Mark Stay's Blog, page 46

The Crow Folk Audiobook – An Exclusive Clip

I can’t being to tell you how much I love the audiobook of The Crow Folk as read by the wonderful Candida Gubbins. Here’s an exclusive clip… The audiobook is available from all the usual audiobook retailers and libraries.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello. I’m out for a walk in some slightly inclement weather. Anyway, The Crow Folk is out. Thank you to everyone who’ s bought a copy, has read it, and said nice things, and came to the launch parpy… party! It’s your book now. So thank you so much. Available in eBook, paperback and audio! Which I suspect is probably the best way to enjoy the book. It’s read by the wonderful Candida Gubbins. We’re gonna listen to an exclusive clip of it right now. It comes from in the middle of the book.
They’ve all just seen The Crow Folk and And no one can quite agree what they’ve just seen. I’d like to remind you, the book is set in the summer. In an English summer. Not like this. So do please enjoy!

Chapter 14, The Heart of the Village.

Woodville had a perfectly good village hall. Rebuilt after a fire in 1932, it served as a venue for village council business, the Woodville Amateur Dramatics Society, wedding receptions and children’s parties. It had electric throughout, parking spaces for two motor cars and even one of those fancy indoor lavvies. For the big emergencies, though, the good villagers of Woodville knew there was only one place they could gather for a rational debate.
The Green Man pub was the real heart of the village and most of Woodville’s residents had squeezed themselves inside to harrumph and rhubarb about the bizarre events they had just witnessed. It was the noon-till-two lunchtime session and the pub hadn’t been this busy since New Year’s Eve. Faye held the fort at the bar while Terrence popped down to the cellar to change a couple of barrels.
‘Travelling folk, I reckon. Passing through,’ Bertie Butterworth said and got a flutter of uhms and aahs in vague agreement from the gathered throng. He had dried out since this morning’s little adventure in the river.
‘Do not disappoint us, they said.’ Faye folded her arms. ‘That sounds like a threat to me, and we don’t take kindly to threats, do we folks?’ This got a rousing chorus of Yuuuurrrsss from the Local Defence Volunteers, who had also dried out. They could only recall a slight altercation between Mr Marshall and Mr Baxter when asked how this morning’s training had gone. Bertie was the same. Faye brought it up when he ordered his pint and he scrunched his nose and frowned, half-remembering that something odd happened, though he wasn’t quite sure what. Why was she the only one who remembered the way the starlings put out the fire? Faye could understand the older men forgetting. At the forefront of their minds were Dunkirk and the war. They had been champing at the bit for a scrap since the retreat, and if they couldn’t fight Nazis, then a bunch of strangers dressed like scarecrows making threats would do for the time being thank you very much. But Bertie should have remembered. 
‘Ignore ’em,’ Bertie said, a voice of reason. He got a few boos from his LDV comrades. ‘Why pick a fight? They’ll be gone soon enough.’
‘I don’t think they’re going anywhere, Bertie.’ Faye fixed him with a slightly miffed stare and the boy wavered, slurping his cider, unsure why she was suddenly so cross with him. ‘And I don’t think they’re travellers,’ Faye continued, wanting to scream that they were clearly scarecrows, but also remembering what Mrs Teach had told her about folk only seeing and hearing what they wanted to. She caught Mrs Teach’s eye. The older woman was watching her from the end of the bar where she nursed a sherry. ‘And that name. Suky. I’m sure I’ve heard it before. Anyone here know a Suky?’ The villagers all looked to one another and in moments the pub was hosting a shrugging contest. ‘They called themselves crow folk. What does that mean?’ More shrugs.
‘A circus, I reckon,’ Terrence said as he emerged from the cellar. ‘I almost ran off with the circus when I was a lad, y’know?’
‘The circus?’ Faye squinted at her dad through her specs. ‘Since when?’
‘They came here when I was a little older than you. Had a bit of a fling with a woman who could put her ankles right behind her ears—’
‘Dad!’
There was a splutter as Bertie choked on his cider, followed by a raucous jeer from the men in the bar. Mrs Teach, who had been uncharacteristically silent since the departure of the crow folk, raised an appreciative eyebrow and sipped at her sherry.
Faye raised her voice. ‘Can we get back to the subject: a marauding band of scarecrows just demanded we hand over poor Mr Craddock.’
‘Gypsy folk, Faye,’ Terrence said with a stern voice. ‘It ain’t nice to call ’em scarecrows.’
‘Poor Mr Craddock?’ Mrs Teach spluttered, breaking her silence. ‘Let me tell you, young lady, he’s not poor, and he doesn’t deserve our sympathy. He is a brute. A cruel brute. He’s a proper scoundrel, and there isn’t a person here who’s not had an unpleasant altercation with the man.’
‘That’s right,’ Miss Burgess said. ‘When my Matilda was sick, he said I should wring her neck and be done with her.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Terrence said as the rest of the pub gasped along in disgust. ‘Hang on, who’s Matilda?’
‘One of my chickens.’
‘He kicked my Mr Tinkles,’ Miss Gordon cried. ‘Called him a flea-bitten moggy.’ This got some murmurs of sympathy, though there were few in attendance who hadn’t been gifted something short, brown and smelly by Miss Gordon’s cat. 
