Mark Stay's Blog, page 30

Ten Years Ago Today: Robot Overlord Rewrites and Panic Attacks…

Here’s an extract from my diary on Monday 8th April, 2013…

Slept badly last night. Panic attacks. It’s only 7 weeks till I leave. It’s becoming a reality now. Jon was looking at locations in Ireland today. Says he’s found a great ravine and a castle.

I got the official go ahead from Piers to work on the tie-in novel of Robots. Started work on the pitch and opening chapters right away.

PS. Jon and I did some good work on the cuts on Saturday. Molinare was empty. We found a quiet nook, ordered some tea and went about cutting thousands of pound from the VFX budget.

Some context: following on from my previous blog where I was asked to write the Robot Overlords novelisation, our producer Piers had to get it signed off by all the other producers. This will become a recurring motif through the making of the film and publication of the book: it could take forever to get a decision because so many people had to sign off on every major choice. It’s not that people were difficult, it’s just that there were so many producers and they’re all busy people.

In order to convince Gollancz that I was up to the job to write the novel, I put together a pitch which included a document outlining the project, a video with pre-viz VFX from the film (still a relatively new and snazzy thing) and about ten thousand words from the opening chapters.

This may have contributed to the late night panic attacks. To be honest, these weren’t anything new. I’d been having them for years, and still get them occasionally (had one just this week!), but I’m sure the big changes just around the corner we’re giving me conniptions. I had arranged to take a six-month sabbatical from work while the film was in production. This would not only allow me the time to write the novel full time, but I could also be more available to the film at its most crucial time.

Molinare is the post production facility just off Carnaby Street and where the film’s editing etc would be finalised. Jon and I were lucky to have it as a place where we could meet and work on tweaks to the script to shave away VFX in order to meet our budget.

Also, as an aside, Margaret Thatcher died on this day. I was never a big fan, but our current leaders make her look almost palatable. Almost…

More diary updates coming soon…

If you’d like to read the Robot Overlords novelisation you can get a signed copy here.
The film is available to download from Apple, Amazon, Sky etc and is currently streaming in Amazon Prime in the UK.

Ten Years Ago Today I Was Asked to Write the Robot Overlords Novelisation

Here’s an extract from my diary dated Friday 5th April, 2013:

Piers has officially asked me to write the film tie-in novel. I ran up to ask Gillian if Gollancz would be interested… they would! It all depends now on a deal being struck (and the film getting a release!), but I might be getting published, along with Claire, in 2014! Speaking of which, the first part of Claire’s advance has been paid: the company’s first bit of income.

So, let’s unpack all that… Piers Tempest was lead producer on Robot Overlords and in the run-up to production there was talk of merch like t-shirts and games, and also a book. I immediately volunteered for it, thinking that this could be a great way to get my first book published. And it made sense for me to pitch it to Gollancz, which is the SF&F imprint at the Orion Publishing Group where I worked.

Me running upstairs to ask Gillian Redfearn (I think she was a commissioning editor at Gollancz at the time. She’s now Deputy Publisher!) if Gollancz would be interested might sound like the deal was done there and then. It certainly wasn’t. In fact, and to their credit, Gollancz were wary of publishing an employee and I all sorts of hoops to jump through yet. But if you’re reading this and thinking ‘Jammy bugger’, then you’re right: I was taking advantage of my position within the company to get my work in front of a publisher. But also bear in mind that I chose to work in publishing precisely for this reason! So much of this business is about who you know, and if Gillian had said ‘No, thank you,’ then I had a long list of alternatives that I could approach. I had hoped that a day like this would come along eventually, and when it did I wasn’t about to let it slip by.

I was a little optimistic on the publication date of the book. The film had a premiere at the London Film Festival in 2014, but wasn’t released until March 2015. The book came out just before in February 2015.

And my wife Claire has beaten me to it in pretty much every field. She got an IMDb credit before me and her books were published before mine! Lottie and Dottie Sow Carrots was published in April 2014.

And the company? I was advised to start a Limited Company to manage the money coming in from our writing. In the UK, if you’re self employed and do your own self-assessment, if you have a good year, followed by a lean year (which is what it turned out to be) you can get walloped by a big tax bill. Having a limited company meant that we could manage the money without having to beg for rebates. And the company is still going ten years later!

Also from my diary that day…

Jon (Wright, director of Robot Overlords) gave me the fright of my life yesterday by sending me a grid with a list of cuts of VFX shots. It looked like we’re cutting back to virtually nothing! But then he explained the colour coding system on the grid. Blue is ‘cut’, orange is ‘cut from the “skimmed” version’ (which we’re preparing for the purposes of closing the deal), but we’re still intending to make the ‘full fat’ version, by chasing that extra £1m. We’re meeting tomorrow to go through the script.

