Mark West's Blog, page 90

Some very nice writing news...

"Mr Huxton Goes Camping" didn't make it into the market that it was written for, unfortunately, but I haven't let that stop me and I've sent it off elsewhere. Fingers crossed it finds a nice home very soon. However, there is good news on the writing front (and no, it's not "david & the clowns", which is still 'coming along').Gary Fry, of Grey Friar Press, sent out an invite a couple of weeks back

My little boy is a star...

Apparently, at school today, they were talking about books and writing and Dude told his teacher that I'm an author. He must have then explained what I write, because he told me that his teacher "likes horror too."Cool, eh? Youngest PR exec ever!

Send in the clowns

After a bit of a break, I've just started working on "david & the clowns" again. The clowns have just made their first appearance, Chelsea Smiles and all. Lovely.

Books up on eBay!

After some quite considerable time away, I've decided to dabble once more in the eBay waters and have put 10 books up for sale (my shelves were getting seriously overloaded and these were the first cull casualties).Apart from "The Birthing House" by Christopher Ransom, which is absolutely awful, the rest are decent enough books and all are in immaculate condition.Interested? The link to my eBay

The End, by Gary McMahon

My friend Gary McMahon has a short novel coming out in time for FantasyCon called "The End". I read it, to crit it for him and hands down, it's one of the best things I've read in a long time. Seriously good stuff.He's just posted about it on his own blog here and has used some artwork I did for him as a kind of 'placeholder image', until the proper cover art is finalised by NewCon Press. Said

David & The Clowns...

...is the working title of my new short story, which now stands at 1,278 words. Not bad, eh?

Another short!

I appear to be off again! I have guidelines for an anthology - no pay, but it's for a very good cause - and I'd love to be involved. I read the guidelines again and again, no inspiration for me at all, but there was a suggestion of other stories. I read part of one, got an image of clowns chasing a man, quickly realised that the clowns weren't really the problem (point of interest - I don't like

INXS Friday - Week 8

A beautiful song, that tells a real story. In fact, there's plenty of imagery here that I think would lend itself wonderfully to a horror story. But there you go, that's probably just me...By My Side

Casting myself out there

"Mr Huxton Goes Camping", my first short story in six years (how is that possible?), has just been submitted to the market it was kind of written for. I'll be honest, I'm as nervous as hell so wish me luck.I was also invited to contribute to an anthology and have re-worked an older story to send to that. Once again, nervous as hell about it, so any good luck you have to spare would be greatly

My travels and some writing...

Last week, I was in Paris with work. It was an interesting trip and, on the way back to the airport, my colleague and I stopped off at Notre Dame and sat outside at a café, having a drink and watching the world go by for a while.The next day, the volcano erupted in Iceland and closed down all air traffic in the UK. To give you an idea of it, this is a picture (which I first saw on Conrad Williams