‘He started a salacious rumour,’ Mr Hodgson began, and the pub’s patrons held their breath in anticipation of the punchline, ‘about my knees.’
‘He let the tyres down on my brand-new Austin hearse,’ Mr Loaf, the usually jolly funeral director declared. ‘Said it was in his way, so quite what he hoped to achieve by making sure it couldn’t move, I don’t know. Delayed old Mr Gregg’s funeral by an hour. Most distressing.’
‘I once saw him tip over Kenny Finch’s milk cart in an argument about clotted cream,’ Mr Paine said, idly sucking on a humbug. ‘Two miserable sods at each other. Hate to say it, but that was quite enjoyable to observe, actually.’
‘He was always mocking my Ernie’s height,’ Mrs Teach said, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘Shorty, titch, half-pint. Every time he saw my Ernie there was a new insult, but my Ernie took it all in his stride and with a smile. I can assure you that while my Ernie may have been lacking stature, he was a big, big man.’
No one knew quite where to look. They had heard the rumours about Ernie, too.
‘Another sherry, Mrs Teach?’ Terrence offered.
Mrs Teach slid her glass to him.
‘I like to think the best of folks,’ Bertie said from behind the dregs of his cider, ‘but if being a miserable bugger was an Olympic sport, then Mr Craddock would get gold, silver and bronze.’
‘And he was going to thump me one last night, but that’s no reason we should hand over one of our neighbours to these . . .’ Faye looked over to her dad, ‘Gypsies.’
‘It’s simply none of our business,’ Mrs Teach said. ‘If they’ve had a contretemps with Mr Craddock then let them have it out. We should, like the Swiss, remain neutral.’
‘Like that Mr Hitler had a contretemps with Poland? And France? Like that?’ Faye could sense her father’s disapproving glare – never disagree with a customer – but she couldn’t let this stand. ‘And what if they decide to have a little disagreement with you, Mrs Teach, hmm? Should I turn a blind eye then, too? We’ve never taken kindly to threats round here and I don’t see why we should start now. Especially with these scarecrows.’
‘Gypsies,’ Terrence corrected.
‘Scarecrows, Dad. One of them had a bloomin’ great pumpkin for an ’ead. I saw it, like you all did. I don’t care if it’s real or what, but if they dress up like scarecrows and act like scarecrows, I’m callin’ ’em scarecrows. So what are we going to do about it?’
‘I don’t see what we can do,’ Terrence said with a forced chuckle. Faye couldn’t fathom why he was laughing at first, then she recalled seeing him do this with unhappy customers in the past. He had always told her that if anyone got a bit tasty then first try distracting them by changing the subject and having a laugh. Just pretend you hadn’t heard the insult or threat and no one would feel they had to deliver on any angry promises of fisticuffs. It was an old trick, but he had never tried it on his own daughter. He was attempting to shut her up like she was some common saloon bar brawler. ‘But I can see young Bertie needs another half o’ cider.’ Terrence slid Bertie’s empty glass towards Faye.
‘Ooh, thank you very much.’ Bertie grinned.
‘Good health.’
‘Cheers.’
Faye scowled at her father, but he gave her a jolly wink and raised his head to address the whole pub.
‘Mrs Teach is right. There ain’t a person in this room who’s not had a run-in with Archibald Craddock,’ Terrence said. ‘And who’s to say they don’t have him already? Anyone here seen him today? No, me neither. And if he’s got some sort of beef with these Gypsy folk . . .’
Faye sighed, surrendered and poured Bertie’s half.
‘. . . then knowing Craddock, he’s prob’ly having a scrap with ’em now in a barn somewhere. That’s how he settles things. Queensberry Rules. Let them have it out fair and square and not stick our noses in.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Mrs Teach said. ‘One shouldn’t go poking one’s nose into other people’s business, Faye. It’s not ladylike.’
Faye spluttered at the hypocrisy of the nosiest woman in the village. ‘Well, I wonder why you of all people, Mrs Teach, wouldn’t want anyone digging deeper?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I saw that fella with the pumpkin for a head tip his hat at you as he wandered off,’ Faye said. ‘Looked like he knows you well enough.’
‘I cannot account for the behaviour of others.’
‘There must be some reason why he singled you out.’
‘Perhaps he knows a lady when he sees one.’
‘P’raps he—’
‘All right, that’s enough, Faye.’ Terrence’s voice boomed as he took his daughter by the shoulders and steered her away from Mrs Teach. ‘Collect the empties and wash them up, please. I think we all need to—’
A heavy thud came from the roof of the pub.
Everyone froze and glanced at each other to make sure they had all heard it, too.
Thud!
Everyone looked up.
Thud-thud-thud!
It became an avalanche of impacts, all piling on top of one another, each one making Faye’s heart jolt. People murmured and clustered together, and then from outside came a scream. Faye hurried around the bar, wriggled through the crowd, pulled the doors open and dashed outside.
She found the elderly Mrs Pritchett out walking her two Yorkshire Terriers. The dogs whined and the old lady was trembling, her eyes wide in terror.
All around her, and littering the whole cobbled street, were starlings. Dozens of them, lying still with their little legs stiff. Some twitched in their death throes, their wings broken.
Mrs Pritchett found her voice. ‘They just . . . fell out of the sky.’

