Mark Stay's Blog, page 63

Four days to go!

And in today’s daily podcast we talk reviews and launch teams. We’re basically begging at this point: please buy our book (BACK TO REALITY, out Monday October 16th!!), and please give us a review… any review… stopping random people in the street counts as a review at this point.

This is longer than most of the other mini-episodes. Mostly we repeat ourselves as the mania increases, we give a big shout out to our amazing launch team, I namecheck a couple of author friends, Kit Cox and Graeme Williams, and then I get a little ranty at the end about mailing lists. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW

Five days to go!

In the third of our daily mini-episodes in the run-up to publication of Back to Reality (out on October 16th!) we look at Beta readers and reviews and how to cope with feedback.

You can definitely hear the mania beginning to set in with this episode. We recorded all of these on one night last week, and it was around the third episode that our banter became babble… but there’s some great stuff here. Our beta group on Facebook has been incredible: they have forensic attention to detail and they’re wonderfully supportive, which we really need as we careen towards our publication date (DID I MENTION THAT IT’S OUT ON OCTOBER 16TH???).

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW…

Six days to go till Back to Reality

In today’s mini-episode of the Bestseller Experiment podcast we discuss the dark art of getting other authors to give you quotes for their book. One way is to start a podcast and call in every favour you have to try and get authors on the show and then beg with them to read your book after a year or so… of course, that approach might not suit everybody, so we explore some other methods. But it pays to be bold! CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW… 

 

 

One week to go!

We publish our book BACK TO REALITY in just a week’s time on Monday October 16th.

And, for some reason, we thought it would be a good idea to have a week of daily podcasts (because, y’know, the pressure of publication isn’t nearly enough).

In today’s episode we talk blurbs and I read it out in my best sexy voiceover voice…

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW

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Joanna Penn on the Bestseller Experiment

On this week’s podcast we spoke to Joanna Penn, and blimey O’Reilly it’s an episode crammed with a ton of useful information on marketing and social media for authors. I’ve listened to it three times already to transcribe it for the Vault of Gold and it still hasn’t all sunk in.

One small note; we were using Zencastr to record this episode, which is normally as good as gold, but for some reason I sound like a Dalek gargling Listerine for most of it, and then at the very end I sound like I’m trapped in a tin box. Apologies for that. Normal service will be resumed shortly… CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW

Gollanczfest and a gatecrasher…

This week’s episode of the podcast is enhanced by the good folk from Gollancz talking GollanczFest, and by a very special gatecrasher…

 

It was all good chaotic fun and not one person asked why I was wearing that hat (it was to celebrate Stephen King’s 70th birthday).

Oh, and if you want a chance to win a couple of tickets for GollanczFest, get a clickin’ over here…

A big, ballsy declaration (don’t be chicken)

Howdy, this month’s chicken centrefold is Giz. Say hello to Giz…

[image error]Visitors are always welcome to the writing room…

We’ve learned quite a few things on the Bestseller Experiment podcast, but the one lesson that’s really chimed with me is the importance of a deadline. And not only a deadline, but a big, public bastard declaration of a deadline that you can’t go back on without making yourself look a complete pillock and suffering big heapings of public shame when you don’t meet it.

It focuses the mind of a writer, forces you to make difficult decisions, doesn’t give you much time for self-doubt, and increases productivity. Just have a look at Brandon Sanderson’s website: he has little progression bars for each of his projects right there on the homepage, and I’m sure this plays a big part in maintaining his incredibly prolific output. Deadlines can be terrifying, but after a year of writing for the podcast I can tell you they bloody work. I still haven’t decided when I’ll make my next stupid declaration. Maybe by the end of this newsletter…? Who knows?

During the meanwhilst, our novel has been through an edit, another rewrite, and is currently with our copy editor. She’s currently getting forensic on its ass, and we look forward to getting a document riddled with notes pointing out our poor grammar, punctuation and identifying massive plot holes.

It’s also with a couple of advance readers. Just a handful at first, then we’ll take on their feedback and widen it out to others. The truth is, we don’t have much time, so if they come back with ‘It stinks, rewrite the whole thing and set it in 12th century Mongolia,’ then we’re kind of screwed. Fortunately, so far we’ve had ‘This isn’t what I expected, but I’m really enjoying it,’ comments (it really is unlike anything I’ve written before).

We’ve also had our first meeting with our cover designer, which was incredibly exciting and promises to be the most enjoyable part of the experiment if for no other reason than it’s our chance to torture a fellow creative. There will be some kind of cover reveal in the next month or so. Follow us on the Twitters, Facebook and Instagram to be the first to know.

I’ve also gone back to look at a couple of projects that I put aside in order to concentrate on the Bestseller Experiment. The first is a middle-grade science fiction adventure novel. I finished the first draft of this almost exactly a year ago, and I’m happy to say that it stands up to scrutiny pretty well. I’m giving it a light polish before sending it to my agent. My hope is that this will get picked up by a children’s publisher and be the first in a bestselling series, leading to big budget movies, action figures and inordinately expensive Lego kits.

