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Guest blog at Simon Marshall-Jones' blog (on writing)

2010-07-13T03:03:00.000-07:00

To begin my irregular series of guest-blogs by already-published authors reminiscing about the ups and downs of being a new writer and how they arrived at where they are now, I am happy to kick it all off with the ruminations of Mark West, author of the short story collection Strange Tales, and two novels, In the Rain with the Dead and Conjure. His novelette The Mill was featured in the Gary McMahon-edited anthology We Fade to Grey. He lives with his wife and son some distance north of me:

What started me writing was reading and watching films and TV and wanting to get involved in that world of make-believe. I am one of the original Star Wars generation, almost 8 years old when it hit the UK and me and my friends wanted (nay, demanded) to know what happened to Han and Chewie and Luke and the droids (not Leia so much - I mean, we were 8 and girls were a bit bleurgh) after Vader had gone spinning off into space. And so we wrote them and I loved it, though I don’t recall writing anything that even remotely resembled “Empire” or “Jedi”. My friends enthusiasm quickly waned, but mine got stronger - I started to write short detective stories (inspired, in part, by “Return Of The Saint” and the stories you used to get in boys annuals - my favourites were “The Six Million Dollar Man”) and then mysteries, as I got into the Alfred Hitchcock & The Three Investigators series. Those books fed my early teenage drive, with a series of 8 books about The Three Intrepids and 4 novels (ha!) - “Shark”, “Hadley Hall Comprehensive” (I liked ‘Grange Hill’), “The Space Mercenary” (still didn’t predict any Lucasfilm storylines) and “Glamourpuss”.

By my late teens, my reading and viewing patterns had changed - I was into Kerouac and existentialism and the American ‘new wave’ (Michael Chabon, Tama Janowitz, Brett Easton Ellis, Robert Coover) - and my writing changed too. I started to write about me and my friends, about life and what I saw around me. My first ‘proper’ novel was a detective thriller called “To Save The Moon” - which didn’t do anything other than teach me not to take on such a massive project without some kind of thinking time beforehand - whilst my second and third were contemporary dramas - “The Loved One” and “Alice” - both of which I loved and both of which were summarily rejected by several big London publishers.

In 1998, having been a lifelong fan of horror, I discovered the ‘Dark Terrors’ series co-edited by Stephen Jones. I hadn’t read a horror short story in years (though I’d written a couple in my early-20s) and I picked up more of the series. I began to write short horror, found that I felt really at home in it and then my wife bought me a Writers Handbook for Christmas. Through that, I discovered Chris Reed’s BBR and, through that, TTA Press and The Zine and then the small press and suddenly, a whole new world opened up in front of me.

I caught the small press at the back end of (probably) its last Golden era, when the Internet was still something you read about but had never seen and every zine was either a perfect bound book or a glossy mag or little more than a side-stapled fanzine. There were loads of them - Sackcloth & Ashes, Enigmatic Tales, Nasty Piece Of Work, Peeping Tom, The Grotty Arab, The Dream Zone, Terror Tales, Oktobyr, Psychotrope, Sci-Fright, Unhinged, Strix, Flickers & Frames, Roadworks and many others I’m sure I’ve forgotten - and I wanted to get into them all. So I began to write, much more seriously than before, with an eye to publication though I very rarely followed guidelines - I wrote the story and then tried to figure out which market it fit.

The great thing about this boom was that, even though there were plenty of markets, most had plenty of material to choose from and so wouldn’t take just anything. The novels getting rejected was something I’d dealt with on the assumption that I was a kid from a small town and nobody in London would be interested in me - getting rejected by the small press toughened me up. Sometimes it was the fault of the editors - I trusted the story, could see it was solid and airtight and would send it on to another zine which would pick it up. But occasionally the stories would keep coming back and that’s the lesson learned - sometimes, you can have the greatest idea in the world but, as a writer, you really screw up the execution of it. Or, alternatively, you have a dreadful idea and write it beautifully. Those editors, back in the day, could mostly see that and that process certainly honed my eye when I looked at my own stuff. Of course, those rejections hurt - as they do when I get them today - but I had a passion and I had a self-belief and I kept going. What would have happened if I’d never had an acceptance, I wouldn’t like to say.