Chilled to the bone and encrusted with dried mud, the fugitive Craddock crawled along the edge of the marsh stream. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of those scarecrows for hours and he would be home soon. His shack stood at the edge of the wood on the other side of Therfield Abbey. When he got there, the first thing he would do was feed the stove, change into dry clothes and finish off the bottle of rum he had stashed away in a box under the bed. He would try and forget whatever the blazes he had witnessed this last night and if that meant more rum, then so be it. He would forget and never speak of it again.
As Craddock clambered up the slippy bank, there came a heavy splash from the stream. Craddock looked back, only to see rings of water spreading out from the impact. A kingfisher, perhaps, or a carp coming up for air. He resumed his climbing when he heard another splash. Then something bounced off his head and he cursed.
It fell to the ground before him. A crow. Its blue-black feathers spread out in flight, frozen in death.
Birds began to fall all around him, tumbling from the sky, bouncing off branches and rolling dead to the ground. There was only so much strangeness a man like Craddock could cope with and so he ran, fuelled by fear. Scrabbling from the stream, he dodged through the wood, dead birds still falling all round him, thumping down on his head, crunching under his boots. He came to the winding path, then up uneven stone steps to the arches of Therfield Abbey, a Norman ruin with broken stone walls that rose around him.
The birds no longer fell, though the ground was littered with their bodies. Hands on his thighs, he leaned forwards to catch his breath, then dropped to his knees. His fingers trembled, his head pounded and his breath scratched at his throat. A moment here would do.
Through the cloisters came the scarecrows.

