people a peek behind the curtain of how books are edited, and much more!
*Apologies for the slight existential crisis. This is what happens when one watches too much rolling news coverage on the television. Back to fiction, I think. Much more edifying for the soul.
join the livestream on youtube hereJoin the livestream on facebook hereThe End of Dragons is on Goodreads
The End of Dragons is now live on Goodreads, so if you feel like giving the book a rating or a review you can do so here…
go to goodreads by clicking on this big button
June 10, 2024
Steampunk Weekend
Yet another opportunity to come and point at and prod me in public! This is quite a unique event in that it takes place at two train stations (Bodiam and Tenterden), but when you buy a ticket you’re getting unlimited travel between the two!
I’ll be at Tenterden selling and signing books and hope to see you there in your best steampunk bib and tucker! Discover more and grab your tickets here.
Saturday 29 & Sunday 30th JuneKENT & EAST SUSSEX RAILWAY: TENTERDEN STATION