By this time, around 2000 or so, I decided - because I like big ideas that don’t always make immediate sense - to write a novel. I’d also just embarked on a three-year night-school course (for my professional qualifications), so the short stories petered out. In 2003, I approached John Ford at Rainfall Books with the idea of a collection and he went for it (“Strange Tales”), but the only shorts I wrote were on invitation. At the same time, I spoke to John about a novella idea I’d had - which later became my novel “Conjure” - and he went for that too, though it would take a couple of years to write, then another four years to see publication. In 2005, Chris Teague accepted “In The Rain With The Dead” (after it’d been turned down by two major publishers and a handful of agents) and Pendragon Press published it later that year. That was a major milestone for me and I should have capitalised on it but my son had just been born and writing time was scarce and I entered a terrible period of writers block, that I’m still struggling to break completely free of even now (in 2010).

I was lucky with my novel, in that it was generally well received and eventually sold out, so it wasn’t as if I had naysayers but the block really knocked my confidence in what I could do. I had plenty of ideas and kept trying to write them (the closest I got was a collaborative novel, which faltered a few chapters in), but all the time I thought the story was too obvious, the writing painfully thin, the idea an old clinker and so I got worse. What helped to break the block was Gary McMahon wanting a story - a novelette, no less - for what became “We Fade To Grey”. I’d suffered a family loss in 2003 that I was still trying to get to grips with and it occurred to me that I could do so through my fiction and I did - “The Mill” is one of the best things I think I’ve ever written and, thankfully, Gary took it (after insisting I take a couple of thousand words out). It was well received, the book did well and I felt good. The year after, “Conjure” came out and where it was found and bought, it seemed to be well received.

This time, I decided to capitalise and threw myself into a novella that I’d spent the last few years making 17,000 words of notes for but after six months, I realised it was going nowhere. That hurt, but rather than stop, I began making notes for other projects, trying to keep alive this little creative flame “The Mill” had restored for me. Part of my drive came from watching (a little enviously, I admit, but also proud too) as my friends got book deals and had sales to anthologies and magazines - they’d done what I should be doing and I could get there.

My original dream was publication, then it was to be published before I was thirty. I achieved them, so my dream shifted to getting a novel published. Now it’s much more prosaic - to produce work that has some worth and to find a market for it. You don’t have to be published to be a writer, but if you want your work to speak to people, then it’s a necessity and that means overcoming your own fears and frustrations and also developing a tough enough skin that when people knock you back, you just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start again.

originally published here -
http://simonmarshalljones.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/guest-blogger-mark-west/
- at Simon Marshall Jones' blog, 4th June 2010

An Interview by Gregg Winkler (2007)

2010-05-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

Mark West, the author of the short story collection, Strange Tales and the novel In the Rain with the Dead has been a good friend of mine for quite some time now. Whether it's writing (horror) or comedy, Mark has developed a easy-to-read crisp prose that projects his stories off the page and into the reader's mind with 3-D clarity. I managed to catch Mark after finishing his most recent work, a novelette titled "The Mill," for another installment of "Twenty Questions with Ninefingers."

9Fingers: Hey Mark! Thanks for doing this. Let's just get started. (Question #1) We've known each other for awhile now. Would you say that I am one of the best blokes you've ever known, or am I THE best bloke you've ever known?

Mark_West: In terms of interviewers, you are absolutely the best bloke I have ever known. In my life. And will ever know, I’m certain of it. In terms of real life, you’re a pretty decent bloke too, I’d have said.

9Fingers: Okay, so I’m putting you down for THE best bloke you've ever known, okay?

Mark_West: Me the best bloke I’ve ever met? Well yes, that makes sense - cheers, Gregg.

9Fingers: No, no, no, that's not what I meant. I meant -- Aww, forget it.

Mark_West: Oh no, don’t be like that, Gregg, not on the first question.

9Fingers: Next question.

Mark_West: Please, Gregg, please!

9Fingers: Next question. (Question #2) You're a busy man. You have a new son, a new job, a new book out, and another book on the way -- How do you stay on top of it all?

Mark_West: Not particularly brilliantly, most of the time, and then I just have a purge and try to get myself back on track. With my writing, I tend to not do anything for ages, beat myself up about it and then do a lot of work in a very short space of time. Thankfully, I’m a quick typist! (Laughs) In my life, generally, family comes first - Alison, Matthew, my parents and sister and friends. I work hard, I am professional, but I am fully aware of where the work-me ends and the home-me begins.

