Mark Stay's Blog, page 24

Harriet Muncaster on the Bestseller Experiment: Creating Worlds

I saw a blog by a writer recently declaring that we should all aim for perfection. Their point being that once the book is out there, then you don’t have an opportunity to change it (which isn’t strictly true) and that we should all aim to make any book we write the best it possibly can be.

I agree that I want anything I write to be the best that I can do, but perfection…? Not sure it exists. And it can be the enemy of creativity, especially when you’re starting out. The idea of creating something as polished and perfect as your favourite author’s latest tome is intimidating at best, crippling at worst. Over time I’ve discovered that creating is a process of failing a little less each time. With each draft, each book, each script I’ve learned something that helped make the next one a little better. But it’s never perfect.

There’s a moment in this week’s interview with the brilliant Harriet Muncaster where she says she held off from starting a project because she wanted it to be perfect. Which meant for a long time she didn’t do anything at all. Then she eventually realised that, ‘If you don’t start something, then it never really develops.’ So if you’ve been putting off that novel, script, artwork, whatever, because you were worried that it wouldn’t be perfect then today’s the day to start it. It won’t be perfect. Nothing ever is. But as you work on it you will discover that it just might be better than you ever imagined.

Also in this week’s episode me and Mr D discuss being child-like and end up being very childish. And in the extended version I finally talk about my role in the Nautilus TV series and what’s happened at Disney+. You can listen to that by becoming a Chart Topper supporter here.

I’ll be at the Maidstone Literary Festival

Congrats! You’ve finished your novel. But what happens now? Get an agent? A publisher? What other options are available to authors today? I’ll be at the Maidstone Literary Festival to tell you everything you need to know about publishers, agents, advances, royalties, self-publishing and more. Click here for tickets. 

SATURDAY 7th OCTOBER, 10-11AM

Kent History & Library Centre, James Whatman Way, Maidstone, Kent, ME14 1LQ

I Have A Kofi, Buy Me A Cuppa

I finally have a Kofi page! ‘What’s a Kofi page?’ you may ask. It’s a place where delightful people like your good self can donate small amounts of money to poor, wretched writers like me. ‘Hang on,’ you continue, folding your arms and narrowing your eyes, ‘you’ve written films and had books published by big publishers… Shouldn’t you be loaded?’

Yes. Yes, I should… But I was paid for Unwelcome three years ago (almost to the day!) and that was the equivalent of two years’ salary of my old job. And because Warner Bros much such a limp effort of promoting it that it will never earn its budget back and I’ll never get the fifty grand of my fee that I deferred just before filming (won’t make that mistake again).

Nautilus, the Disney+ TV show that was my idea has been filmed and is in post-production, but has just been dropped by Disney so I won’t be seeing any money from that soon.

And yes, I have been published by the likes of Simon & Schuster, but it wasn’t a huge advance and I’m on a joint accounting contract which means I don’t start earning royalties until the first three books have earned out (to learn more about how all this nonsense works, click here).

And also yes, I have been self-publishing a few of my books, but that’s also an expensive business and turning into a bit of a money pit…

So if you like my stuff and you’ve bought all the books and seen the films, then do please consider dropping three quid in the Kofi tip jar. I reckon if 231 of you do it, I might just be able to pay my overdraft off. I’ll be popping all my blog posts and other exclusive bits and bobs over on Kofi, too, so it won’t just be me panhandling. Pop over have a look…

True Grit with Sarah Moorhead on the Bestseller Experiment

It was a delight to welcome back Sarah Moorhead to the Bestseller Experiment podcast this week. There’s a moment early on when she talks about creating great characters and how the ‘grit in the oyster makes the pearl’. I think the same can be said about Sarah who found herself in the perfect storm of her debut being launched in lockdown at the same time as she was dropped by her agent and publisher. There are few authors who could bounce back from that, and Sarah has done it brilliantly with her new novel The Treatment. Get inspired and have a listen/watch below and if you want more like that, there’s an extended version for podcast supporters where Sarah answers listener questions on resilience, self-belief, plotting, structure, why learning to write is like learning to drive and much more! You can get access to that and hundreds of hours of extra material by becoming a Chart Topper supporter of the podcast here.

