Month: May 2025

Sarah Pinborough: Relatable is Commercial

Here’s a clip of me mansplaining theme to bestselling author Sarah Pinborough, before she sums it up succinctly… 🙂

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Or watch the whole interview on Youtube…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: We have a thing called the Green Room where people… we talk about writing, and I bang on and on about things like central dramatic arguments and themes. When you say, what is your book about? You’ve just given us a brilliant example because you’ve, you know, it’s about the lies couples tell each other and that thematically, you know, runs through the whole story and it’s so strong because we spent, you know, eight minutes talking about it already. And I think we could talk about it all night. But it’s and that’s what I think makes your book so compelling because it is, you know, about these terrible truths…

SARAH: It’s that awful word, ‘relatable’.

MARK: ‘Relatable’.

SARAH: ‘Relatable’.

MARK: Relatable equals commercial equals money in the bank. Yeah, it’s Mike says 100%. All you need is a dog. And we had we had, we had Mike and his dog on here a few episodes ago, folks. I’ll, I’ll put a link in the show notes. You can check the episode out.

MIKE SHACKLE: I am a professional. I’m sorry.

LINKS MENTIONED

The episode with Mike Shackle and his dog…

Here’s my writing group The Green Room…

JOIN THE GREEN ROOM

And here’s my favourite video on theme and the central dramatic argument with Craig Mazin…

Sarah Pinborough: “I Triple Write.”

This month’s special guest bestselling author Sarah Pinborough reveals when she knows that’s she finished a draft and how she ‘triple writes’ her books…

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Or watch it on Youtube…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: How do you know when you’re done?

SARAH: Well, Mark, invariably, I am skating in the last knockings of the deadline. So when I write the end, I literally think ‘I’m going to scan through this and I’m sending this fucker off,’ so… But, because I do triple write, as it were, like I plan in a notebook, then I rough write into Scrivener, then I copy it over into Word, tidy it in Word. I do it in like 8000 word chunks. I’ve kind of… if it’s not untidy and it’s not…. You know, it’s probably most people’s second draft, when I hand it in. And I kind of think… I mean obviously this would be different if it was on spec, but I’m like; they’ve paid for it. Let’s see if it’s holding, you know, because if it’s not holding, it doesn’t matter how pretty I make it. (If) there’s a massive structural problem, let’s get to that. You know, so I kind of figure that’s the way.

May & June Comic Con Updates

I type this with sore feet… actually, I’m typing this with my fingers, but my feet are sore. See how addled my mind is? That’s because I’ve just spent a fairly epic weekend selling m’books at the MCM Comic Con in London. From the set-up on Thursday afternoon, through to the dismantling on Sunday it was fairly non-stop and proved to be my most successful comic con yet. I sold more books than ever by quite some margin… and I was standing for most of that time, hence the sore feet. Writing is mostly sedentary, y’know. I’m not used to this standing and moving about malarkey!

One slight problem — and it’s a good problem to have — is that I sold so many books that I don’t have enough for the next couple of comic cons. Normally, after a weekend of comic cons, I would do a quick stock check and order some more. But one of my books — Babes in the Wood — is reprinting on 6th June, and the warehouse is closed because they’re moving the stock to a brand new warehouse. So I won’t be getting any fresh stock until week commencing 9th June.

This means that I won’t be turning up to the following comic cons…

Hatfield on 31st May

Newmarket on 1st June

Suffolk on 8th June

My apologies to anyone hoping to pop by and say hello on any of those days. But the cons will be still be on and they’re great fun, so why not treat yourself?

That means that my next comic con will be Brighton on 14th June. For details of that and more comic cons in June and July pop over to my events and diary page…

Diary & EVENTS Page

Sarah Pinborough: When is She Ready to Write?

This month’s special guest bestselling author Sarah Pinborough reveals when she knows that’s she ready to start writing…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: What’s the thing that makes you think you’re ready to start writing on a project?

SARAH: When I’ve got the ending locked in place. I can’t start to write without… I have to see the final scene of the book in my head. So… Behind Her Eyes, the final chapter was in the pitch of the book. So I don’t have the whole book planned, obviously, but I tend to kind of have to have the characters names, a bit of a tent pegging. and the ending has to be locked so I know what I’m working towards. But you know, I’m great one for mulling… mulling for a long time. I think that’s the hardest part, isn’t it?

