Mark Speed's Blog, page 2

Do your research, but spare us the detail

Research is critical – there’s always going to be an expert out there who trips you up as a writer if you don’t get it right. I once modelled for a photo-shoot where I starred as Mozart. The sub-editor overseeing it (an art historian) explained that even the inkwell I used had to be of the precise era, or they’d get complaints from pedantic readers. Luckily he knew someone at Sotheby’s and was able to procure one. But I digress.

When writing about a specific period in time you have to be able...

Apocalypse Later… again

Thanks to terrific reader feedback, I’ve republished Apocalypse Later: A guide to the end of the world by Nice Mr Deathas an ebook. It’s now available on Kindle, and from Amazon Createspace as a paperback.

Second edition cover. Nice, eh? Designed for better interwebs viewing

I published Apocalypse Later as a traditional paperback in August 2012, as I was performing my cult solo comedy The End of the World Show at the Edinburgh Fringe. I’d done a half-run the year before, and audience members ke...

Public reading at London Book Fair

Public reading of Doctor How and the Illegal Aliens

The London Book Fair took place earlier this month. I was invited to perform a public reading of Doctor How and the Illegal Aliens: Doctor How, book one

at an event organised by The Alliance of Independent Authors, and funded by Amazon and Createspace.

The pub was packed, the sponsors were picking up the bar tab, and I was on late in the evening. Unfortunately the video camera picked up the noise of the glasses being washed rather than my readi...

Doctor How and the Mad March Launch

The second week of March can only mean one thing: Doctor How and the Illegal Aliens is due for publication in four days.

The word count is now 65,000. It’s been professionally proofed and reviewed by a couple of beta-readers. The cover artwork has been done and redone. The CreateSpace version has been laid out, and it has lost two pages in the last 24 hours. Not a reduction in words – just an increase in the quality of layout. The cover was the last thing to be approved: a higher resolution im...

Doctor How and the Frustrating February

F is for the F in Frustrating February I’ve just had (geddit?).

January had the big learning-curve associated with my first Kindle giveaway, which was for Doctor How and the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy. Not a catchy title, but I was hoping it would hit some keywords in searches. The indications were that I was right, because the ‘also bought’ section in Amazon displays a load of titles completely unrelated to my genre. Keywords work – what a fantastic own-goal by yours truly!

It didn’t ach...

Is Content King?

It’s almost a month since I published Doctor How and the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy, which is a promotional taster for the whole Doctor How series. Last weekend I ran a four-day Kindle freebie promotion for it. I set myself a ludicrous target for downloads, which I came nowhere near achieving.

Am I disheartened? Not a bit of it. I’ve failed before in marketing novels, but I’m failing just that little bit better this time. You can buy any number of courses on Kindle market...

Doctor How plot in Private Eye cartoon

Doctor Who 50th and Kennedy Assassination connected

British satirical magazine Private Eye spotted exactly what I did, publishing this cartoon about the connection between the Doctor Who 50th anniversary and the Kennedy Assassination.

You can read all about it in Doctor How and the Kennedy Assassination, which is available free on Kindle from 17th to 20th January 2014.

Doctor How and the Frustrating Christmas

Yesterday I managed, finally, to publish Doctor How and the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy on Kindle. This is the first of two promotional short stories in advance of the publication of the first book in the five-volume Doctor How series,Doctor How: Who are the Illegal Aliens?due out on March 13th. It doesn’t matter how many times you publish something, it’s a finnicky business. The cover image is just one of the elements...

Centrepoint Sleepout – not a rough deal

On Thursday 7th November seven of us from work joined the Sleepout in Exchange Square, London, to raise funds for Centrepoint, the charity which helps young homeless people across the UK. They do so by not only providing shelter, but by teaching them a trade so that they can get off the streets for good.

We pitched up just after seven o’clock, and my colleagues headed straight for the BBQ tent/bar next to the ice rink. The four other men tucked into food, whilst my two female colleagues had a...

Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming

Last month I was given a copy of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale by my younger brother, who had received it as part of World Book Night 2013. The first and last Bond novel I read was Dr No, when I was about twelve. I didn’t much like it because it seemed pretty tame by modern standards, and I didn’t like the style. I was interested to see how I’d get on with this novel.

Casino Royale was the first of Fleming’s Bond novels, and he wrote it in February 1952 as a way of distracting himself as he wait...