A little context for this: we were still short of meeting our budget by about a million pounds, so we needed to write a version of the script where we could still make the film, but with fewer VFX shots. We had three versions: the ‘full fat’ was as written, the ‘skimmed’ version was with fewer VFX, and the blue version… well, we might as well have made it with stick figures. In the end, I think we shot something that fell between the ‘full fat’ and ‘skimmed’ version. But that’s a diary entry for another day…

Oh, and apparently it snowed that day, too!

If you’d like to read the Robot Overlords novelisation you can get a signed copy here.

The film is available to download from Apple, Amazon, Sky etc and is currently streaming in Amazon Prime in the UK.

David McCloskey on the Bestseller Experiment

When I prepped for my interview with former CIA analyst David McCloskey I was expecting to discuss the kind of things that writers get wrong/right about spy craft, and how to write about the trauma of real life events (which we did), but we also discussed things like letting go of your ego when writing and, erm hot dog vending machines. This is a good one…

The End of Magic: A Bit of an Announcement…

Here are the headlines, (more details below):

There’s a change in the availability of The End of Magic in eBook.

The paperback is about to go out of print and I have the last few.

Oh, and there’s going to be a sequel!

Cover art designed by Mark Ecob: http://mecob.co.uk

Something unexpected happened a couple of weeks ago. I got the rights back to The End of Magic from my publisher. This happened a year earlier than I thought it would and it caught me on the hop, but it means three things:

From today the eBook of The End of Magic will only be available to read on Kindle or Kindle Unlimited . If you’re an Apple/Kobo/Google reader and you’ve already bought the eBook of The End of Magic it should stay on your device. If it suddenly vanishes, then drop me a line here and I’ll sort it out. To read it now on Kindle just click here. The Unbound paperback is now officially out of print. You might still find copies online and in a few stores, but I snapped up the last few copies that Unbound had. So if you want a signed first edition paperback, there are fewer than 30 left and you can get them while stocks last here . If you want the standard Amazon print-on-demand version, then there’s an endless supply of those available from Amazon.I can finally write a sequel to The End of Magic!

So why couldn’t I write a sequel previously? Well, when you sign a deal with a publisher they have first refusal on any sequel/series ideas that you have. And as much as I like the good people at Unbound, I didn’t much fancy going down the crowdfunding route again. I had planned to wait until their licence expired next February, but they’re having a bit of a purge of their digital list, and they’ve been reverting the rights back to authors left, right and centre and so when they reverted the rights a couple of weeks ago it was something of a pleasant surprise.

I’ve spent the time since re-reading The End of Magic and I’d quite forgotten how much I loved writing those characters and playing in that world. So I’ve started making notes for a sequel, currently titled (drumroll)…

THE END OF DRAGONS

This will continue the story of Sander Bree, Rosheen Katell and her moon child brother Oskar and anyone else who managed to survive the events the End of Magic intact. Oh, and there will be dragons. Big ones.

Don’t get too excited just yet. It could take a year before it’s ready for publication, but it is happening (and there might even be a third to make it a trilogy, too), and I’m very excited to be writing it.

And if you’re a fan of the Witches of Woodville novels, please do not fear! The fourth in the series — The Holly King — is coming in September and available for pre-order now, and the fifth book will coming in 2024-ish, and hopefully there will be many more after that.

Right. Back to work. This epic fantasy won’t write itself…

UNWELCOME spoiler special coming soon…

Save the date! 27th April, 2023, 8pm BST we’ll have special livestream episode of the Bestseller Experiment on youtube where Mr D will be grilling me on the making of the film UNWELCOME! I’ll answer listener questions about the making of the film, and especially *that* ending! Warning: there will be spoilers, so if you haven’t seen Unwelcome already, then rent/buy it now and join us for a fun hour of mayhem and redcaps. It’s all on Youtube, so click on the link below for more info…

Experiments in AI Audio (and Romance) on the Bestseller Experiment

When I prepared my interview notes for this week’s guest Jayne Davis, I was expecting to talk about the finer points of Regency Romance fiction (which we did) and earning a living as an indie author (which we did), but experiments in artificial intelligence audio was a surprise topic. But I guess that’s typical of what’s happening now. AI’s reach is expanding into all corners of society. To be fair, though, Jayne started out as an engineer and has a fascination in how new things work and AI is another tool that she’s working with in a very successful career. In this case, she used an AI narrator for one of her audiobooks, with mixed results. You can download a sample from Bookfunnel here (you might need an account).

And the rest of this week’s podcast is here.