9Fingers: That's very important. In America, there seems to be a real problem with folks taking their work home with them. Would you say that's true in England?

Mark_West: Certainly, though not to the degree of the US yet. When I was in the States last year, for work, there seemed to be this culture of arriving well before eight o'clock and not leaving until the absolute last minute. That’s not prevalent here yet, so far as I know, but it does happen and I can see it catching on and becoming expected, which is the worst thing.

9Fingers: How so?

Mark_West: I am a conscientious employee, I work hard and if I need to work after hours then I’ll do so. But I’ll do it because the task at hand requires it and my concern is that it becomes the norm for me to be sitting at my desk at 6pm when I officially finished at 4:30 -- and being in an office, I don’t get overtime pay either.

9Fingers: I see. Let's not talk about work then. (Question #3) When can we expect a new book?

Mark_West: The new book is a novella, which I wrote in 2004 and completed in 2005. I was talking with John Ford, who published Strange Tales and I was bemoaning the fact that I had this novel which I wanted published by a Brit house. He wasn’t keen on a novel but mentioned that if I had something of about 40k words, he’d be interested to see it. When Alison & I went to London for the Strange Tales launch, I took him a cover mock-up I’d done -- Monica Bellucci, lying naked in some water -- and gave him the synopsis. I said, “It’s about a couple, at the seaside and there’s a witch.” He loved it and encouraged me and I took off. I know that you’ve read it, but it’s about a couple who win a holiday to an English coastal resort and their visit there coincides with a workman accidentally opening the resting place of a witch. It was supposed to appear last year, but John had to move it back so it’ll probably be this year, hopefully in time for FantasyCon in September.

9Fingers: (Question #4) How would you say "Conjure is different from your previous work?

Mark_West: It tends towards the quieter realm of my stuff, though there is some violence but not a lot of gore. There was quite a major upheaval in my life, just as I was starting the notes, which really coloured my decision to go for a more restrained approach. It’s also different in terms of length, I’d never tried for a novella word count before and the first draft came in at 83k words, which is obviously a short novel!

9Fingers: Whoa! So how many words did Conjure end up?

Mark_West: I got it down to about 54k. The thing with my style of writing is that I tend to over-write like mad, putting in everything that I think might be useful, working on the assumption that I can pare back as drafts progress. With “Conjure”, it also took a while to write and - to be honest - there were pieces where I repeated myself, having forgotten that I’d already written about something. Seriously though, my first drafts are very overblown, which is why I’m the only one who ever reads them.

9Fingers: That makes sense.

Mark_West: Out of everything though, probably the biggest difference is in the artwork. I’ve been very lucky in that both John (with Strange Tales) and Chris Teague at Pendragon Press (who published my novel In The Rain With The Dead) allowed me to produce my own cover-art. With Conjure, John said that I could do all the artwork if I wanted and so I produced seven interior illustrations - all photo-montages, starring friends and family - as well as the cover. I loved doing it.

9Fingers: What kind of software do you use for your art?

Mark_West: It’s the regular Microsoft Digital Image Suite. On our original PC, we got Adobe PhotoDeluxe with the camera and I loved it. When that PC died and I needed to do more artwork, my friend got me a copy of Adobe Photoshop Pro which was absolutely impossible to use - really, you’d need a maths degree to cut and paste with it. So I went looking for something else, knowing what I wanted it to do and wanting the software to do it as simply as possible. And Image Suite worked.

9Fingers: That reminds me. (Question #5) Do you find girls with British accents as sexy as I do?

Mark_West: It depends where the accent comes from - some are sexy, some aren’t. I like foreign accents too - Italian and Spanish, mainly.

9Fingers: Are you saying there are unsexy British accents?

Mark_West: Oh bloody hell, yes. Scousers don’t do anything for me, at all - you could peel wallpaper with that accent - and the Brum accent is more likely to make me smile than anything else.

9Fingers: Moving on. (Question #6) Who would you say are your biggest influences in your work?

Mark_West: It shifts, day to day. My environment has an effect, since it inspires a lot of images with me (In The Rain With The Dead especially, but also “The Mill”, a novelette I just wrote for a Gary McMahon edited collection); my family and friends, things I see around me, films and TV and, often, other indie/small press writers.