Charlotte was chopping wood and her bonfire was burning nicely when it happened. Birds bounced off branches before spiralling lifelessly to the woodland floor around her.
She swung the axe and buried its head in the chopping block before striding to her cottage and digging out a book she had hoped she might never need to open again. A book of signs and warnings, handed down from one generation to another. She flicked through it, her eyes darting as she scanned the pages.
And there it was.
She stood back from the book as if it were infectious.
Charlotte found her pipe on the dining table, stuffed it with tobacco and puffed as she lit it. Her nerves were soothed, but what she saw still troubled her. She glanced sidelong at the book, as if she didn’t want it to notice her curiosity.
Flames from the bonfire outside threw shapes and shadows around the room. On the pages of the book, the shifting light gave the illusion of movement to an old woodcut illustration of birds falling from the sky in droves. Below them danced a grinning scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head.


Signed Book and Chocolate Giveaway

Giveaway time! For your chance to to win one of five signed/dedicated copies of The Crow Folk and a special bar of chocolate simply sign up to the my newsletter here at the Woodville Village Library... https://witchesofwoodville.com/#library

Ends 5pm GMT, 28th Feb 2021 Ts&Cs here: https://witchesofwoodville.com/woodville-newsletter-giveaway-terms-and-conditions/

Live Show – The Aftermath

A huge thank you to everyone who came to last night’s online launch for The Crow Folk! I think a splendid time was had by all. If you missed out, or want to relive the giddy joy of it all over again, it’s here in its entirely for your viewing pleasure…

Thanks also to Caimh McDonnell for compering magnificently, to Ian W Sainsbury for the joyful sing-a-long-a-pub-knees-up at the end, to Emily and Kai for tech support, Dominic King for bringing us to the world via the BBC, to Sara Cox for her sage advice in the run-up to launch, to Claire for her lovely veg, and to George for once more reprising the role of Pumpkinhead.

The Crow Folk is now out there and belongs to you lovely readers. I sincerely hope you really enjoy it… and if you do, there’s more on the way. Not only will book two be coming in October, but I’ll also be releasing a quartet of short stories featuring the mysterious Miss Charlotte. Watch this space for more news on that soon!

How To Market Your Book – Episode 13

With days to go until the launch of ‘The Crow Folk’ (published by Simon & Schuster), author and screenwriter Mark Stay and video marketer & creator Jeremy Mason deep dive into the writing process.

In this 13th outing of the ‘Book Marketing Challenge’, we offer writing advice for new writers, as well as insights into freelance writing and the whole process of writing books. If you’re looking for writing advice from authors, and tips on how to write your first book – you should watch this. In fact – anyone with even a vague interest in writing books, should, really, IMHO.

Where I got the idea for The Crow Folk

We had a special episode of the Bestseller Experiment this week and Mark Desvaux asked me a bunch of listener questions about The Crow Folk. I’ve broken them up into short videos, and in this first episode I talk about how the idea developed from a contemporary TV pilot into the Second World War novel that’s out now.

You can listen to the whole podcast episode here.

Discover more about the Crow Folk and the Witches of Woodville here.

TRANSCRIPT:

MARK STAY: Hello folks, it’s here! Look! Finished, gorgeous. Thanks to everyone who bought the book, read the book, said lovely things about the book, a huge thank you to all of you. It really means a lot. What you’re going to see today… We had a special episode of The Bestseller Experiment where I answered a whole bunch of listener questions and rather than one big lump of video I’m going to do them in little chunks over time, in more digestible chunks. So the first of these, people ask me where I got the idea from and how it developed. And this has been in development for some time. Be warned: this video contains gratuitous bellringing.

MARK DESVAUX: But let’s let’s dive in because there’s a lot there’s a lot of things people want to know about this book. And the first thing the first question is from Jan Carr, and Jan asks, where did you get your idea from?