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Or watch the whole interview on Youtube:

Sarah Pinborough on Writing in Short Bursts

This month’s special guest bestselling author Sarah Pinborough reveals a great tip for writing in 20-minute bursts…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: What small thing has made a big difference to your creative process?

SARAH: Cocaine! Okay, that’s a joke. (laughs)

MARK: (laughs) You might have said that a little too quickly.

SARAH: What small things made a difference to my creative process. I mean, it’s not a small thing, but obviously… Oh, actually, I do have one for this! So I use the Freedom app. You know, which turns the internet off. And my friend Harriet Tyce… because I used to just turn it off for an hour and then dick around on my phone. Pointless. But she told me to do it… There’s that thing where you do it in 20 minute bursts. So you set it for 20 minutes, and then you work… because 20 minutes you can work for. And so three lots of 20 minutes, and you’ve done, like, nearly a thousand words. And it’s much more focused. So I do try and do these 20 minute bursts if I’m not feeling it. And that does help, you know. And also I’m not a great fan of the word count thing. You know, people say I must write 2500 words a day. I think it’s better to have a good thinking time.

MARK: Yeah, absolutely. That 20 minutes is that sort of Pomodoro timer.

SARAH: Yeah. That’s the word! Pomodoro. That’s it.

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I’ll be at the MCM COMIC CON, London this weekend

I’m delighted to be returning to the MCM Comic Con at the cavernous Excel Centre in London this weekend where I’ll be selling and signing m’books.

On the Saturday, I’ll be moderating a panel on writing comedy with these amazing authors: Joanna Nadin, MJ Northwood and Veronika Dapunt (click on the image for more details)…

If you’re one of the many thousands attending the MCM do please come along and say hello. I’ll be with all the fab authors in the WRITERS’ BLOCK where you’re bound to find a new favourite author.

GET TICKETS HERE

Talking ANDOR on the Authorized Podcast

Had a great time chatting about Andor season 2 on the Authorized podcast. As is often the case when I’m guesting on Authorized, I offer the case for the defence of the writer. I clearly enjoyed this show a lot more than Hannah and Overbye, though now I’ve had a re-listen I realise that their main criticism of the show is that they wanted even more of it… and I can’t argue with that. You can find the podcast on your favourite podcast provider…

And if you want to hear us chatting about season 1 of Andor, you can find that here.

Mark Stay’s Creative Differences Episode 10 with Sarah Pinborough: THE LIES WE TELL

I chat with Sarah Pinborough, the bestselling and award-winning author of Behind Her Eyes about her new thriller We Live Here Now, spooky houses, her method of ‘triple writing’, going on tour and the lies we tell each other…

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Or watch it on Youtube…

LINKS

The book links are affiliate links and I earn a wee bit of commission if you buy from them.

WE LIVE HERE NOW

LAUNCH AT WATERSTONES MILTON KEYNES ON WEDNESDAY 4TH JUNE

SARAH’S US TOUR

MOBLAND
THE HANDMAID’S TALE
DOPE THIEF
TUBI FOR JACK PALANCE HORROR
YOU KILLED ME FIRST BY JOHN MARRS
THE HAMLET BY JOANNA CORRANCE
PAM KOWOLSKI IS A MONSTER BY SARAH LANGHAM
THE DEVILS BY JOE ABERCROMBIE
ANDOR
IT AIN’T ME BY EMILY ZECK

COME AND MEET MARK AT A COMIC CON

Mark Chadbourn on Bluesky
The Mike Shackle episode

Edit by Kai Newton
Production assistance by Emily Stay
Jingle by Dom Currie

THE GREEN ROOM

Writers: Need advice? Pop into the Green Room…

Twice a month, I run live surgeries on Zoom where you can ask me questions about the craft of writing, your WIP, or the business of publishing. Step backstage and let’s figure out practical solutions to your writing problems! The sessions will be recorded live and saved on Kofi for exclusive access to Green Room supporters.

In tonight’s session, we’ll be looking at sales agents for indie authors, writing historical fiction, working on more than project at a time and much more! Click on the image below to discover more about the Green Room…

The Corn Bride Spoiler Night Recording

Here’s the recording of last night’s Corn bride spoiler special, though in the end we didn’t end up talking much about the book, and more about what might happen next…