9Fingers: (Question #7) How'd you get started writing?

Mark_West: I started back when I was about eight, filling little exercise books with tales of Detective West and his computer car (heavily inspired by Steve Austin annuals), or furthering the adventures of my Star Wars heroes. As I moved into my teens, I homaged the Three Investigators calling them The Three Intrepids, with the stories resolutely set in Rothwell - though mention is made of Gaffney, even back then -- and other films/TV shows.

9Fingers: Is Gaffney Mark West's Castle Rock?

Mark_West: It’s built up of Rothwell and Kettering and various other local areas, but I wanted to use a home-made creation, just in case I inadvertently once “killed” a character whose name matched someone who just so happened to live in the real street in the real location. Plus I like having my own place.

As for how I got started, I started a period of doing photo-stories, which had to be more original (since I was in the pictures and had no special effects budget) and that led to me writing the original batch of "Strange Tales" in 1987 through to 1989. After that, I wrote several detective thriller novellas and four novels and then I started writing short horror again in 1998.

9Fingers: (Question #8) There are evident themes in your work: Characters dealing with traumatic losses, the past revisiting the present, and rain. Why do you think these elements tend to resurface?

Mark_West: I’ve never really thought about that, to be honest - if you’d asked me, I’d have said that recurring themes are probably the importance of love and friendship - but now that you mention it and I think back over my stuff, yes, I can see your point completely.

9Fingers: Well, if I was to list four themes in your work, I'd have included the "love and friendship" but I went with the rhetorically safe three items.

Mark_West: (Laughs). Well, here we go…

Characters dealing with traumatic losses: I like monsters, I love grue and gore but a lot of the time, the stories of my own that I tend to have more feeling for, that I think work better, do so because they don’t have monsters, grue and gore in them as much. I’ve never been someone who likes changes and loss is a big, massive change and so that will inform a lot of my work (certainly since my sister passed away) - it also allows the conflict to make the story, giving me more of a chance to explore the characters and their personalities and dysfunctions.

The past revisiting the present. I once read somewhere that you should never regret what you do, only what you didn’t do and I’ve tried to live by that. I can’t always, of course, but it’s not a bad philosophy and obviously extends out to being the fact that who you are today is completely formed by your past existence, so whether something was good or bad, it made you who you are today. And, of course, in fiction it’s easier to explore that kind of thing.

Rain. I love it. It can be joyous, grim, whatever you want. It even had a key role in a chapter of the drama novel I wrote back in 1992/93 called “The Loved One”. And if I ever get my finger out and start work on “The Day It Rained”, it will be a character in that story too!

9Fingers: (Question #9) Hypothetical question: Your house is on fire. You only have time to run inside and save one thing. Would you choose the dog, your family, your work, your clothes, or the one-of-a-kind autographed portrait of me during my stint as an underwear model that you keep framed and hanging above the mantle?

Mark_West: Your picture of course, Gregg! (Laughs) Of course, I could tuck that into the pocket of my dressing gown and then rescue my family too.

9Fingers: Are you sure you want to take that chance? I mean, you've already got the photo.

Mark_West: Yeah, better safe than sorry, eh?

9Fingers: (Question #10) Why have you chosen horror as the genre in which you write?

Mark_West: I’m not sure I necessarily got to choose, but why wouldn’t people want to write here? I mean, within the realms of one story, I can span the spectrum of emotion from laughter, to anger, to love, to death. The whole world is there for me to write in, so why restrict it?

9Fingers: I agree. I've always thought that horror and humor were the two most honest genres in literature. I guess, though that for many people, it's too hard to get through the metaphorical structure of horror and see the real meat of what a story is about.

Mark_West: I read somewhere that horror and comedy are the hardest things to write because, in essence, both are attempting to provoke a definite reaction in the reader. But you’re right, most people can’t see past the structure and - to be fair - most people associate horror with stalk and slash rubbish, or those bloody irritating, whiny vampires that seemed so popular a while back.

9Fingers: I think they're back -- if they've ever left.

Mark_West: Is it just me or did you want to shake them and say, “hey, lads, come on. You’re going to live forever, you’re incredibly sexually attractive, no graying or male pattern baldness for you and you can be rich, rich, rich. For Christ’s sake, lighten up a bit!”

