Author: MarkStayWrites

Author, screenwriter, and award-winning podcaster.

Writers need to take chances… Nicola May on the Creative Differences podcast

This month’s special guest Nicola May reveals how she got her books into a major book chain…

Listen to Mark Stay’s Creative Differences on your favourite podcast provider:

lISTEN TO THE WHOLE PODCAST

Or watch the whole interview on Youtube…

TRANSCRIPT

NICOLA: Don’t let anything or anyone stop you
because at the London Book Fair I once and chased after the book buyer of WH Smiths with Love Me Tinder and I said, “Go on, you know, you want to put this in your shop, but it ended up in WH Smiths Travel. Do you know what I mean? It’s like you’ve got to take chances.

MARK: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love that. Absolutely love it

Creative Differences Episode 6 with Nicola May: “Persistence over Resistance”

Nicola May is the author of heartwarming and funny romantic comedies, including the hugely successful Ferry Lane and Cockleberry Bay series, she’s a great champion for indie authors and she’s here to kick off 2025 with another bestseller ‘How Do I Tell You?’ 

We discuss: 

Tips for writing romcoms 

The key differences between self publishing, traditional publishing and digital-first publishers 

Balancing serious themes with heartwarming fiction 

And much more!

LISTEN NOW

LINKS 

Nicola’s website 

The Green Room 

Kinky Boots Musical UK Tour 2025 

Rivals

Paul Mescal in A Streetcar Named Desire 

Katherine Priddy and Simon Armitage 

Julian Barr’s Worldbreaker 

American Primeval

Edit by Kai Newton

Production assistance by Emily Stay

Jingle by Dom Currie

The Crow Folk is 4 Years Old Today

The Crow Folk was published this day in 2021! Crikey, how time flies.

Here’s the unboxing video we made…

Camera, sound and edit: Kai Newton 

Production Assistant: Emily Stay 

Pumpkinhead: George Stay 

Music: Dom Currie 

get a signed paperback here

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on Authorized

I had the best time discussing the classic novelisation of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan by Vonda N McIntyre with the Authorized podcast gang. I discuss my relationship with the film and the book and how both have inspired me as a writer…

Talking Bowie at the Faversham Lit Festival

Saturday 22nd February, 2025

Faversham Literary Festival

Faversham Assembly Rooms, 5pm

I’ll be chatting to Simon Goddard about the latest of his books chronicling the career of David Bowie. He’s up to 1974, the year in which one man is trying to find his soul in a world that’s gone to the devil. Wickedly funny and shockingly tragic.

GET TICKETS

Join Nicola May on the Creative Differences livestream

We kick off 2025 with a brilliant special guest! Nicola May is a hugely successful bestselling author renowned for her heartwarming and humorous …

Join Nicola May on the Creative Differences livestream

Fancy a FREE Witches of Woodville Short Story?

A Dream of Scissors is a new FREE Witches of Woodville short story now available to subscribers of the Woodville Village Library newsletter. Sign up now for the latest news and grab a FREE eBook or two while you’re at it!

SIGN UP TO THE WOODVILLE VILLAGE LIBRARY NEWSLETTER HERE

And please take a moment to enjoy the stunning cover design by Andrew Bowden…

The Crow Folk & Babes in the Wood for just 99p you say?

The Crow Folk and Babes in the Wood are 99p on Kindle throughout January 2025!

🇬🇧 CROW FOLK UK 99p
🇬🇧 BABES IN THE WOOD UK 99p
🇺🇸🇨🇦 CROW FOLK USA/CAN 99c
🇺🇸🇨🇦 BABES IN THE WOOD USA/CAN 99c

What’s the best social media platform for marketing books?

This month’s special guest GB Ralph reveals his preferred social media platforms for marketing his books…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: Marketing wise, which platform do you find the most successful for your books?

GB RALPH: I presume you mean, like, social media platform? All sort of have different purposes.
My Instagram is sort of… I’ve inherited friends and family who are very lovely. There’s only so many times you can sell the same book to your friends and family. Then Facebook. I’ve picked up a lot of readers who I wouldn’t have expected. TikTok was really fun. It comes in waves where I get enthusiasm to do some videos and then it drops off again. But that is… because TikTok shows your stuff to a lot of people who don’t follow you. So I think that has been really interesting to pick up people who’ve never heard of me because my videos have been shown to them or whereas on the other platforms a lot of it is your stuff getting shown to a subset of your own followers who already know you. I don’t know. Probably the most engagement is through my mailing list actually, because that’s the most reliable. It gets sent out and I can see roughly how many people open it. That’s where it starts. And then it’s sort of like, okay, I have the content now, I need to now I can recycle that to the social medias.

GB Ralph on Starting a First Draft

This month’s special guest GB Ralph reveals when he’s ready to start writing a draft…

TRANSCRIPT

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

GB RALPH: When I back-calculate from my deadline and find that I’m already behind schedule. (laughs) I don’t know, where is even the start line? Is it jotting down ideas, sketching them out? Plotting? Is it start writing, ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’? I’m ready to start drafting my next book now. Like, as in, chapter one, scene one as of this week. I have a victim. I have a handful of suspects, each with their potential motives, and that’s about it. But I have I have about two novels’ worth of content and that I want to fit into one novel. So we’re bursting at the seams, and I need to start writing to see what ideas are actually smaller than I thought they were. Ones that don’t fit in at all. Ones that are maybe bigger than I had originally thought and will spark more ideas.

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE PODCAST

Or watch the whole show on Youtube…