The other project… Well, maybe it’s time for a big, stupid, ballsy, public declaration of a deadline? This project started as a book in 2008, then became a TV pilot script, then went back to being a book again, then was reduced to a treatment for another version of a TV show. It was an idea in search of a format and was in danger of being completely abandoned, but whenever I went back to it I knew that it had such rich potential. Another big lesson learned from the Bestseller Experiment is that a good series can be hugely successful. And it occurred to me that this project didn’t need to be just one book and it didn’t need to be restricted by TV and film budgets. It could be a series set in a single precinct, much like Robert Rankin’s Brentford, or Terry Pratchett’s Discworld where anything could happen. A kind of Midsomer Murders with magic, with a roster of characters and situations that will allow me to write about pretty much any theme I want to. It’s current working title is The Woodville Project after the school where I grew up (my parents were the school caretakers and I had the run of the fields and adventure playground… it was bloody brilliant).

So, my big, stupid, ballsy, public declaration is that I will write and self-publish three Woodville novellas in 2018. The first one in, pfft, I dunno… shall we say April? Fine, that’s a deal. Here we go!

Shit, what have I done?

Till next time!

Mark

PS. Of course this could all be scuppered by a really good film or TV deal coming along. I reserve the right to sell-out to Hollywood.

PPS. What’s your declaration? I promise not to tell anyone, but I will hold you to it. Life is short, what are you waiting for…? Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day…

PPS. Subscriber to my newsletter get this news first, so why not sign-up now? It’s Mailchimp, so no selling to spammers.

 

Welcome To Woodville…

Strange doesn’t even begin to describe it. To be the first to get news on this exciting new book series, sign-up to Mark Stay’s newsletter here.

Oliver Stone, Chocolate Hobnobs and Japanese Knotweed

After months of wrangling with estate agents, solicitors, Japanese Knotweed and a very stubborn tree, my family and I have finally moved home. We’ve left the suburbs behind and headed out to the country where I won’t be watching afternoon repeats or the food I eat, but instead working on making a new life here, and writing as much as possible in my mighty man cave (with a lovely view of the washing line)…

 

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The latest news on the Bestseller Experiment is that we’ve finished our latest draft and have sent it to our editor. This is the first time that a fresh pair of eyes will read our work, and it’s always a slightly terrifying prospect, but we’ve worked our nuts off on this book, and when working on the final chapters over the weekend I actually found myself blubbing. That’s never happened to me before, so I reckon we might be onto something (mind you, I’ve been wrong in the past).

A big change to my routine is my commute. I used to get thirty minutes or so on the train each morning to write, then I would write in my lunch break, then again on the train home. Two hours a day of good writing, albeit mostly in a tin can full of stressed commuters, which could leave me wiped out on a hot day. My new commute takes up over three hours of my day, but it’s far less stressful, fully air-conditioned, and ten times as productive. I’m loving it already and wished I’d done this years ago.

Oh, and I’m in a film! Film lover, film reviewer and now filmmaker Stuart Bannerman has a made a documentary called Experiencing Comic Cons. I love going to cons and Stuart spoke to me while at MCM last year. Blink and you’ll miss me, but Oliver Stone is in the film, too, and I think that means me and Ollie are best friends or something (he’s yet to answer my calls, but it’s just a matter of time before I wear him down). It’s a passion project for Stuart and if you love cons, or even if you’ve never been and want to know what all the fuss is about, then I urge you to check it out (also, he very kindly brought me a packet of chocolate Hobnobs while I was signing books, which makes him one of my favourite people in the world).

Back to work now. Mr. Desvaux and I now have been tasked by our editor to come up with a synopsis and blurbs for our book… Wish us luck!

 

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I haven’t written for three days!

If you follow the Bestseller Experiment podcast you might have noticed that we recently finished our first draft. This is always a cause for celebration, even if the draft is a big old mess (which it is) and will need a ton of work (which it will). Simply finishing something is an achievement.

I celebrated by getting a summer cold, and diving straight into rewrites of a TV pilot script. This was huge fun, as this was the script that had been give such a kicking a while ago, but I had spent the time since working on solutions that I couldn’t wait to try out.

The other reason for the hurry is that I’m moving house. The Stay family is leaving the suburbs and heading to the country… Well, maybe not the country, but it’s next to a farm, and for a boy born in the city that counts as the countryside. All this means lots of packing (so many books!), and a break in my usual routine, which means I haven’t written anything other than emails to utility companies in three days.

I’m a ‘write every day’ guy. If I don’t write anything during the working day, I get twitchy. So much so, that I just snuck out of bed in the middle of the night to sit among the boxes and compose this blog…

… and that feels good, even though it’s not the full dose of happiness that I get from a bit of creative writing. But I am reassured by the response we got from Sarah Pinborough on the podcast when we asked her if she wrote every day. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s bollocks.’ She went on to clarify that even though she might not actually be writing her latest work in progress, she’s always thinking about it. Well, I’ve been doing lots of thinking, and I’m allowing myself to call that work, even if it’s just for a few days.

The other thought that keeps me going is that when we move I will finally have a writing room. I hate to use the phrase ‘man-cave’, due to all the icky connotations, but it will almost certainly be the very definition of male writer mid-life crisis decor: film posters, books, Lego, and I might even succumb to the lure of vinyl LPs again… Lordy, what have I become…?

In the meantime, keep writing, my friends. I love hearing about your work and news (my friend Graeme Williams just had some amazing news!) and it’ll keep me going till I see you on the other side once I’ve unpacked…

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