9Fingers: I agree.

Mark_West: I have - and do - work outside of the horror genre, but it tends to be either contemporary drama/mainstream -- I have a couple of novel ideas -- or comedy. I sometimes write sketches and stupid songs.

9Fingers: Have you tried publishing these?

Mark_West: The detective novel, To Save The Moon, which featured a pimp walling up rent boys in houses he owned in Northampton, and the first drama, The Loved One didn’t go anywhere, though the latter got a lot of good feedback from my friends. I just never felt it was the right time to send it away. The second drama, Alice, went to several places but only collected rejection slips. The novel I completed just before re-starting Strange Tales, which was called The Great Weston Dead Beats Association, didn’t go anywhere either. I wouldn’t mind publishing something other than horror, but most of my stuff tends to drift towards the dark side quite naturally. As for the sketches and songs, I’ve performed them a few times, but I need a partner on stage with me, I’m not really brave enough to do it myself!

9Fingers: (Question #11) Do you believe in ghosts?

Mark_West: Yes and no. I think, when it’s dark and you’re alone, your mind will naturally turn that way. Having said that, I have lost two people very close to Alison and myself and neither of us have seen them since they passed away, so if they don’t come back to check up on us, I don’t see why anyone else would bother.

9Fingers: Excellent point. (Question #12) If you could fight any ghost, which one would it be, and why?

Mark_West: (Laughs) What a brilliant question! I’d have a wrestle with Marley’s ghost, from “A Christmas Carol”, because I played him in a school Christmas gala when I was about 9 and I could easily take a 9 year old version of me.

9Fingers: You were Marley? I was Bob Cratchett when I was 13! Perhaps we should gather together all of the folks online that have acted in A Christmas Carol and see if we can put on an E-production of the old play. I think I still even remember some of the lines!

Mark_West: That’d be a great idea. My Mum & Dad are putting all of their old photos in albums and they found the script from my performance, that I’d made notes on (from way back in 1978!), so I don’t need to remember my lines!

9Fingers: So really, we just need to find a Scrooge and a couple of ghosts, and we're set!

Mark_West: Let’s go for it!

9Fingers: (Question #13) How's your life been different since becoming a father?

Mark_West: It’s totally different in a lot of ways and pretty much the same in others. I feel a lot more responsible now, I think about things in a more long-term way, I’m very aware that certain spontaneous things - weekends away, going to the cinema on the spur of the moment, living on take-aways - aren’t always possible now but then, the upside is incredible. I get to watch the development of a human being, who has his own personality and likes and dislikes, but also looks up to me. Which is brilliant. I wouldn’t change becoming a father for anything.

9Fingers: (Question #14) What do you suppose your son will think when he's old enough to pick up and read one of your books?

Mark_West: I’m not sure. I remember, when I was in my teens, finding Nine and a Half Weeks on my dad’s bookshelf and reading it and being vaguely disturbed that he liked that kind of thing. (Laughs) With some of the things that Magellan gets up to in In The Rain With The Dead, I’m not sure what Matthew will think of me! Hopefully, he’ll be able to see past it being his ‘dad’ writing and will enjoy the work for what it is.

9Fingers: What about your parents, your friends? It's always a bit awkward when those close to you see what you've been up to on the computer for hours?

Mark_West: Oh absolutely and whilst I never censor myself in relation to those around me, I do sometimes wonder if they’re going to treat me differently once they read something. My Mum & Dad are very proud of me, but Mum hasn’t read anything of mine for a long time and Dad gave up when I re-started horror (he tends to read the first and last pages now, just so that he’s read something). My sister, Sarah, has read most things I’ve written and had just started Uni when I asked her to read the second draft of In the Rain With the Dead - thinking back on it, I might not do that again if given a second chance! Of my friends, most of them read the work in draft for me, which means they often see something different from what a regular reader would and I often ask them technical questions, so perhaps it’s not quite so awkward. I do remember feeling a bit iffy with the crucifixion and all that goes on around it in the novel, but that was pretty much all. Though my short story “Aversion” did provoke a few raised eyebrows (as well it might!).

9Fingers: Ahhh, you're referring to the short story about the hard-up guy with the phobia of vagina's, yeah?