MS: Classic, classic, and just to reassure listeners, so I’m going to try and make the answers as helpful for writers as possible, and it’s not just going to be me blowing smoke up my own bum for an hour, I mean, maybe for just forty five minutes. So hopefully we’ll get some insight into working with agents, editors, development, ideas, writing for series historical fiction, stuff like that. So Chris asked the same question. Chris Lowenstein: Where did you get the idea? Matt says, of all the story ideas you likely had before you started this book, why did you choose this one? Tanya says, How do you decide if it’s a book or TV thing? What made you a great idea for a novel? A lot of variations on that. But here’s the thing. I’ve got files going back on this idea going all the way back to 2008. So it’s… and it probably dates to before that. I mean, this has been mulling around for a long, long time. And it did, weirdly, it started out as a TV idea, but it was very different.
First of all, I think the big problem with it was I had the point of view completely wrong, and it only took me about 10 years to figure that out. And the period was wrong too, because it was contemporary. Set in the here and now. So a few things had to change to sort of make the idea fall into place. And for me, it really started getting momentum in its current form when we were visiting friends in Chiddingtone in Sussex. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Chiddingstone. It’s on the border of Sussex and Kent. And it is your archetypal English village. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Weirdly, I work with the chap who lives there called Mark Streatfeild, who is kind of Lord of the Manor at Chiddingstone castle. He’s related to Noel Streatfeild who wrote Ballet Shoes. And they have… The family have their own coat of arms and everything. And Claire was down there, bellringing And while she was ringing, me and the kids sat outside a pub and the kids challenged me to come up with an idea for Doctor Who. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a whole session of bellringing? But they do something at the end. They ring down the bells because the bells have to be put in a position where they kind of put up and then they’re rung down and something happens to the bells, the bells and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They start ringing very, very closely together, really, really closely together. And it creates this incredible sound, an absolutely incredible sound. It’s like the lost chord from the beginning of the universe. It just creates this incredible magical hum and… And I got something from that I thought that could be that could be something magical, but that’s a good MacGuffin. I could use that. And of course, we’ve been using bells to fight off evil since time began. So bells…. Bells was something… Going to be very important and also Claire hosts… The bellringers will go on journeys. They’ll go from Surrey to Kent and back for the day back or whatever. And they they use us as a base for a couple of days. So sort of twice a day they come back and I’d have to make 40 cups of tea and then double up 40 lots of sandwiches or whatever. And I joked to them, oh, this is just after The End of Magic came out. I joked that I would make bellringers the heroes in my next book. So so the whole bell ringing MacGuffin was coming together. And it does play a really important part in The Crow Folk and then the time period thing put it into place, because it was still a TV idea. My TV agent, my script agent said, why don’t you set it… Instead of making it contemporary, why don’t you set it in the Second World War? Because that period England… Downton Abbey is an easier sell to Americans and overseas people than contemporary England. And that just… Another sort of thing sorted into place. Okay, great: World War Two and… I’ve moved to Kent. Moving here made a big, big difference because… Moving to the country made a big difference. And World War Two, I mean, it happened here with the Battle of Britain right above our heads. So moving here made all the difference.

MD: I got to say…

MS: Slotted into place and then.

MD: I was going to say, yes, that’s kind of like and it’s an extreme case, isn’t it, of a book research is to actually leave leave the suburbs of London and buy a house and therefore you’ve immersed yourself in it. Must have changed a lot because immersing yourself in kind of a village kind of environment must have given you an amazing kind of sense of backdrop for the book. Right?

MS: Completely. Completely. I mean, one of the nice notes I’ve got from someone who read the book said they said you write nature really well, and it’s just being here. You become a lot more aware of the nature and the surroundings. And then the big thing that clicked into places I got the POV right. In and the original version had been the monster’s POV. With this, I created a created a character called Faye Bright. She’s this young girl. She’s your classic, you know, hero… ingenue, kind of, you know, of character. And it all kind of started to click into place. And going back to I think it was Matt who said, why choose this one? It was just the idea that just would not go away. And I couldn’t figure out why… I’d write other things. And whenever I finish those things, I came back and this idea just kept coming back: a magical wood, a village. And, you know, the other thing is I knew this had series potential, you know, that endless well of story. And for years I’ve been trying to think of a series idea, something I could come back to. Well, could it be a science fiction idea? Fantasy idea, what have you? And this it all clicked into place about a character that was able to grow with the series. You know, she’s 17 in this book, but she’ll grow as it goes on. And it just took a really, really long time to see what was right in front of me. But, yeah, that’s a very, very long answer. But it had a very, very long gestation. It’s been around for 13 years. And ten of those it was kind of swimming about and it was completely wrong. So if anyone out there is thinking, you know, I’ve got this idea and it just won’t gel, just be patient. Just if it keeps coming back, if it keeps nagging you, there’s something in there. There’s there’s gold in them thar hills. And you just have to have the tenacity to hang in there because eventually it will reveal itself.