Four Films That Mean A Lot

I had a great time speaking to Chris Deacy on the KMTV Kent Film Club show about the four films that mean the most to (that week at least… ask me again now and it might be four different films!)

Can you guess what they are? There’s a slight spoiler in the blog’s pic…

Ten Years On: Take Your Daughter to the Robot Apocalypse Day

Long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve been looking back at my diaries from ten years ago, during the filming 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). But this one is exclusive to this blog and has never been seen before…

I had never known anyone in the film industry when I was a kid. Growing up first on a housing estate in Hornsey, then in a caretaker’s house in Leatherhead, the very idea that I might get into the film industry was up there with being an astronaut. Or Batman. Both of which are still options, I guess, but fairly unlikely. My uncle Desmond told me once that he owed money to a man called , who appeared in all kinds of films and TV shows as a heavy or a stuntman and the rumour was that he had been a Stormtrooper in Star Wars, which blew my tiny mind (it’s not listed on his IMDb, so who knows?). A girl was at my school for a short while who turned out to be the daughter of actor and stuntman , which was exciting but she didn’t stay long. Then a couple of my best friends at secondary school had parents who worked in TV. My friend Tim’s dad worked for ITN and showed around the news studio one day, and my friend Jeremy’s mum got us tickets for the recording of a show called The Secret Cabaret where I met Ricky Jay after the show and he did some astonishing close-up card tricks for us. So that, and a screening of The Sooty Show when I was about six, was it as far as my childhood brushes with film and TV go. But they were memorable days and made me think that maybe working in TV or film wasn’t so unlikely. With that in mind, when Robot Overlords came along, I wanted my kids to get a taste of the industry in a way that I never really had. I’d already got them parts as extras in one scene (see this diary entry for the longest school run ever), but Emily, then 13, was showing a real talent for animation and editing. I had already banged on about how my favourite films were edited by women (Jaws by Verna Fields, Star Wars by Marcia Lucas, and Goodfellas by Thelma Schoonmaker) and I thought there would never be a better opportunity to inspire her than to take her to see an actual film being edited and get a sneak peek at CG animation, and so…

Friday 30th August, 2013

I decreed that it would be ‘Take your daughter to work’ day today, and so Emily and I hopped on the train up to London. Matt Platts-Mills (editor) kindly showed Emily how he cut together the scene between Gillian Anderson and the Steven Mayhew character based on Jon’s notes. He also added temp sound fx to the scene where the kids run from the Sentry.

We popped next door to chat with the assistant editor Vicky Webbley. who was very encouraging. She started out like Em: editing movies and putting them on YouTube.

After that we popped round to Nvizible (VFX company) where we got the VIP tour from Paddy Eason (VFX Supervisor) and Simon-Pierre Puech (compositor). We saw 3D models for the Spitfire, Sentry, Sniper and Skyship and they all looked incredible. Then it was fish n chips with Paddy, some shopping at Forbidden Planet, then home.

Emily is now 23 and an animator and storyboard artist working with her fella Kai for some very cool clients on Youtube. She still edits and I asked her what she remembered of the day and she recalled that Matt had discovered that the sandwich that Gillian Anderson holds in the scene moved from hand to hand and he was struggling to find shots that matched. And that Vicky told her that to be a good editor it helped to be good at Tetris with good organisational skills. She still remembers the day fondly and I’ll always be grateful to Matt, Vicky, Paddy and Simon for taking the time to show her around.