Mark_West: Yeah, that’s right. I knew, when it was forming in my head, that I was skating on thin ice, even though the story itself isn’t at all misogynistic - it’s a phobia the lead character has, he’s not being nasty, he just wants company without this one organ getting in the way. I showed it to a writer friend of mine, who liked it as much as she’s able to stomach most of my stuff and I showed it to my friend who the story was dedicated to and she enjoyed it - because of the dedication, certainly, but also because she’s known me for 20 years! My Dad, who hadn’t read it but knew the story, strongly advised me not to publish it because he felt it would do whatever level of reputation I had some harm. It was finally published on a webzine who asked me to send them something. I sent them “Aversion” and the lead editor loved it, but it had to go through an editorial panel, which has never happened to me, before or since - and this was just for a webzine that didn’t even pay - and it divided them. Weirdly, it was half and half of either gender - one man loved it, the other hated it and the same with the lady editors. In the end, I could see that some of the comments were heading back to what my mind was concerned with so I emailed them and said that if they had a problem, I’d withdraw the story and save everyone the hassle. The lead editor emailed back, told me not to worry and it was published as the lead story in the first issue. And I got absolutely no feedback on it at all.

9Fingers: (Question #15) In the movie of my life, which actors, do you think, should play you and me?

Mark_West: When Alison & I first got together, her sisters thought I looked like Richard Dreyfuss and since I can’t think of anyone else who looks like me, I’ll go for him. In his “American Graffiti” stage. As for you, well, is Brad Pitt available?

9Fingers: You are a real treat to interview. (Both laugh). (Question #16) What is your ultimate life goal?

Mark_West: To be a wonderful husband, father, son and brother. To enjoy life and try to make a difference. To write and have that work touch people, to the extent that I make a living for me and my family at it.

9Fingers: (Question #17) What are you doing today to get there?

Mark_West: I try to be an asset to my wife, son, parents and sister and my resolution this year is to try and take things easier, to not let the ‘little’ things chisel away at me. As for the writing, now that I seem to have beaten the block I suffered through, I’m working - it’s just that I work very slowly sometimes!

9Fingers: Slow and steady wins the race -- least that's what they say.

Mark_West: Unless you’re running away from a bomb/wild animal/someone who’s going to kill you. Then, I would imagine, slow and steady don’t do you any favours at all!

9Fingers: Yeah, slow and steady has never won me any awards, but who am I to question conventional wisdom?

Mark_West: Absolutely! Plus, slow and steady doesn’t get you out of breath, does it?

9Fingers Have you ever seen Inside the Actor's studio?

Mark_West: No, I haven’t actually. Is that the Actor’s Studio that Strasberg set up?

9Fingers: No, this is hosted by a guy named James Lipton.

Mark_West: Does he make the tea?

9Fingers: I think he makes about half-a-million a year! Ohhhh! These are the jokes, people…(Crickets chirp). At the end of the show they have a questionnaire developed by some great questionnaire guy or something. I've developed my own.

Mark_West: Sounds good.

9Fingers: They're short and sweet.

Mark_West: Like friendly midgets? (Both Laugh)

9Fingers: Just answer each quickly and honestly.

Mark_West: Okay.

9Fingers: (Question #19) What's your favorite curse word?

Mark_West: Fuck. Wanker’s pretty good too and twat. Just to get an idea of cross-cultural references, what’s your favourite profanity? We don’t tend to say curse word over here, it’s generally ‘swear word’.

9Fingers: Me? I'm not sure. I like to mix profanities though. Rather than say, "Son of a bitch," I'd rather say, "Son of a shit!" or something like that. (Question #19) If you could be any Muppet, which one would you be, and why?

Mark_West: Gonzo. He’s so cool. Who wouldn’t want to be Gonzo?

9Fingers: (Question #20) If there is a heaven, what will you do if they don't let you in?

Mark_West: What a great question, except that it presumes I’ve done something to exclude my membership (Laughs). If loved ones were in there, waiting for me, I’d get them to create a diversion and sneak in when nobody was looking. If my loved ones weren’t there, I wouldn’t want to be either. Is that answer okay? What a great question, nobody’s ever asked that before!

9Fingers: (Question #21) What part of your body would you like my name tattooed?