MD: I think it’s a brilliant, brilliant testament really to that idea. And we often call it signposting where you get to you know, you get an opportunity in life where you can start something new or you can try something and you look at the signposts and the different things that you could do at that point in your life. And if there’s a signpost is always there, it’s always like this is this I’m not going away. I’m not leaving you. If you see that enough times, you really have to follow up. And it sounds like intuitively you went right now. But it’s also about timing, is it? Well, I mean, you couldn’t have written this book five, ten years ago, right?

MS: Well, I did. I did write the book. I mean, that’s the thing. I mean, we’ve got questions about development later on. I finished many, many drafts of the wrong book, you know, that eventually kind of and scripts, you know, TV pilot scripts, feature length scripts that I got to the end of. And they still didn’t work. So, you know, it’s I did write it, but it was it was just wrong. It was it was wrong, wrong, wrong era and not the right character for you to write the right book as well.

If you enjoyed that, folks, there’s more to come. I’m going to be talking about future episodes, things like development, the writing process, writing historical language, historical dialogue and comparing my experiences in crowdfunding and indie publishing and traditional publishing, all that good stuff. So subscribe and don’t miss an episode. See you soon. And happy writing.

I Got On The Bestseller Experiment Podcast!

What are the odds, eh? I answer our wonderful listener questions on choosing and developing ideas, working with agents and editors, writing non-sweary period dialogue, and I compare my experiences in traditional publishing, indie publishing, crowdfunding and now with Simon & Schuster… Have a listen here: https://bestsellerexperiment.com/ep303-mark-stay-and-the-crow-folk/

And here’s a quick look behind the scenes before we started recording…

You Are Cordially Invited To The Launch Of THE CROW FOLK

We’re launching my new novel THE CROW FOLK with a special party and you’re all invited!

The launch will be happening online on Facebook and Youtube on Thursday 4th February, 7-8pm GMT (11-noon PST, 12-1pm MST, 2-3pm EST, 6am next AEDT, 5am next day AEST).

CLICK HERE TO JOIN ON YOUTUBE

CLICK HERE TO JOIN ON FACEBOOK

The dress code is 1940s Home Front and our Master of Ceremonies for the evening will the wonderful Mr Caimh McDonnell — author and stand-up comedian of some repute. There will be revelations, merriment and a splendid time for all.

If you have any questions for me, then simply pop it in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer it on the evening.

If you cannot make the launch party, then fear not: it shall be recorded and distributed across all the usual social media channels.

We look forward to seeing you on the evening in your best bib and tucker. Until then, don’t forget to order The Crow Folk at all the usual stockists here.

How To Market Your Book – Episode 12

In this 12th outing of the “Book Marketing Challenge,” we’re joined by Bookswarm’s Simon Appleby – an author website expert, to reveal why having an author website is critical to the success of book marketing. We discuss what goes on your author website, and how to best use websites for author marketing. https://mpvideoproduction.co.uk/

This series takes you on a journey of book publishing – offering writing tips and writing advice – along with book promotion and book marketing strategies. It’s the uncut, inside story of a book’s journey from the page to it appearing on a bookshelf in your favourite bookstore …

How To Market Your Book With Youtube — Part 10

3 weeks away from our book launch, we’re exploring virtual book launch ideas as the UK is in lockdown. So “The Crow Folk” author Mark Stay, pivots his book launch plans online. Joined by facilitator Sara Cox – we discover how to launch a book online.

In this 11th outing of the ‘Book Marketing Challenge,’ You’ll learn loads of tips for planning a successful book launch, with stacks of book launch ideas, to make your next book launch a massive success.

This series takes you on a journey of book publishing – offering writing tips and writing advice – along with book promotion and book marketing strategies. It’s the uncut, inside story of a book’s journey from the page to it appearing on a bookshelf in your favourite bookstore …

The Crow Folk Unboxing Video

We did one of those author unboxing videos… We might have got a bit carried away.

Camera, sound and edit: Kai Newton

Production Assistant: Emily Stay

Pumpkinhead: George Stay

Music: Dom Currie

Kai is keeping a video diary and you can see behind the scenes here…