Ten Years On: The Post-Production Excitement Begins

Long time readers of this blog will know that I’ve been looking back at my diaries from ten years ago, during the filming 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). But this one is exclusive to this blog and has never been seen before…

I had just returned from a family holiday in Spain and, having seen a rough cut of the film and finished the first draft of the novelisation, I was raring to get back and see what I’d missed. And it all started with a meeting at Orion House…

Wednesday 29th August, 2013

Great meeting today with Piers (Tempest, producer), Gillian Redfearn (my editor at Gollancz) and Jen McMenemy (Gollancz marketing manager). Lots of exciting stuff we can do for the book and the film. Piers showed us the Toronto (Film Festival) sales trailer — very exciting — and let slip that thanks to SBK (Sir Ben Kingsley) we might have a Prince’s Trust Premiere! That would be an incredible launch.

Stayed behind with Gillian to run through her edit notes. I’ve got a good idea of what to attack next. She’s very good. It’s like having a co-writer. Great objectivity.

To say that Gillian Redfearn is ‘very good’ is like saying Pele was quite handy with a football. I knew that Gillian had edited some of my favourite authors at Gollancz, and they were fulsome in their praise of her, but this was my first time being edited and I had no idea I was getting the Rolls Royce treatment. There were 4440 comments and changes (I still have the Word doc… let me know if you’d be interested in seeing it!). A perfect blend of suggestions, encouragement, compliments and Joyce Grenfell-like moments of, ‘No, Mark, don’t do that.’ And she was always the eye of the reader, not only pointing out moments of potential confusion, but demanding more of me and making me a better writer. Gillian basically taught me how to write a novel with her edit and I shall always be grateful for that incredible experience.

We didn’t get a Prince’s Trust premiere in the end, and more excited hyperbole was to come, but more of that later…

Linwood Barclay Lie Maker

This is not to suggest that bestselling author Mr Barclay is a big fibber (The Lie Maker is the title of his latest thriller), but to be fair that’s what writers do for a living: make stuff up and pass it off as the truth. And Linwood Barclay gives us a ton of tips how to do that in this week’s episode of the podcast here…

This was a special episode for a few reasons. Not least that Mr D got to join me for the whole interview (he’s a big fan of Linwood), and that Linwood reveals all sorts of stuff about authors like Ross Macdonald and Stephen King, but we also get very excited about his Gerry Anderson Supercar model made by legendary film and TV model maker Martin Bower. If you want to skip straight to that bit (and you should because it’s a thing of beauty), it’s here…

The Holly King is available direct from me right now…

I’ve got stock of The Holly King paperback in the building nice and early, so if you want an early copy of the latest Witches of Woodville adventure then click here. I can even sign and dedicated it too, and I’ll also throw in a free bookmark! Be the envy of your friends with a hot off the presses copy of The Holly King weeks before publication!

Falling Between Genres: Teresa Driscoll on The Bestseller Experiment

Teresa Driscoll had a huge career change in 2017 when she switched from writing family dramas to thrillers with her novel I Am Watching You. She went from going out of contract and the potential end of her writing career, to selling a million copies. How did she manage that? With I Am Watching You she wrote a thriller, pure and simple (actually these things are never simple to write, but you know what I mean). She tells me in the interview that her family dramas were just a little too dark for readers of that genre, and not thriller-y enough to qualify for that genre. So she decided to go all-in with thrillers and started selling in big numbers. That’s not to say that writing a novel that offers everything that genre readers want will make it a guaranteed success, but it can certainly increase the odds.

My Witches of Woodville books fall between genres and categories. They’re not quite fantasy, not quite horror, and they’re not quite YA and that can make them tricky to sell. One of the most common comments I get on reviews is, “I don’t normally read stuff like this, but I really enjoyed it.” I’m fine with that, even if it means fewer sales, because they’re the books I wanted to write… But I’ve also embarked on a top secret project with another author that will be a thriller, pure and simple. We’re both hoping that this will give us the kind of success that authors like Teresa have enjoyed.

We also discuss why Teresa stopped watching TV for a year, perseverance, Dame Edna Everage, and owls. And in the extended version for podcast supporters I give tips on writing settings. If you want to support the podcast then click here and if you’re a chart topper supporter you’ll get access to hundreds of hours of extra writer-y goodness.