The Bestseller Experiment according to ChatGPT…

I asked ChatGPT to transcribe a typical episode of the Bestseller Experiment podcast. This is what it spat out (I swear, I have not tinkered with this one bit!)…

[Intro music]
MARK: Hello and welcome to the Bestseller Experiment, the podcast where we discover what makes a bestselling novel and inspire you to finish your book. I’m Mark Stay, and today I’m joined by…
MARKUS: Markus, hi, great to be here again.
MARK: It’s great to have you here, Markus. Now, today we’re going to be talking to a fantastic guest, an author who has sold over a million copies of her books worldwide.
MARKUS: Wow, that’s incredible. Who is it?
MARK: It’s none other than Jane Smith.
MARKUS: Oh, I love her books. This is going to be a great interview.
MARK: Absolutely. So, before we get to that, Markus, how has your writing been going this week?
MARKUS: Well, I’ve been struggling a bit with the second act of my current novel. It’s been tough trying to figure out how to keep the tension high without it feeling contrived. How about you, Mark?
MARK: I’ve actually been working on a short story this week. It’s a bit of a departure for me, as it’s a sci-fi story, but it’s been really fun to write.
MARKUS: That sounds interesting. Have you got any tips for writing sci-fi?
MARK: Definitely. I think the key is to start with a strong concept. You need to have something that’s going to capture people’s imagination and make them want to keep reading. And then, once you have that, you need to really think about the world that your story is set in. The more you can make it feel real and believable, the more your readers will be invested in the story.
MARKUS: That’s great advice, thanks.
MARK: No problem. So, let’s get to our interview with Jane Smith. Jane, thank you so much for joining us today.
JANE: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
MARK: So, first of all, congratulations on selling over a million copies of your books. That’s an incredible achievement.
JANE: Thank you. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, to be honest.
MARK: I can imagine. So, what do you think has been the key to your success?
JANE: I think it’s a combination of things. Firstly, I’ve always tried to write stories that are emotionally engaging. I want my readers to care about the characters and what happens to them. And secondly, I think it’s important to have a strong brand. When people see my name on a book, they know what to expect.
MARK: That’s really interesting. How did you go about building your brand?
JANE: It was a gradual process, really. I started off by writing in a particular genre, and over time I developed a style and a voice that people could recognise. And then, as my readership grew, I started to focus more on what they wanted from me. I made sure that I was delivering the kind of stories that they were looking for.
MARK: That’s great advice. So, what’s next for you? Are you working on a new book at the moment?
JANE: Yes, I am actually. It’s a bit of a departure for me, as it’s a historical novel. But I’m really excited about it.
MARK: That sounds great. Well, we’ll be looking out for that one. Jane, thank you so much for joining us today.
JANE: Thank you for having me.
MARK: That’s all we have time for today. Join us next week when we’ll be speaking to another bestselling author. And remember, keep writing and never give up on your dreams.
[Outro music]

Getting Confessional with Nadine Matheson

There’s something about chatting with bestselling thriller author and podcaster Nadine Matheson that made me all confessional! We talk about all sorts, including being made redundant, dealing with Amazon, being skint, being old and going for job interviews, why I insisted on getting a proper lunch break and much, much more! This is one of my favourite new podcasts, and I was honoured to be a guest. It’s available on all the usual podcast providers, or you can click on the link below…

Disney’s Black Hole Warped My Mind

I was delighted to be invited on the Fifty Years of Shit Robots podcast to discuss one of my favourite robot movies, Disney’s The Black Hole. This film really messed with my mind when I was a kid (still does now, to be honest) and I had a great laugh chatting with hosts Matt Brown and Stephen Murray through our favourite and not-so-favourite bits. Click here for links to listen to the podcast and click on the Tweet below for a slap-happy sample of what we discuss (best enjoyed with the sound on!)…

TODAY on the podcast, screenwriter @markstay breaks down the Disney techno-gothic classic, THE BLACK HOLE. There are a LOT of robots and a LOT of deaths. What could be more fun? https://t.co/1UjEGlMgYw pic.twitter.com/mdmzmOlOD4

— Fifty Years of S**t Robots Podcast (@FiftyYOSR) March 20, 2023

Grammar Free in the UK on the Bestseller Experiment

Something very different on the podcast this week. I spoke to Dave Dawson who with his dad, under the guise of Dave and Derek Philpott, has been writing funny letters to pop stars about their lyrics. Their first book, Dear Mr. Kershaw, became a cult hit and the follow-up Dear Mr. Pop Star was released by Unbound Publishing to more acclaim. And now they return with a Punk edition, Grammar Free in the UK, which is raising money for the charity Crisis. A few writing tips on building a community of readers, crowdfunding and such, but mostly this is a good laugh about 80s music and punk…

Get a copy of Grammar Free in the UK here: https://grammarfreeintheuk.bandcamp.com/Here’s the new edition of Dear Mr Pop Star:https://amzn.to/3HBAwFe Amazon Worldwidehttps://amzn.to/406zmc0  Amazon UK