I was honoured to be asked to be a guest on the latest episode of the splendid Fifty Years of Shit Robots podcast. `The hosts, Matt and Stephen, have been running a special series on the original Star Wars movie, and — being a bit of a nerd — I had to correct them on a couple of points. This got so annoying for them that they invited me on the podcast and it soon turned into a kind of therapy session for me. Have a listen wherever you get your podcasts…
And so, we find ourselves at the end of the current Witches of Woodville series by Mark Stay which brings to mind the old saying, ‘all good things …
Must all good things come to an end?
Nadine Matheson and I share the things that are bringing us joy this week, including…
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Spring and early morning sunrises
And, uhm, a fence…
Or watch it on Youtube…
I was delighted to read the opening chapter of The Corn Bride on the British Fantasy Society’s Youtube page…
The Corn Bride is available in paperback, eBook and audiobook from all book retailers and you can get signed copies from me here.
Here are my favourite podcasts that inspire me as a writer…
LINKS
FILM STORIES WITH SIMON BREW: https://filmstories.co.uk/podcast-page/episodes/
SCRIPTNOTES – John August, Craig Mazin: https://johnaugust.com/scriptnotes
THE CONVERSATION WITH NADINE MATHESON: https://www.nadinematheson.com/events/23/the-conversation-with-nadine-matheson-podcast/
YOU’RE WRONG ABOUT – Sarah Marshall https://yourewrongabout.com/
SMERSH POD – John Rain https://shows.acast.com/smershpod
AUTHORIZED – Andrew Overbye and Hannah Blechman https://open.spotify.com/show/68YhhFLKW5m6ibJJDZ147M?si=4f46a841a4d74390
COMFORT BLANKET (SEE ALSO BE FUNNY OR DIE) – Joel Morris https://shows.acast.com/comfort-blanket
ROCKONTEURS – Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt https://www.anotherslice.com/rockonteurs
SCARRED FOR LIFE – Stephen Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence with presenter Andy Bush https://scarredforlifebooks.com/#podcast
FIFTY YEARS OF SHIT ROBOTS: Matt brown and Stephen Murray https://shows.acast.com/fifty-years-of-shit-robots
BESTSELLER EXPERIMENT https://bestsellerexperiment.com/podcasts/podcast-episodes/
MARK STAY’S CREATIVE DIFFERENCES https://markstaycreativedifferences.com/
Excitement filled the Emporium with the arrival of The Corn Bride by Mark Stay. Quickly followed by the usual scramble and squabble to see who would …
Book Review: The Corn Bride by Mark Stay
This month’s special guest Gareth L Powell reveals the biggest mistake of his writing career, but how this particular disaster was a blessing in disguise…
Or watch it on Youtube…
TRANSCRIPT
MARK: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your writing career?
GARETH: Oh, Lord. The worst thing — I don’t know if it’s a mistake, It could have been an Act of God — But was when the first half of the first draft of Descendant Machine vanished.
MARK: Oh, God, I remember this.Yeah, yeah, yeah.
GARETH: I’d been working on it for three months, I think. And then one day, it just wasn’t on my computer. It wasn’t in the recycle bin. It wasn’t, you know, anywhere. I used various kind of, programs to claw through the hard drive to try and find it. And… nothing. It just completely vanished. So if unless I just did something ridiculously stupid in my sleep or, you know… I don’t know what, I’ve no idea what happened to it. But this entire three months work just absolutely vanished. That was a big setback because, you know, that was when I, you know, you go in that feeling where you just go cold.
MARK: Yeah.
GARETH: You know in the, sort of Agatha Christie films from the 70s when there’s, like, a pistol blast or a scream, and then you’d get a shot of a load of crows flapping up from a tree. It’s kind of like that. I just uttered a curse. Venomous. It turned the air to glass and… And I lay on the sofa and thought, I’m never gonna write again. It’s all over.
MARK: And I remember talking to this, about this at the time, and it was just one of those complete mysteries. It wasn’t like you weren’t backing stuff up. It just absolutely vanished. Is it… because this happened to a friend of mine the other day, and I said, Oh, this happens to all sorts of writers, but every one of them tells me that when they go back and rewrite it, it’s so much better. Would you say that’s true, or am I just trying to make my friend feel good?
GARETH: No, that’s true, but the book I wrote was, substantially different from the first draft I had done, and much better for. So it was a blessing in a very, very heavy disguise.
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.
Author, podcaster and screenwriter Mark Stay… I’d heartily recommend his The Witches of Woodville books. These are set in Kent in World War Two and …
Best of 2024 type thing with Mark Stay
Mark Stay has invited me to join him for his monthly livestream where he chats with fellow authors about “their writing and the little things that …
G B Ralph on Mark Stay’s Creative Differences podcast (live!)
Mark Stay Writes 