Mark_West: We saw the Dirty Sanchez movie last week and in that, Pritchard has “I Heart Dainton” tattooed on his willy. That seems a bit extreme to me, so I’ll go for forearm. No reason, really. Not a big fan of tattoo’s, I don’t know where I’d put any. I mean, what’s the point of doing one on your back, you can’t see it then.

9Fingers: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me today.

Mark_West: You’re very welcome, Gregg, thank you for asking some great questions.

9Fingers: That's why they pay me the big bucks!

Mark_West: And you deserve them!

You can check out Mark West and his work at his website, www.markwest.org.uk, where there are links to his works and projects. You can also find him at his Livejournal here.

Interview by Gregg Winkler (9fingers), conducted in April 2007

originally published on LiveJournal (c) 9fingers 2007

Writing Groups

2010-02-22T16:46:00.001-08:00

When I was growing up, I was the only 'creative writer' that I knew - people read my stuff, they seemed to like what I did, but I was the only kid doing it. In 1998, thanks to a horror anthology called 'Dark Visions', I discovered the small press and in 1999 I made my first sale (to Sci-Fright). Back then, the UK small press was predominantly print based - the Internet was still in its infancy to mere mortals and so I have a nice collection of books sitting on a shelf, containing some of my short stories.

Anyway, at about this time, I thought I might like to join a Writers Group, to see if there was anything I could pick up about moving forward. I found a poster, in Kettering library, for the Kettering Writers Workshop and I joined up.

I'm not entirely sure that the group did teach me much at all, but I did enjoy going - we met once a month at the Melton Road Community Centre and took along stuff to critique or read out (the centre later provided a key location in my novelette "The Mill", which was very successful to me). The group leader, Sally Angel, stressed that you didn't have to be published to join, or even want to be and as it was, the two most successful members were myself and Sue Moorcroft and both of us made our own leads and luck. Sue is now successful, a full-time writer and making great inroads in romantic/chick-lit fiction. If you've got this far into my web-site, you know what I'm doing now.

Sue & I, I think, used to wind Sally up because we were doing exactly what the group was supposedly pushing us towards, but we were the only ones really going for it. Everyone else was doing something they loved, enjoying the thrill of creation and reading their stuff and that's great, though I did get a little saddened towards the end of my membership when people got excited about appearing in poetry anthologies, where they had to buy a copy of the hardback edition. But no matter - I left the group in 2000, when I started night-school to do my AAT qualifications and I have no idea if it's still going. Part of me hopes so, but most of me assumes not.

I'm going to join another group, in Northampton, with some very prolific and successful members and I hope it gives me the same kind of push that Kettering did.

This appeared in the Kettering Evening Telegraph on Thursday 3rd June 1999. I am in the middle of the picture and Sue is sitting to my right. Simon, a beat poet (whose work I really liked) is to my left. The lady behind Simon and myself, Anne, was really supportive of me and my horror stories, but she had to leave when her Parkinson's meant she couldn't hold a pen - a great shame and a lovely lady. Sally, for some reason, isn't in the photograph.

Photo-stories

2010-02-22T16:21:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was make films. Bear in mind that I grew up through the 70s and 80s, when video cameras weren't really around and you can see why this became a kind of Holy Grail for me. To try and get something visual, I ended up making various "photo-stories" (for those who don't know, "photo-stories" did exactly what you think they did, in the pages of boys and girls comics back in the day - I believe there were also photo-novels, but the less said about them, probably the better).

The above picture was taken in 1981 and features my Dad, me and my school friend Geoff Burbidge. I think we were probably making a rip-off of "Man Tracker" from "The Crunch" or something like that, but I ended up using this image as the cover of a novel I wrote called "Hadley Hall Comprehensive", in about 1982. It was also used as an element for a cover I did for one of my Three Intrepid mysteries.

I never gained the means to make films of my own, though I did eventually make some with Matt Ratcliff (see the film-making section and even though I now have a video camera and an MPEG maker on my still camera and a video on my phone, I only usually film my son or family activities. Strange, eh?

Two more shots from the same story.

Left, my friend Nick walks away as Geoff (in my Dad's old trilby) threatens me. What's cool about this is the Harrington jackets, jeans and trainers. What a look!

On the right, Nick's brother Chris lines up a shot (except you can't see the gun) on Geoff and Nick. That billboard is long gone now and so is the wall that Chris is on - that's where the new library building stands.