Thanks for stopping by Olga and I do hope you get to read Mark’s other work. It’s all so original and refreshing 🙂

I don’t think many of us enjoy the marketing side, at all…

You’re welcome Mark 🙂

Nice to meet you, AK and thanks for commenting.
That Bambi thing – I was talking to my brother in Carlisle on Saturday. We’re both traumatised! How DID Disney get away with it – it’s not like Kung Fu Panda is it 😀
Hope you enjoy Shiny too – and thanks again.
Mark

Hi E,

That’s really nice of you to say so. I hope you are enjoying Shiny. As I said to Terry, I’ll always write, but I am adamant that these need to sell as I am literally walking around with matchsticks holding up my eyelids. I am going to invest, though – I am a gambling man, as anyone who has read my books, like your very good self will attest, and I am serious about Shiny. I think it could places, so I’m going to put some money int0 it. We’ll see. Looking forward to seeing what you think, E – thank you for your support as usual 😀
Mark x
Oh, and Georgia always gets me to relax when we’re out walking the pooches – that’s how she gets me to talk ha ha.

Heyup Christoph – big Portishead fan here. Love the albums – though I have to be in the right mood; they can be a bit, er, challenging 😀

Hope the books are going well – and the festival!

Heyup Terry, thanks for commenting in such depth. I do appreciate your forthright approach too. Let me explain further.

I don’t really do PR based interviews, and I answered these questions late at night. Bit of background. The last six months have been the toughest I’ve had for many years and, to be frank, I’m tired out.
You of all people know how tough writing books is. It is brutal. I mist have redrafted Shiny five times. I could publish the outtakes!!
Sorry, let me change my mind: its easy writing books, but its writing decent books that people might like to read is a challenge. Around the time I spoke to Georgia, I discovered that someone I interviewed for the Cauldron three years ago has had a book downloaded one million times. It’s not a great book. It’s quite juvenile – a bit silly, and makes serious errors almost all the way through – errors neither you or I would make – yet, it’s extremely popular, apparently.
As well as writing SC, I finished off The Waiter (which is still not ready, really, especially now Trump has gone off the deep end, which has made a lot of it redundant), and worked, on average, with the exception of Christmas, about 60 to 80 hours a week on business outside writing. I sometimes wonder what the point is. I don’t really want to be famous, or rich, but I do have goals which are not being met and I would like to cover costs, which are sometimes considerable (BCD cost me a fortune). So, taking all this into account, I need this to sell a few copies for me to once again go through the hell I went through this winter to get these books out. I probably won’t pack in writing – I’m like you, a scribomaniac 😀 – but my goals will change. Plus I have “the surprise”, which I cannot NOT write – it niggles away at me daily. But yes, the million download thing for a pretty average book really got to me. I’m fine now though 😀
As for whether SC is my best, it certainly feels like it, but I’m not a reader and I always listen to people who read me before I consider my own views.
Hope everything is well. Always makes me laugh – Paranoid, Black Sabbath’s most famous song, was more or less an outtake, a filler they wrote in about an hour to complete the second album. They didn’t even give it a second thought ha ha.
Markx

Judith, for years, while I managed a small office, I used to have a running joke with a girl I worked with about my alter-ego, a useless, spangly jacketed pub singer called Mike Champagne. I use it in lectures and training now too 😀

How about Jude Sparkles? 😀

Best of luck with everything. Mark x

It has scarred so many children A – but I’m totally with you on Simba’s father – I remember sobbing, while my children were not… I do hope you enjoy Mark’s work, there is a great variety so something to suit all, but everything is very well written 😀